“Oh my God. Is that what people think?” I turned to face the scientists. Most of them averted their eyes. “Nothing like that is going on! And I’m not her number two! I’m just a scientist—drafted into this project like the rest of you!”

Yáo turned around and stared at me for a moment. The room fell silent. He didn’t speak much, so when he did, people paid attention.

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

The BBC announcer counted the last few seconds along with the on-screen timer. “Three… two… one… and we have lift-off!”

Flames and smoke surrounded the rocket on-screen, and it rose skyward. Slow at first, then picking up more and more speed.

Ilyukhina held her glass up for a few seconds and finally burst into cheers. “Tower is clear! Launch is good!” She gulped her vodka.

“It’s only a hundred feet off the ground,” I said. “Maybe wait till it reaches orbit?”

DuBois sipped his wine. “Astronauts celebrate when the tower is clear.”

Without a word, Yáo took a sip of his beer.

“Why. Doesn’t. This. Work?!” I hit my forehead with both palms at each word.

I flop into the lab chair, deflated.

Rocky watches from his tunnel above. “No predator, question?”

“No predator.” I sigh.

The experiment is simple enough. It’s a glass bulb full of Adrian’s air. The air didn’t actually come from Adrian, but the proportions of gases are based on the spectrograph of its atmosphere. The pressure is very low—one-tenth atmosphere, like the upper atmosphere of Adrian must be.

Also inside the bulb is our collected Adrian life-forms and some fresh Astrophage. I hoped that providing a bunch of nice, juicy Astrophage would make the predator population spike and I could isolate it from the sample once it was the dominant cell type present.

Didn’t work.

“You are certain, question?”

I check my makeshift heat-energy indicator. It’s just a thermocouple with part of it sticking in ice water and part of it attached to the bulb. Heat energy is provided by Astrophage and consumed by the ice. The resulting temperature of the thermocouple tells me how much total heat energy the Astrophage is giving off. If the temperature goes down, it means the Astrophage population went down. But that’s not happening.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say. “No change in Astrophage population.”

“Maybe temperature of bulb no good. Too hot. Adrian upper atmosphere is probably much colder than you room temperature.”

I shake my head. “Adrian air temperature shouldn’t matter. The predator has to be able to handle Astrophage temperature.”

“Ah. Yes. You are right.”

“Maybe the predator theory is wrong,” I say.