Project Hail Mary

Chapter 2

Okay, take a breath. Let’s not jump to wild conclusions. Yes, the gravity is too high. Work from there and think of sensible answers.

I could be in a centrifuge. It would have to be pretty big. But with Earth’s gravity providing 1 g, you could have these rooms at an angle running around a track or on the end of a long solid arm or something. Set that spinning and the aggregate centripetal force plus Earth’s gravity could be 15 meters per second per second.

Why would someone make a huge centrifuge with hospital beds and a lab in it? I don’t know. Would it even be possible? How big would that radius have to be? And how fast would it go?

I think I know how to find out. I need an accurate accelerometer. Dropping things off a table and timing them is all well and fine for rough estimates, but it’s only as accurate as my reaction time on hitting the stopwatch. I need something better. And only one thing will do the job: a small piece of string.

I search the lab drawers.

After a few minutes, I have half the drawers open and have found just about every form of lab supplies except string. I’m about to give up when I finally find a spool of nylon thread.

“Yes!” I pull off a few feet of thread and cut it with my teeth. I tie a loop on one end and tie the other end around the tape measure. The tape measure will be playing the role of “dead weight” in this experiment. Now I just need something to hang it from.

I look above me at the hatch over my head. I climb up the ladder (easier now than ever before) and put the loop over the main latch handle. Then I let the tape measure’s weight pull the string taut.

I have a pendulum.

Cool thing about pendulums: The time it takes for one to swing forward and backward—the period—won’t change, no matter how wide it swings. If it’s got a lot of energy, it’ll swing farther and faster, but the period will still be the same. This is what mechanical clocks take advantage of to keep time. That period ends up being driven by two things, and two things only: the length of the pendulum and gravity.

I pull the pendulum to one side. I release it and start the timer. I count cycles as it sways back and forth. It’s not exciting. I almost want to fall asleep, but I stay at it.

When I hit the ten-minute mark, the pendulum is barely moving anymore, so I decide that’s long enough. Grand total: 346 full cycles in exactly ten minutes.

Onward to phase two.

I measure the distance from the hatch handle to the floor. It’s just over two and a half meters. I go back downstairs to the “bedroom.” Again, the ladder is no problem. I’m feeling so much better now. That food really did the trick.

“What’s your name?” the computer asks.

I look down at my sheet toga. “I am the great philosopher Pendulus!”

“Incorrect.”

I hang the pendulum on one of the robot hands near the ceiling. I hope it’ll stay still for a while. I eyeball the distance between the robot hand and the ceiling—I’ll call it a meter. My pendulum is now four and a half meters lower than it was before.

I repeat the experiment. Ten minutes on the stopwatch, and I count the total cycles. The result: 346 cycles. Same as upstairs.

Golly.

Thing is, in a centrifuge, the farther you get from the center, the higher the centripetal force will be. So if I were in a centrifuge, the “gravity” down here would be higher than it was upstairs. And it isn’t. At least, not enough to get a different number of pendulum cycles.

But what if I’m in a really big centrifuge? One so huge that the force difference between here and the lab is so small it doesn’t change the number of cycles?

Let’s see…the formula for a pendulum…and the formula for the force of a centrifuge…wait, I don’t have the actual force, just a cycle count, so there’s a one-over-x factor involved…this is actually a very instructive problem!

I have a pen, but no paper. That’s okay—I have a wall. After a lot of “crazy prisoner scribbling on a wall”–type stuff, I have my answer.

Let’s say I’m on Earth and in a centrifuge. That would mean the centrifuge provides some of the force with the rest being supplied by Earth. According to my math (and I showed all my work!), that centrifuge would need a 700-meter radius (which is almost half a mile) and would be spinning at 88 meters per second—almost 200 miles per hour!

Hmm. I think mostly in metric when doing science stuff. Interesting. Most scientists do, though, right? Even scientists who grew up in America.

Anyway, that would be the largest centrifuge ever built…and why would anyone build it? Plus, something like that would be loud as heck. Whizzing through the air at 200 miles per hour? At the very least there’d be some turbulence here and there, not to mention a lot of wind noise. I don’t hear or feel anything like that.

This is getting weird. Okay, what if I’m in space? There wouldn’t be turbulence or wind resistance, but the centrifuge would have to be bigger and faster because there’s no gravity to help out.

