Okay. I’m Rocky. My ship is dead. Maybe I rescued some Astrophage. The Taumoeba can’t have gotten all of it, right? So I have some. Can I make my own beetle? Something to send back to Erid?

I shake my head. That would require a guidance system. Computer stuff. Way beyond Eridian science. That’s why they had a crew of twenty-three on a massive ship in the first place. Besides, it’s been a month and a half. If he were going to build a little ship, he’d be done by now and I would have seen its engine flare. Rocky moves fast.

Okay. No beetle. But he’s got energy. Life support. Food enough to last him a long, long time (original crew of twenty-three, and it was always intended to be a round-trip voyage).

“Radio?” I say.

Maybe he’ll make a radio signal. Something powerful enough to be heard on Erid. Just a small chance of detection, but something. Eridians have a long life-span. Waiting a decade or so for rescue wouldn’t be that big a deal. Well, not on the life-or-death scale. If you asked me a few years ago I’d say it’s not possible to send a radio signal ten light-years. But this is Rocky we’re talking about, and he might have some rescued Astrophage to power whatever he creates.

It doesn’t have to contain information. It just needs to be noticed.

But… no. There’s just no way. Some back-of-the napkin math tells me that even with Earth’s radio technology (which is better than Erid’s), the strength of that signal at Erid would be way less than background noise.

Rocky will know that too. So there’s no point.

“Hmm.”

I wish I had better radar. Mine is good for a few thousand kilometers. Obviously that’s nowhere near good enough. Rocky could probably whip something up if he were here. It’s a little paradoxical, but I wish Rocky were here to help me save Rocky.

“Better radar…” I mumble.

Well, I have plenty of power. I have a radar system. Maybe I can work something out.

But you can’t just add power to the emitter and expect things to go well. I’ll burn it out for sure. How can I turn Astrophage energy into radio waves?

I shoot up from my pilot’s seat. “Duh!”

I have everything I need for the best radar ever! To heck with my built-in radar system, with its measly emitter and sensors. I have spin drives and a Petrovascope! I can throw 900 terawatts of IR light out the back of my ship and see if any of it bounces back with the Petrovascope—an instrument carefully designed to detect even the smallest amounts of that exact frequency of light!

I can’t have the Petrovascope and engines on at the same time. But that’s okay! Rocky is up to a light-minute away!

I work up a search grid. It’s pretty simple. I’m smack-dab in the middle of my guesstimate on Rocky’s location. So I have to search all directions.