Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

“How can there be a sudden change in the sun? It’s a star, for cripes’ sake. Things just don’t happen this fast for stars. Changes take millions of years, not dozens. Come on, you know that.”

This is real. The sun is dying. And I’m tangled up in it. Not just as a fellow citizen of Earth who will die with everyone else—I’m actively involved. There’s a sense of responsibility there.

So I’m a single man in my thirties, who lives alone in a small apartment, I don’t have any kids, but I like kids a lot. I don’t like where this is going … A teacher! I’m a schoolteacher! I remember it now! Oh, thank God. I’m a teacher.

“Your doctorate is in molecular biology, correct? Don’t most scientists agree that liquid water is necessary for life to evolve?” “They’re wrong!” I crossed my arms. “There’s nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen! They’re required for Earth life, sure. But another planet could have completely different conditions. All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!”

“Everyone understands the gravity of the situation. There’s no time for old grudges. But for what it’s worth, you’ll be able to show everyone you were right. You don’t need water for life. Surely that must be something you want.”

it? It’s almost academic. I’m either on a collision course with the sun or on my way out to deep space with no hope of returning. Or, I might be headed in the sun’s general direction, but not on a collision course. If that’s the case, I’ll miss the sun … and then fly off into deep space with no hope of returning.

I’m aboard the Hail Mary.

“It’s crazy odd,” I said. “But these things live on the sun. At least some of the time. So I guess having a high resistance to heat makes sense.” “They live on the sun?” she said. “So they’re a life-form?” “I’m pretty sure they are, yeah.” “Elaborate.”

put a few dots under a vacuum and ran a spectrograph. Just a simple test to see if they emit light. And they do, of course. They give off infrared light at the 25.984 micron wavelength. That’s the Petrova frequency—the light that makes the Petrova line. I expected that. But then I noticed they only emit light when they’re moving. And boy, do they emit a lot of it. I mean, not a lot from our point of view, but for a tiny single-celled organism it’s a ton.”

“This isn’t Vulcans dropping by to say hi. This is … space algae.” “An invasive species. Like cane toads in Australia.”

“I think you’d call it ‘Astrophage.’”

This star I’m looking at … it’s not the sun. I’m in a different solar system.

“You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.” “It took you two days to think of poking it with a stick.” “You … be quiet.”

“Um. There’s carbon and nitrogen … but the vast majority of the sample is hydrogen and oxygen.” I sighed and plopped down in the chair next to the machine. “The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen is two to one.” “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What does that mean?” “It’s water. Astrophage is mostly water.”

“Probably because it maintains its internal temperature at 96.415 degrees Celsius no matter what’s going on outside.”

They were the generation that would experience the Sixth Extinction Event.

“Ego?! This isn’t about my ego! It’s about my children!” “You don’t have children.” “Yes, I do! Dozens of them. They come to my class every day. And they’re all going to end up in a Mad Max nightmare world if we don’t solve this problem. Yeah, I was wrong about the water. I don’t care about that. I care about those kids. So give me some gosh-darned Astrophage!”

Anyway, all this can only mean one thing: The Hail Mary isn’t going home. This is a one-way ticket. And I’m pretty sure these beetles are how I’m supposed to send information back to Earth.

I’m on a suicide mission. John, Paul, George, and Ringo get to go home, but my long and winding road ends here. I must have known all this when I volunteered. But to my amnesia-riddled brain this is new information. I’m going to die out here. And I’m going to die alone.

“Dr. Ryland Grace, I hereby grant you top-secret clearance to all information pertaining to Project Hail Mary.”

How do I scour an entire solar system for information about Astrophage? What am I supposed to do? Throw some of my Astrophage fuel at Tau Ceti to see what happens? How do I steer this ship anyway?

If I do find useful information, how do I tell Earth about it? I think that’s what the beetles are for, but how do I upload data to them? How do I aim them? How do I launch them? Why would I, of all people, be part of this mission? Yes, I worked out a bunch of stuff about Astrophage, but so what? I’m a lab coat, not an astronaut. It’s not like they sent Wernher von Braun into space. Surely there were more qualified people.