More math, more graffiti on the wall. The radius would have to be 1,280 meters—close to a mile. Nothing anywhere near that big has ever been built for space.

So I’m not in a centrifuge. And I’m not on Earth.

Another planet? But there isn’t any planet, moon, or asteroid in the solar system that has this much gravity. Earth is the largest solid object in the whole system. Sure, the gas giants are bigger, but unless I’m in a balloon floating around the winds of Jupiter, there’s just nowhere I could go to experience this force.

How do I know all that space stuff? I just know it. It feels like second nature—information I use all the time. Maybe I’m an astronomer or a planetary scientist. Maybe I work for NASA or ESA or—

I met Marissa every Thursday night for steak and beer at Murphy’s on Gough Street. Always at six p.m., and because the staff knew us, always at the same table.

We’d met almost twenty years ago in grad school. She dated my then-roommate. Their relationship (like most in grad school) was a train wreck and they broke up within three months. But she and I ended up becoming good friends.

When the host saw me, he smiled and jerked his thumb toward the usual table. I made my way through the kitschy décor to Marissa. She had a couple of empty lowball glasses in front of her and a full one in her hand. Apparently, she’d gotten started early.

“Pre-gaming, eh?” I said, sitting down.

She looked down and fidgeted with her glass.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

She took a sip of whiskey. “Rough day at work.”

I signaled the waiter. He nodded and didn’t even come over. He knew I wanted a rib-eye, medium, mashed potatoes on the side, and a pint of Guinness. Same thing I ordered every week.

“How rough could it be?” I asked. “Cushy government job with the DOE. You probably get, what, twenty days off a year? All you have to do is show up and you get paid, right?”

Again, no laugh. Nothing.

“Oh, come on!” I said. “Who pooped in your Rice Krispies?”

She sighed. “You know about the Petrova line?”

“Sure. Kind of an interesting mystery. My guess is solar radiation. Venus doesn’t have a magnetic field, but positively charged particles might be drawn there because it’s electrically neutral—”

“No,” she said. “It’s something else. We don’t know exactly what. But it’s something…else. But whatever. Let’s eat steak.”

I snorted. “Come on, Marissa, spill it. What the heck is wrong with you?”

She mulled it over. “Why not? You’ll hear it from the president in about twelve hours anyway.”

“The president?” I said. “Of the United States?”

She took another gulp of whiskey. “Have you heard of Amaterasu? It’s a Japanese solar probe.”

“Sure,” I said. “JAXA has been getting some great data from it. It’s really neat, actually. It’s in a solar orbit, about halfway between Mercury and Venus. It has twenty different instruments aboard that—”

“Yeah, I know. Whatever,” she said. “According to their data, the sun’s output is decreasing.”

I shrugged. “So? Where are we in the solar cycle?”

She shook her head. “It’s not the eleven-year cycle. It’s something else. JAXA accounted for the cycle. There’s still a downward trend. They say the sun is 0.01 percent less bright than it should be.”

“Okay, interesting. But hardly worth three whiskeys before dinner.”

She pursed her lips. “That’s what I thought. But they’re saying that value is increasing. And the rate of the increase is increasing. It’s some sort of exponential loss that they caught very, very early thanks to their probe’s incredibly sensitive instruments.”

I leaned back in the booth. “I don’t know, Marissa. Spotting an exponential progression that early seems really unlikely. But okay, let’s say the JAXA scientists are right. Where’s the energy going?”

“The Petrova line.”

“Huh?”

“JAXA took a good long look at the Petrova line and they say it’s getting brighter at the same rate that the sun is getting dimmer. Somehow or another, whatever it is, the Petrova line is stealing energy from the sun.”

She pulled a sheaf of papers from her purse and put them on the table. It looked like a bunch of graphs and charts. She shuffled through them until she found the one she wanted, then pushed it toward me.

The x-axis was labeled “time” and the y-axis was labeled “luminosity loss.” The line was exponential, for sure.

“This can’t be right,” I said.

“It’s right,” she said. “The sun’s output will drop a full percent over the next nine years. In twenty years that figure will be five percent. This is bad. It’s really bad.”

I stared at the graph. “That would mean an ice age. Like…right away. Instant ice age.”

“Yeah, at the very least. And crop failures, mass starvation…I don’t even know what else.”

I shook my head. “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.”

