“Tsar Bomba,” said Dimitri. “Made by my country. Fifty megatons. Boom.”

Stratt continued. “So we’d rather be out in the middle of the ocean where we won’t eradicate any cities.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And as we get more and more Astrophage, we’ll go further and further out to sea. Anyway. Head down to the hangar deck. I have carpenters building accommodations and offices as we speak. Pick some you like and lay claim.”

“This is our life now,” said Dimitri. “Welcome.”

Okay, if I’m going to die, it’s going to have meaning. I’m going to figure out what can be done to stop Astrophage. And then I’ll send my answers off to Earth. And then… I’ll die. There are lots of avenues for painless suicide here—from overdosing on meds to reducing the oxygen until I fall asleep and die.

Cheerful thought.

I eat a delicious tube of “Day 4—Meal 2.” I think it’s beef-flavored. The food is getting chunkier now. There are actually some solids in there. I think I’m chewing on a little cube of carrot. It’s nice to feel some texture in the food for a change.

“More water!” I say.

The NannyBot (as I’ve come to call it) quickly takes my plastic cup away and replaces it with a full one. It’s funny. Three days ago those ceiling-mounted arms were a mechanical monster that haunted me. Now they’re just… there. Part of life.

I’ve found the dormitory to be a good place for thinking. Now that the dead bodies are gone, anyway. The lab doesn’t have anywhere comfortable to relax. The control room has a nice chair, but it’s cramped and has blinking lights everywhere. But the dormitory has my nice, comfortable bed I can lie back on while I think about what to do next. Plus, the bedroom is where all the food comes from.

I remembered a lot over the past couple of days. Looks like Project Hail Mary was a success, because here I am, in another star system. Tau Ceti, I assume. It makes sense that I’d mistake it for the sun. Tau Ceti is very similar to the sun as stars go. Same spectral type, color, and so on.

And I know why I’m here! Not just in vague terms like “Oh hey, the world’s ending. Make that not happen.” But very specifically: Find out why Tau Ceti wasn’t affected by Astrophage.

Easy to say. Hard to do. Hopefully I remember more details later.

A million questions run through my mind. Some of the most important are:

1. How do I scour an entire solar system for information about Astrophage?
2. What am I supposed to do? Throw some of my Astrophage fuel at Tau Ceti to see what happens?
3. How do I steer this ship anyway?
4. If I do find useful information, how do I tell Earth about it? I think that’s what the beetles are for, but how do I upload data to them? How do I aim them? How do I launch them?
5. Why would I, of all people, be part of this mission? Yes, I worked out a bunch of stuff about Astrophage, but so what? I’m a lab coat, not an astronaut. It’s not like they sent Wernher von Braun into space. Surely there were more qualified people.