“Stand by. Velocity…” —I check the navigation console—“127.5 meters per second! Just what I calculated! Holy cow, it worked!”

I feel the pull of Adrian, tugging me into my seat.

This is one of those things I frequently have to explain to my students. Gravity doesn’t just “go away” when you’re in orbit. In fact, the gravity you experience in orbit is pretty much the same as you’d experience on the ground. The weightlessness that astronauts experience while in orbit comes from constantly falling. But the curvature of the Earth makes the ground go away at the same rate you fall. So you just fall forever.

The Hail Mary isn’t falling anymore. The engines hold us up in the sky and our tilt makes us scooch forward at 127 meters per second—about 285 miles per hour. Fast for a car, but amazingly slow for a spaceship.

The air behind us glows so bright the external camera shuts down to protect its digitizer.

The Life Support panel comes up on my main screen, unprompted. EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE EXTREME, it warns.

“Air is hot,” I call out. “Ship is hot.”

“Ship no touch air,” Rocky says. “Why is ship hot, question?”

“It’s bouncing our IR back at us. And it’s so hot now it emits its own IR. We’re getting cooked.”

“You ship is Astrophage-cooled, question?”

“Yes. Astrophage cools ship.”

Astrophage conduits run all along the hull for just such an occasion. Well, not the occasion of “blasting a planet’s atmosphere with so much IR light the results can melt steel” but the general situations where heat builds up. Mostly from the sun or Tau Ceti heating the ship up and the heat having nowhere to go.

“Astrophage absorb heat. We safe.”

“Agree. We safe. And we ready. Drop probe!”

“Drop probe!” He slams his claw on the Drop button.

I hear the scrape and clink of the spools sliding off the hull one at a time and falling toward the planet below. Twenty spools in all, each one drops and unwinds before the next is released. Our best effort at keeping the chain from getting tangled.

“Spool Six away…” Rocky reports.

The Life Support panel blinks its warning again. I mute it again. Astrophage lives on stars. I’m sure a little reflected IR light won’t be too much heat for it to handle.

“Spool Twelve away…” Rocky says. “Sampler signal good. Sampler detecting air now.”

“Good!” I say.

“Good good,” he says. “Spool Eighteen away… air density increase…”

With the external cameras offline, I can’t see any of what’s going on. But Rocky’s readings are right in line with our plan. Right now, the chain is unfurling as it falls. Our angled engines keep us in the sky, but nothing keeps the chain from falling straight down.

“Spool Twenty away. All spools released. Air density of sampler is almost Astrophage breeding ground level…”

I watch Rocky with bated breath.