“No, I don’t know that. I used to know that. Now I only know the sun’s dying,” she said. “I don’t know why and I don’t know what we could do about it. But I know it’s dying.”

“How…” I furrowed my brow.

She downed the rest of her drink. “President addresses the nation tomorrow morning. I think they’re coordinating with other world leaders to all announce at the same time.”

The waiter dropped off my Guinness. “Here you go, sir. The steaks should be out shortly.”

“I need another whiskey,” Marissa said.

“Make it two,” I added.

I blink. Another flash of memory.

Was it true? Or is that just a random memory of me talking to someone who got sucked into a bogus doomsday theory?

No. It’s real. I’m terrified just thinking about it. And it’s not just sudden terror. It’s a cozy, comfortable terror with a permanent seat at the table. I’ve felt it for a long time.

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.

I still don’t remember my own name, but I remember random bits of information about the Petrova problem. They call it the Petrova problem. I just remembered that.

My subconscious has priorities. And it’s desperately telling me about this. I think my job is to solve the Petrova problem.

…in a small lab, wearing a bedsheet toga, with no idea who I am, and no help other than a mindless computer and two mummified roommates.

My vision blurs. I wipe my eyes. Tears. I can’t…I can’t remember their names. But…they were my friends. My comrades.

Only now do I realize I’ve been facing away from them the whole time. I’ve done everything I can to keep them out of my line of sight. Scrawling on the wall like a madman with the corpses of people I cared about right behind me.

But now the distraction is over. I turn to look at them.

I sob. It comes without warning. I remember bits and pieces all in a rush. She was funny—always quick with a joke. He was professional and with nerves of steel. I think he was military and he was definitely our leader.

I fall to the floor and put my head in my hands. I can’t hold anything back. I cry like a child. We were a lot more than friends. And “team” isn’t the right word either. It’s stronger than that. It’s…

It’s on the tip of my tongue…

Finally, the word slides into my conscious mind. It had to wait until I wasn’t looking to sneak in.

Crew. We were a crew. And I’m all that’s left.

This is a spacecraft. I know that now. I don’t know how it has gravity but it’s a spaceship.

Things start to fall into place. We weren’t sick. We were in suspended animation.

But these beds aren’t magical “freeze chambers” like in the movies. There’s no special technology at play here. I think we were in medically induced comas. Feeding tubes, IVs, constant medical care. Everything a body needs. Those arms probably changed sheets, kept us rotated to prevent bedsores, and did all the other things ICU nurses would normally do.

And we were kept fit. Electrodes all over our bodies to stimulate muscle movement. Lots of exercise.

But in the end, comas are dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Only I survived, and my brain is a pile of mush.

I walk over to the woman. I actually feel better, looking at her. Maybe it’s a sense of closure, or maybe it’s just the calmness that comes after a crying jag.

The mummy has no tubes attached. No monitoring equipment at all. There’s a small hole in her leathery wrist. That’s where the IV was when she died, I guess. So the hole never healed.

The computer must have removed everything when she died. Waste not, want not, I guess. No point in using resources on dead people. More for the survivors.

More for me, in other words.

I take a deep breath and let it out. I have to be calm. I have to think clearly. I remembered a lot just then—my crew, some aspects of their personalities, that I’m on a spaceship (I’ll freak out about that later). The point is I’m getting more memories back, and they’re coming sort of when I want them instead of at random intervals. I want to focus on that, but the sadness is just so strong.

“Eat,” says the computer.

A panel in the center of the ceiling opens up, and a food tube drops out. One of the robot arms catches it and places it on my bed. The label reads DAY 1—MEAL 2.

I’m not in the mood to eat, but my stomach growls as soon as I see the tube. Whatever my mental state may be, my body has needs.

I open the tube and squirt goop into my mouth.

I have to admit: It’s another incredible flavor sensation. I think it’s chicken with hints of vegetable. There’s no texture, of course—it’s basically baby food. And it’s a little thicker than my earlier meal. It’s all about getting my digestive system used to solid food again.

“Water?” I say between mouthfuls.

The ceiling panel opens again, this time with a metal cylinder. An arm brings it to me. Text on the shiny container reads POTABLE WATER. I unscrew the top and, sure enough, there’s water in there.

I take a sip. It’s room temperature and tastes flat. It’s probably distilled and devoid of minerals. But water’s water.