Ohhhh … that’s what the lowercase t is on the Hail Mary crest. It’s a tau, for “Tau Ceti.” Okay.

I have no idea how much time it took. Or, rather, I have no idea how much time I experienced. When you get going near the speed of light, you experience time dilation. More time will have gone by on Earth than I have experienced since I left Earth. Relativity is weird.

“Besides. We’re already asking these people to die. We shouldn’t ask them to suffer emotional torment for four years too. Science and morality both give the same answer here, and you know it.”

This … this is an alien spacecraft. Made by aliens. Aliens intelligent enough to make a spacecraft. Humanity isn’t alone in the universe. And I’ve just met our neighbors. “Holy fucking shit!”

As hundreds of astronauts have done before, I place my faith and my life in the hands of the engineers who designed the system. Dr. Lokken, I guess. Hope she did her

The Blip-A spins in space. It rotates end-over-end, probably at the exact same rate as the Hail Mary. I guess they saw me spin up the centrifuge and figured it was another communication thing. Humanity’s first miscommunication with an intelligent alien race. Glad I could be a part of it.

But this is the interstellar equivalent of a stranger offering me candy. I want the candy (information), but I don’t know the stranger.

The tunnel is about 20 feet long. Or 7 meters. Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.

How Eridian numbers work (base six) How Eridian numbers are written (ℓ, I, V, λ,+, V) How Eridians read information (left to right) How long an Eridian second is

“Wow …” I stare at him. “Humans spent thousands of years looking up at the stars and wondering what was out there. You guys never saw stars at all but you still worked space travel. What an amazing people you Eridians must be. Scientific geniuses.”

Broadly speaking, the human brain is a collection of software hacks compiled into a single, somehow-functional unit. Each “feature” was added as a random mutation that solved some specific problem to increase our odds of survival.

“No, no, no! You can’t just use ‘I’m saving the world’ as an excuse every time you’re a jerk.”

How can a civilization develop space travel without ever discovering radiation?

“Okay. Nineteen years.” “Nineteen years?” “You wanted a number,” he said. “There’s a number. Nineteen years.” “Okay, what’s nineteen years?” “That’s my estimate for when half the people currently alive will be dead. Nineteen years from now.”

Eridians are extremely susceptible to radiation, and they never even knew it existed.

“So here I am. Environmental activist. Climatologist. Antiwar crusader.” He looked out to sea. “And I’m ordering a nuclear strike on Antarctica. Two hundred and forty-one nuclear weapons, courtesy of the United States, buried fifty meters deep along a fissure at three-kilometer intervals. All going off at the same time.”

I’ve gone from “sole-surviving space explorer” to “guy with wacky new roommate.” It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

science.” “I am,” I say. “I’m a science human. You’re good at making and fixing things. Together we’ll figure this out.” He raises his carapace a bit. “Yes. Together. You have device to sample Astrophage, question?”

Eight hundred pounds and can skitter around effortlessly. Mental note: Do not get in an arm-wrestling match with an Eridian.

“Earth-culture rule. If you’re at a place first, you get to name everything you discover there.”

Step 1: Subject defecates from mouth. “Yup,” I say to myself. “That was pretty freaking gross.”

“Oh my God!” I gasp. My heart just about beats out of my chest. “Astrophage has a predator!” There’s a whole biosphere at Adrian. Not just Astrophage. There’s even an active biosphere within the Petrova

“You are the number two,” he said. Then he turned back to the screen.

If I never see another chain again in my life, it will be too soon. Ten kilometers of chain—each link just 5 centimeters long. That’s two hundred thousand links. Each one connected by hand or claw. It worked out to each of us working eight hours per day for two weeks doing nothing but connecting links.

“Save … Earth … Save … Erid …” he quavers. Then he slumps down. “Rocky!” I grab his carapace without thinking. It’s like putting my hands on a burner. I jerk away. “Rocky … no …” But he is motionless.

The hardest part about working with aliens and saving humanity from extinction is constantly having to come up with names for stuff.

“You not know where you ship parts are, question?!” “The computer has all that information! I can’t remember all that!” “Human brain useless!” “Oh, shut up!”

I still have two more tethers coiled on my tool belt ready to go if needed. There’s no such thing as too much tether.