Judging by the path on the map, the ship will automatically put me in a stable orbit around Tau Ceti, between the third and fourth planets. If I had to guess, I would say that’s probably 1 AU. The distance that Earth is from the sun. A nice, safe distance from the star. A slow orbit that takes about a year to complete. Probably longer, because Tau Ceti is smaller than the sun, so it probably has less mass. Less mass means less gravity and a slower orbital period at a given distance.

Okay, I have five days to kill until engine cutoff. Rather than mess around with stuff, I’ll just wait it out. Once the engines are off, I’ll fire up the Petrovascope and see what’s out there. Until then, I’ll try to learn as much about the ship as I can.

I’ll do just about anything right now to keep from thinking about Yáo and Ilyukhina.

Technically the carrier was named the People’s Liberation Army Navy Gansu. Why their navy has “Army” in its name I’ll never know. Regardless, people stopped calling it that and started calling it Stratt’s Vat. Despite objections from the sailors aboard, the name stuck. We wandered around the South China Sea, never getting too close to land.

I’d spent a blissful week doing nothing but science.

No meetings. No distractions. Just experimentation and engineering. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to get immersed in a task.

My first breeder prototype had demonstrated another successful run. It wasn’t much to look at—mostly a 30-foot-long metal pipe with a bunch of ugly control equipment welded on here and there. But it did the trick. It could only generate a few micrograms of Astrophage per hour, but the concept was solid.

I had a staff of twelve people—engineers from all over the world. A couple of Mongolian brothers were my best engineers. When I got a call from Stratt to meet her in the conference room, I left them in charge.

I found her alone in the meeting room. The table was strewn with papers and charts, like always. Graphs and diagrams adorned all the walls—some new, some old.

Stratt sat at one end of the long table, with a bottle of Dutch gin and a lowball glass. I’d never seen her drink before.

“You wanted to see me?” I said.

She looked up. Her eyes had bags. She hadn’t slept. “Yeah. Have a seat.”

I sat in the chair next to her. “You look terrible. What’s going on?”

“I have to make a decision. And it’s not easy.”

“How can I help?”

She offered me the gin. I shook my head. She topped off her own glass. “The Hail Mary is going to have a very small crew compartment—about 125 cubic meters.”