I finish the rest of my meal. I haven’t had to use a bathroom yet but I’ll need to eventually. I’d rather not go wee on the floor.

“Toilet?” I say.

A wall panel spins around to reveal a metal commode. It’s just right there in the wall, like in a prison cell. I take a closer look. It has buttons and stuff on it. I think there’s a vacuum pipe in the bowl. And there’s no water. I think this might be a zero-g toilet modified for use in gravity. Why do that?

“Okay, uh…dismiss toilet.”

The wall swivels around again. The toilet is gone.

All right. I’m well fed. I’m feeling a little better about things. Food will do that.

I need to focus on some positives. I’m alive. Whatever killed my friends, it didn’t kill me. I’m on a spaceship—I don’t know the details, but I know I’m on a ship and it seems to be working correctly.

And my mental state is improving. I’m sure of it.

I sit cross-legged on the floor. It’s time for a proactive step. I close my eyes and let my mind wander. I want to remember something—anything—on purpose. I don’t care what. But I want to initiate it. Let’s see what I get.

I start with what makes me happy. I like science. I know it. I got a thrill from all the little experiments I’ve been doing. And I’m in space. So maybe I can think about space and science and see what I get….

I pulled the piping-hot spaghetti TV dinner from the microwave and hustled over to my couch. I peeled the plastic off the top to let the steam escape.

I unmuted the TV and listened to the live feed. Several coworkers and a few friends had invited me to watch this with them, but I didn’t want to spend the whole evening answering questions. I just wanted to watch in peace.

It was the most watched event in human history. More than the moon landing. More than any World Cup Final. Every network, streaming service, news website, and local TV affiliate was showing the same thing: NASA’s live feed.

A reporter stood with an older man in the gallery of a flight-control room. Beyond them, men and women in blue shirts fixed their attention on their terminals.

“This is Sandra Elias,” said the reporter. “I’m here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. I’m here with Dr. Browne, who is the head of Planetary Sciences for NASA.”

She turned to the scientist. “Doctor, what’s our status now?”

Browne cleared his throat. “We received confirmation about ninety minutes ago that ArcLight successfully inserted into orbit around Venus. Now we’re just waiting for that first batch of data.”

It had been a heck of a year since the JAXA announcement about the Petrova problem. But study after study confirmed their findings. The clock was ticking and the world needed to find out what was going on. So Project ArcLight was born.

The situation was terrifying, but the project itself was awesome. My inner nerd couldn’t help but be excited.

ArcLight was the most expensive unmanned spacecraft ever built. The world needed answers and didn’t have time to dillydally. Normally if you asked a space agency to send a probe to Venus in under a year, they’d laugh in your face. But it’s amazing what you can do with an unlimited budget. The United States, European Union, Russia, China, India, and Japan all helped cover costs.

“Tell us about going to Venus,” the reporter said. “What makes it so hard?”

“The main problem is fuel,” said Browne. “There are specific transfer windows when interplanetary travel takes the minimum amount of fuel, but we were nowhere near an Earth-Venus window. So we had to put a lot more fuel in orbit just to get ArcLight there in the first place.”

“So it’s a case of bad timing, then?” the reporter asked.

“I don’t think there’s ever a good time for the sun to get dimmer.”

“Good point. Please go on.”

“Venus moves very fast compared to Earth, which means more fuel just to catch up. Even under ideal conditions, it actually takes more fuel to get to Venus than it does to get to Mars.”

“Amazing. Amazing. Now, Doctor, some people have asked, ‘Why bother with the planet? The Petrova line is huge, spanning an arc from the sun to Venus. Why not somewhere between?’ ”

“Because the Petrova line is widest there—as wide as the whole planet. And we can use the planet’s gravity to help us out. ArcLight will actually orbit Venus twelve times while collecting samples of whatever material the Petrova line is made of.”

“And what is that material, you think?”

“We have no idea,” said Browne. “No idea at all. But we might have answers soon. Once ArcLight finishes this first orbit, it should have enough material for its onboard analysis lab.”

“And what can we expect to learn tonight?”

“Not much. The onboard lab is pretty basic. Just a high-magnification microscope and an x-ray spectrometer. The real mission here is sample return. It’ll be another three months for ArcLight to come home with those samples. The lab is a backup to get at least some data in case there’s a failure during the return phase.”

“Good planning as always, Dr. Browne.”

“It’s what we do.”

