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Chapter no 27

Project Hail Mary

Ileap from the stool, but I dont have a plan.

Okay, dont panic,” I tell myself. Think clearly. Then act.

The BOCOA is still hot. That means theres a lot of living Astrophage still in there. I caught it early. Thats good. Not because of the BOCOAits toast. Ill never be able to sort out the Taumoeba from the Astrophage in there. But it means that however the heck the Taumoeba got in there, this is very recent and hopefully hasnt reached the ships fuel.

Yes. Thats priority number one. Dont let Taumoeba into the fuel bays. Last time they got in was because of various microscopic leaks in the system. But it had to have gotten there from the crew compartments where I had brought it aboard. There isnt much overlap between the fuel system and the crew compartment. Theres just one place thats the likely culprit for transfer.

Life support.

If the ship is too cold, it runs air across coils lled with Astrophage to warm it up. A breach in one of those coils would do it. Lucky for me Ive had a big pile of 96°C Astrophage in the lab keeping the crew compartment so warm the ship has to use the air-conditioning system.

Okay, now I have a plan.

I scamper up the ladder to the control room. I bring up the Life Support panel and look at the logs. As I suspected, the heater hasnt been turned on in over a month. I deactivate the heater entirely. It shows as disabled, but I dont trust it.

I go to the primary breaker box. Its under the pilots seat. I nd the breaker for the heating system and ick it o.

Okay,” I say.

I get back in the seat and check the Fuel panel. The fuel bays all seem to be in good shape. The temperature is correct. It wouldnt take long for Taumoeba to run wild and eat everything in a fuel bayI know that for darn certain. If they were aected, theyd be colder than that.

I bring up the spin-drive controls and shut the engines o. The oor drops out from under me as I return to weightlessness. I probably dont need to shut them o, but for now I dont want the fuel doing anything. If theres Taumoeba in a fuel line, I want it to stay there, not get pumped all over the ship.

Okay…” I say again. Okay…” More thinking.

How did it get loose? I sterilized every part of this ship with nitrogen before getting a gram of Astrophage from Rocky. The only Taumoeba aboard are in the sealed mini-farms on the beetles and the sealed, xenonite breeder tanks.

No. No time for science questions. I can speculate on the cause later. Right now I have an engineering problem. I wish Rocky were here.

I always wish Rocky were here. Nitrogen,” I say.

I dont know how the Taumoeba got out, but I need them dead. Taumoeba-

82.5 can handle 8.25 percent nitrogen at 0.02 atmospheres. Maybe a little higher. But it denitely cant handle 100 percent nitrogen at the crew compartments 0.33 atmospheres. That works out to be two hundred times its lethal dose of nitrogen.

oat to the breaker box and shut off everything related to life support. Immediately, the emergency alarm sounds and red lights turn on. I kick across the control room to the emergency systems breaker box and shut those all off as well.

The master alarm is annoying, so I silence it on the main interface panel.

y down to the lab and throw open my gas cylinder supply cupboard. I have about 10 kilograms of nitrogen gas in a single canister. Again, I owe my life to DuBoiss preferred method of suicide.

I dont remember all the details about the life-support system, but I know it has manual overpressure valves. The ship simply will not allow more than

0.33 atmospheres. If all else fails (which it will, because I shut the emergency systems down), itll vent excess pressure into space.

I cant just release the nitrogen and hope for the best. I want to get rid of the existing oxygen rst. Im through messing around with this stu. I want 100 percent nitrogen in here. I want to make this ship so utterly toxic to Taumoeba that it has no chance of survival. Even if its hiding under some goop somewhereI want the nitrogen to suuse through it. Nitrogen everywhere. Everywhere!

I grab the nitrogen cylinder, kick off the oor, and oat back up to the control room. I throw open the airlock inner door and get into the Orlan suit faster than I ever have in the past. I boot everything up and dont even bother with the self-check. No time.

I leave the inner airlock door open and turn the manual emergency valve on the outer door. The ships air hisses away into space. The primary and emergency life-support systems are powered down. They are unable to replace the lost gas.

Now I wait.

It takes a surprisingly long time for a ship to lose all its air. In movies, if theres a little breach everyone dies immediately. Or the muscular hero guy plugs the hole with his biceps or something. But in real life, air just doesnt move that fast.

The emergency valve on the airlock is 4 centimeters across. Seems like a pretty big hole to have in your spaceship, right?

It took twenty minutes for the ships air pressure to drop to 10 percent of its original value. And its dropping very slowly now. I think its a logarithmic function. So in the middle of this emergency, I just have to stand here with my tank in my hand.

Okay. Ten percent is close enough,” I say. I close the airlock emergency valve to reseal the ship. Then I open the nitrogen tank.

So now, instead of listening to a hiss from the airlock, I listen to a hiss from the nitrogen tank.

Not much dierence there.

Again. Its a bit of a wait. But not as long this time. Probably because the pressure inside that nitrogen tank was a lot higher than the pressure in the ship. Whatever. Point is, in short order the ship is back to 0.33 atmospheres of pressure. But its almost entirely nitrogen.

Funny thingId be perfectly comfortable if I took this EVA suit o. Id breathe without any problems. Right up until I died. Theres nowhere near enough oxygen for me to survive.

I want that nitrogen to permeate everything it can. I want it to get into every crevice. Wherever Taumoeba are lurking, I want them found and killed. Go forth, my N2 minions, and cause destruction!

I head down to the lab and check out the BOCOA. I left in such a hurry I forgot to seal the vat. Fortunately, Astrophage is gunky stu. Surface tension and inertia kept it inside. I close the lid and bring it up to the airlock. I jettison the whole thing.

I probably could have saved the surviving Astrophage in the vat. I could have bubbled nitrogen through the sludge to make sure it gets at all the little Taumoeba lurking inside. But why take the chance? I have over 2 million kilograms of Astrophage. Theres no point in risking the whole mission just to save a few hundred.

I wait three hours. Then I ick the breakers back on. After a period of initial panic, the life-support system gets the air back to normal thanks to the ships copious oxygen reserves.

I have to isolate every source of Taumoeba on this ship. Preferably before the life-support system nishes pumping out the nitrogen. Why not do it before getting back to normal air? Because itll be a lot easier and faster without wearing the EVA suit. I need my hands to do this, not my hands inside bulky gloves.

I climb out of the Orlan and y down to the lab, the nitrogen cylinder in hand.

First up: the breeder farms.

I put each of the ten farms in large plastic bins. I install a little valve on each bin (epoxy can do anything), and pump in nitrogen. If any of the farms

have a leak, the nitrogen will get in and kill everything. Any farm thats behaving properlykeeping airtightwont have any problems.

The bins are airtight to begin with, but I seal them with duct tape anyway, and I deliberately overpressurize them by just a little bit. The sides and tops bulge out. Now if any of the farms leak, itll be visually apparent because the bulging will disappear.

Next up: the beetles and their mini-farms.

John and Paul already have their mini-farms installed. I put them in isolation bins just like I did with the breeder farms. I was working on Ringo when the poop hit the fan, so that mini-farm and the one intended for George are still uninstalled. I put the pair together in another isolation bin.

I tape everything to the walls. I dont want any of the bins to oat around.

They might bump into something sharp.

The lab is a shambles. I was halfway through disassembling Ringo when I shut off the spin drives. Tools, beetle parts, and all manner of other junk oats around the room. Ill have to clean all that up without the aid of gravity before I can even take a break.

Well, this sucks,” I mumble.

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