The angle of the nose cone is shallow enough that I don’t slide off. I check the tethers again, then crawl up the nose toward the top. The centrifuge action shoves me to the side as I go. I have to stop every couple of feet and let friction with the hull zero out my lateral motion.

“Status, question?”

“Making progress,” I say.

“Good.”

I reach the nose. The artificial gravity is weakest here, being closest to the center of rotation. That’s a nice little benefit.

The universe lazily revolves around me every twenty-five seconds. For half the time, Adrian fills my entire view below. Then I get a few seconds of Tau Ceti’s burning brightness. Then nothing. It’s a little disconcerting but not too bad. Just mildly annoying.

The beetle hatch is just where it should be. I’m going to have to be careful here. I don’t want to damage anything.

This was all designed to be a suicide mission. They didn’t care about the Hail Mary getting home. The mechanism inside has pyros to blow off this hatch. Then the beetles can launch and find their way back to Earth. Good system, but I need this hatch intact for when I go home. It’s all for the aerodynamics.

Yes, aerodynamics.

The Hail Mary has always looked like something out of a Heinlein novel. Shiny silver, smooth hull, sharp nose cone. Why do all that for a ship that’ll never have to deal with an atmosphere?

Because of the interstellar medium. There’s a teeny, tiny amount of hydrogen and helium wandering around out there in space. It’s on the order of one atom per cubic centimeter, but when you’re traveling near the speed of light, that adds up. Not only because you’re hitting a whole bunch of atoms but also because those atoms, from your inertial reference frame, weigh more than normal. Relativistic physics is weird.

Long story short: I need the nose intact.

The entire panel and pyro assembly is attached to the hull with six hex bolts. I pull a socket wrench from my tool belt and get to work.

As soon as I unscrew the first bolt, it slides down the slope of the nose cone and falls away into the unknowable distance.

“Um…” I say. “Rocky, you can make screws, right?”

“Yes. Easy. Why, question?”

“I dropped one.”

“Hold screws better.”

“How?”

“Use hand.”

“My hand’s busy with the wrench.”

“Use second hand.”

“My other hand’s on the hull to keep me steady.”

“Use third han—hmm. Get beetles. I make new screws.”

“Okay.”

I get to work on the second bolt. This time I’m very careful. I stop using the wrench halfway through and do the rest by hand. The fat fingers of the EVA suit are awful for this. It takes ten minutes just for this one bolt. But I get it done and, most important, I don’t drop it.

I put it in a pouch on my suit. Now Rocky will know what I need him to duplicate.