A cheer erupted from behind the reporter.

“I’m hearing—” She paused to let the sound die down. “I’m hearing that the first orbit is complete and the data is coming in now….”

The main screen in the control room changed to a black-and-white image. The picture was mostly gray, with black dots scattered here and there.

“What are we looking at, Doctor?” said the reporter’s voice.

“This is from the internal microscope,” said Browne. “It’s magnified ten thousand times. Those black dots are about ten microns across.”

“Are those dots what we’ve been looking for?” she asked.

“We can’t be certain,” said Browne. “They could just be dust particles. Any major gravity source like a planet will have a cloud of dust surrounding—”

“What the fuck?!” came a voice in the background. Several flight controllers gasped.

The reporter snickered. “High spirits here at JPL. We are coming to you live, so we apologize for any—”

“Oh my God!” said Browne.

On the main screen, more images came through. One after another. All nearly the same.

Nearly.

The reporter looked at the images on-screen. “Are those particles…moving?”

The images, playing in succession, showed the black dots deforming and shifting around within their environment.

The reporter cleared her throat and delivered what many would call the understatement of the century: “They look a little like microbes, wouldn’t you say?”

“Telemetry!” Dr. Browne called out. “Any shimmy in the probe?”

“Already checked,” said someone. “No shimmy.”

“Is there a consistent direction of travel?” he asked. “Something that could be explained by an external force? Magnetic, maybe? Static electricity?”

The room fell silent.

“Anyone?!” said Browne.

I dropped my fork right into my spaghetti.

Is this actually alien life? Am I really that lucky?! To be alive when humanity first discovers extraterrestrial life?!

Wow! I mean—the Petrova problem is still terrifying but…wow! Aliens! This could be aliens! I couldn’t wait to talk about this with the kids tomorrow—

“Angular anomaly,” the computer says.

“Darn it!” I say. “I was almost there! I almost remembered myself!”

“Angular anomaly,” the computer repeats.

I unfold myself and get to my feet. In my limited interactions with it, the computer seems to have some understanding of what I say. Like Siri or Alexa. So I’ll talk to it like I’d talk to one of them.

“Computer, what is an angular anomaly?”

“Angular anomaly: an object or body designated as critical is not at the expected location angle by at least 0.01 radians.”

“What body is anomalous?”

“Angular anomaly.”

Not much help. I’m on a ship, so it must be a navigational issue. That can’t be good. How would I even steer this thing? I don’t see anything resembling spaceship controls—not that I really know what those look like. But all I’ve discovered so far is a “coma room” and a lab.

That other hatch in the lab—the one that leads farther up—that must be important. This is like being in a video game. Explore the area until you find a locked door, then look for the key. But instead of searching bookshelves and garbage cans, I have to search my mind. Because the “key” is my own name.

The computer’s not being unreasonable. If I can’t remember my own name, I probably shouldn’t be allowed into delicate areas of the ship.

I climb onto my bunk and lie on my back. I keep a wary eye on the robot arms above, but they don’t move. I guess the computer is satisfied that I’m self-sufficient for now.

I close my eyes and focus on that flash of memory. I can see bits and pieces of it in my mind. Like looking at an old photo that’s been damaged.

I’m in my house…no…apartment. I have an apartment. It’s tidy, but small. There’s a picture of the San Francisco skyline on one wall. Not useful. I already know I lived in San Francisco.

There’s a Lean Cuisine microwave meal on the coffee table in front of me. Spaghetti. The heat still hasn’t equalized yet, so there are pockets of nearly frozen noodles next to tongue-melting plasma. But I’m taking bites anyway. I must be hungry.

I’m watching NASA on TV; I see all that stuff from my previous flash of memory. My first thought is…I’m elated! Could it be extraterrestrial life? I can’t wait to tell the kids!

I have kids? This is a single man’s apartment with a single man eating a single man’s meal. I don’t see anything feminine at all. There’s nothing to suggest a woman in my life. Am I divorced? Gay? Either way, there’s no sign that children live here. No toys, no pictures of kids on the wall or mantel, nothing. And the place is way too clean. Kids make a mess of everything. Especially when they start chewing gum. They all go through a gum phase—at least, a lot of them do—and they leave it everywhere.

How do I know that?

I like kids. Huh. Just a feeling. But I like them. They’re cool. They’re fun to hang out with.

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.