“Sampler has closed! Seal is airtight, heater is on! Success success success!”

“Success!” I yell.

It’s working! It’s actually working! We have a sample of Adrian air from the Astrophage breeding zone! If there are any predators, they have to be there, right? I hope so.

“Step two now.” I sigh. This is not going to be fun.

I unhitch my restraints and climb out of the chair. Adrian’s 1.4g’s of gravity pulls me down at a 30-degree angle. The whole room feels tilted because, actually, it is tilted. This isn’t engine thrust I’m feeling. It’s gravity.

One point four g’s isn’t too bad. Everything’s a bit harder, but not unreasonably so. I climb into the Orlan EVA suit. This is going to be difficult, to say the least. I have to go outside and do an EVA while completely under the effects of gravity.

Needless to say, absolutely no part of the EVA suit, the airlock, or my training was remotely designed for this possibility. Who would have thought I would have to tromp around on the ship in full gravity? More than full, in fact?

Yet however much gravity there may be, there’s still no air. Worst of all worlds. But there’s no other way. I have to get the sample.

Right now, the sampler hangs at the end of a 10-kilometer chain, which is just dangling in the air. There’s no easy way for us to get it back to the ship.

When planning this all out, my first thought was to thrust away from the planet, then collect the sampler when we’re back to zerog. Problem is, there’s literally no way to do that without vaporizing the sampler. Any path I try to take to get the ship out of Adrian’s gravity—or even into a stable orbit—will mean using the spin drives. They’d push the ship along, which would make the chain and sample lag behind us and into the IR blast behind the ship. And then the sampler, everything in it, and the chain all become individual, very hot atoms.

The next idea I had was to make a huge spool that could winch up the chain. But Rocky informed me he’d never be able to make a spool big enough and strong enough to bring up the entire 10-kilometer length.

Rocky had a pretty clever thought: The sampler could climb the chain when it was done. But after some experimenting he ditched the idea. He said the risks just weren’t worth it.

So we have… this other plan.

I grab a special winch Rocky designed and attach it to my suit’s tool belt.

“Be careful,” says Rocky. “You are friend now.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You are friend also.”

“Thank.”

I cycle the airlock and look outside.