“Glad you’re making friends,” said Stratt. “But you’ve got a lot of work to do before you start hitting the bars.”

“Me? What do I have to do?”

“You need to design and create an Astrophage-breeding facility.”

I blinked. Then I shot to my feet. “You’re going to make an Astrophage-powered ship!”

They all nodded.

“Holy cow! It’s the most efficient rocket fuel ever! How much would we need to—oh. Two million kilograms, right? That’s why you wanted to know how long it would take to make that much?”

“Yes,” said Xi. “For a one hundred thousand kilogram ship, we would need two million kilograms of Astrophage to get it to Tau Ceti. And, thanks to you, we now know how to activate the Astrophage and make it generate thrust at will.”

I sat back down, pulled out my phone, and launched the calculator app. “This would take, like… a lot of energy. Like, more energy than the world has. It would be around ten to the twenty-third Joules. The largest nuclear reactor on Earth makes about eight gigawatts. It would take that reactor two million years to create that much energy.”

“We have ideas for finding the energy,” said Stratt. “Your job is to make the breeder. Start small and get a prototype going.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “But I didn’t exactly love the ‘militaries of the world’ grand tour on the way here. Can I take a passenger jet home? Coach is fine.”

“You are home,” said Stratt. “The flight hangar is empty. Just tell me what you need—including staff—and I’ll make it happen.”

I looked at the others in the conference room. Xi, Voigt, and Dimitri all nodded. Yes, this was real. No, Stratt wasn’t kidding.

“Why?!” I demanded. “Why the heck can’t you just be normal, Stratt?! If you want fast military transport, well, okay, but why not just work at an air base or something sane people would do?!”

“Because we’ll be experimenting with a bunch of Astrophage once we breed it up. And if we accidentally activate even a couple of kilograms of that stuff, the resulting explosion will be bigger than the largest nuclear bomb ever made.”

“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.”

Chapter 6