I don’t have any xenonite (that’s what I’m calling this weird alien compound, and no one can stop me). But I do have solder and a soldering iron. I break off a little piece of solder, melt one end, and stick it to the Tau Ceti sphere. It sticks pretty well, which is a relief. You never know with xenonite.

I check, double-check, and triple-check to make sure I correctly identify which one of the little stars in the model is Sol (Earth’s sun). I solder the other side of the wire to Sol.

I search the lab until I find some hard paraffin. With some poking, open flames, and mild swearing, I’m able to make a really poor approximation of the Petrova-line icon they sent me. I smush it onto Sol in the model. It looks all right. At least, good enough that they should get the idea.

I take a look. The sleek, thin lines of the xenonite whiskers are ruined by my crooked, blob-ended solder addition and crappy wax model. It’s like someone added a crayon drawing into the corner of a Da Vinci, but it will have to do.

I try to screw the top and bottom of the doohickey back together. They refuse to mate. I try again. It still doesn’t work. I remember that Eridians use left-handed threading in their screws. So I do what, to me, is an unscrewing motion. The two pieces connect perfectly.

Time to throw it back to them. Politely.

Except I can’t. Not with the ship spinning around like this. If I tried to step out of the airlock, I’d go flying off into space.

I grab the doohickey and climb up to the control room. I strap myself into the chair and order the ship to spin down.

Like last time, I feel the room tilt, though this time it tilts the other way. And again, I know it’s not actually tilting, it’s my perception of the lateral acceleration being applied, but whatever.

I feel the gravity decrease and the tilt of the room reduce until I’m back in zero g again. This time there’s no disorientation. I guess my lizard brain has made its peace with the fact that gravity comes and goes. The operation ends with a final “clunk” as the reoriented crew compartment seats into the rear half of the ship.

I get back in the EVA suit, grab the doohickey, and head out into space once again. I don’t need to work my way across the hull with tethers this time. I just clip my tether in the airlock.

The Blip-A has stopped spinning—probably did it when the Hail Mary stopped. And it’s still 217 meters away.