He thinks for a moment. “I need word. Small life. Single thing. Like Astrophage. Eridian body made of many many of these.”

“Cell,” I say. “My body is many many cells also.”

He says the Eridian word for “cell,” and I add the tones to my ever-growing dictionary.

“Cell,” he says. “My crew have problem with cells. Many many cells die. Not infection. Not injury. No reason. But not me. Never me. Why, question? I not know.”

Each individual cell in the affected Eridians died? That sounds horrible. It also sounds like radiation sickness. How am I going to describe that? I shouldn’t have to. If they’re a spacefaring people, they should already understand radiation. We don’t have a word for it between us yet, though. Let’s work on that.

“I need a word: fast-moving hydrogen atoms. Very very fast.”

“Hot gas.”

“No. Faster than that. Very very very fast.”

He wiggles his carapace. He’s confused.

I try another approach. “Space has very very very fast hydrogen atoms. They move almost the speed of light. They were created by stars long long long ago.”

“No. No mass in space. Space is empty.”

Oh boy. “No, that’s wrong. There are hydrogen atoms in space. Very very fast hydrogen atoms.”

“Understand.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

I stare in shock.

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

“Dr. Grace,” she said.

“Dr. Lokken,” I said.

We sat across from each other at a small steel table. It was a tiny room, but spacious by aircraft-carrier standards. I didn’t quite understand its original purpose and its name was written in Chinese characters. But I think it was a place for the navigator to look at charts…?

“Thank you for making time to see me,” she said.

“Not a problem.”

As a rule, we tried to avoid each other. Our relationship had matured from “annoyed with each other” to “very annoyed with each other.” I was as much a part of the problem as she was. But we got off on the wrong foot all those months ago back in Geneva and never really improved.

“Of course, I don’t think this is necessary.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “But Stratt insisted you run this stuff by me. So here we are.”

“I have an idea. But I want your opinion.” She pulled out a file and handed it to me. “CERN is going to release this paper next week. This is a rough draft. But I know everyone there, so they let me see an advance copy.”

I opened the folder. “Okay, what’s it about?”

“They figured out how Astrophage stores energy.”

“Really?!” I gasped. Then I cleared my throat. “Really?”

“Yes, and frankly it’s amazing.” She pointed to a graph on the first page. “Long story short: It’s neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” I shook my head. “How the heck…”