“Data. It’s got a redundant RAID array with more memory storage than anyone would ever need.” He knocked on the dome. It echoed slightly. “The bulk of this puppy is fuel storage. It’ll need about 125 kilos of Astrophage to make the trip. Seems like a lot but… man… twelve light-years!”

I lifted the device and hefted it in my hands a couple of times. “How does it turn?”

“Reaction wheels inside,” he said. “It spins them one way, the ship turns the other. Easy-peasy.”

“Interstellar navigation is ‘easy-peasy’?” I smiled.

He snickered. “Well, for what we have to do, yeah. It has a receiver that’s constantly listening for a signal from Earth. Once it hears that signal, it’ll broadcast its location and await instructions from the Deep Space Network. We don’t have to be super accurate with the navigation. We just need it to show up within radio range of Earth. Anywhere within the orbit of Saturn or so will do just fine.”

I nod. “And then scientists can tell it exactly how to get back. Clever.”

He shrugged. “They’ll probably do that, yeah. But they don’t need to. They’ll have it radio over all the data first thing. The information gets across. Then they can collect it later if they want. Oh, and we’re making four of these. All we need is for one of them to survive the trip.”

I turned the beetle this way and that. It was surprisingly light. A few pounds at most. “Okay, so there are four of these. How likely is each one to survive the trip? Is there at least a little system redundancy aboard?”

He shrugged. “Not that much, no. But it doesn’t have to travel for nearly as long as the Hail Mary does. So stuff doesn’t have to survive as long.”

“It’s going the same route, right?” I asked. “Why doesn’t it take the same time?”

“Because the Hail Mary’s acceleration is limited by the soft, squishy humans inside. The beetle doesn’t have that problem. Everything aboard is military-grade cruise-missile electronics and parts that can handle hundreds ofg’s of force. So it gets to relativistic speed much faster.”

“Oh, interesting…” I wondered if this would make a good question for my students. I dismissed the idea immediately. It was absurdly complicated math no eighth grader would be able to handle.

“Yeah,” Hatch said. “They accelerate at five hundredg’s until they reach a cruising speed of 0.93 c. It’ll take over twelve years to get back to Earth, but all told the little guys will only experience about twenty months. Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”