During the decades (gasp!) that Rocky’s been here, he surveyed the system very well. He gave me all the information he’d accumulated. He cataloged six planets, noted their size, mass, positions, orbital characteristics, and general atmospheric makeup. He didn’t have to travel around to do it. He just did astronomical observations from the Blip-A. Turns out Eridians are as curious about things as humans are.

And it’s a good thing too. This isn’t Star Trek. I can’t just flip on a scanner and get all that information about a star system. It took Rocky months of observations to get things at this level of detail.

And more important, Rocky knows all about the local Petrova line. As expected, it goes to one specific planet—probably the one that has the most carbon dioxide. In this case, it’s the third planet from the star, “Tau Ceti e.” At least, that’s what Earth calls it.

So that’ll be our first stop.

Sure, we could fly the Hail Mary through any part of the Petrova line and get some Astrophage that way. But we’d only intersect the line for a few seconds. A solar system is not a static thing. We have to keep moving at least fast enough to maintain orbit around the star.

But Tau Ceti e is a nice, big planet in the widest part of the Petrova line. We can park the Hail Mary in orbit and be immersed in local Astrophage for half of every orbit. And we can stay there as long as we want, getting as much data as we need to about the Astrophage here and the dynamics of the Petrova line itself.

So we’re on our way to the mysterious planet.

I can’t just ask Mr. Sulu to plot a course. I spent two days doing math, checking my work, and rechecking my work before I figured out the exact angle and thrust to apply.

Sure, I have 20,000 kilograms of Astrophage left. And yes, that’s quite a lot of fuel considering I can get 1.5g’s by spending 6 grams per second. And yes, Rocky’s ship apparently has scads of Astrophage (I still don’t understand how he has so much extra fuel). But I’m conserving fuel anyway.

I got us going a good head of steam and we’re on course for Tau Ceti e. I’ll do the orbital-insertion burn in about eleven days. While we wait, we may as well have gravity. So we’re back to centrifuge mode.

Eleven days. Truly astonishing. The total distance we’ll be traveling to get there is over 150 million kilometers. That’s about the same as the distance from Earth to the sun. And we’re doing it in eleven days. How? By having an absurd velocity.