Project Hail Mary

The Hail Mary is plunged into blackout, and Rocky helps Grace navigate through the dark to the control room, where they learn that the Hail Mary’s primary and back-up generators have failed. Grace activates the emergency batteries but has a reduced power supply insufficient for controlling the ship or running the renewable life support system. There is enough air on the ship to sustain him for now, but they need to identify the problem quickly.

With visibility limited, Rocky helps Grace locate the Astrophage-powered generators in the storage compartment below the dormitory. The generator’s fuel line is filled with foul-smelling, rotting Astrophage, and Grace realizes that Taumoeba must have gotten into the Hail Mary’s fuel lines and destroyed the Astrophage, leaving them without fuel, stranded in space.

Grace rests while Rocky cleans and repairs the generator and fuels it with his separate supply of Astrophage, safe in his compartment on the ship. Grace suddenly realizes that the Beetle probes are self-contained and may have enough Astrophage fuel to propel the ship. Grace makes a dangerous spacewalk in gravity to retrieve the Beetles, as the Hail Mary is stuck in centrifuge mode and still spinning due to inertia.

Rocky, although mystified by the electric wiring of the beetles, modifies the probes so they can be attached to the Hail Mary’s hull as thrusters. Grace makes another dangerous spacewalk to attach them. With the ship’s electricity back to full power thanks to Rocky’s generator repairs, Grace takes the Hail Mary out of centrifuge mode so that they can turn on the hull-mounted Beetles and stop the ship’s spin. Grace is successful, and he and Rocky prepare to return to the Blip-A, using the Beetle probes as substitute engines.

In flashback, Grace attends a meeting with Stratt, Yáo, Ilyukhina, and the other scientists where he learns that the accident that killed DuBois and Shapiro was caused by DuBois and Shapiro's testing of a highly unlikely malfunction scenario. By accident, DuBois was given nearly a million times the amount of Astrophage he expected but could not have recognized the difference between one milligram and one nanogram with the naked eye. The resulting explosion vaporized the research center. Stratt informs Grace that he has been selected as the replacement science specialist for Project Hail Mary since the mission cannot be delayed, Grace has the coma-resistance DNA marker, and he is the leading expert on Astrophage and has “been present for every major scientific or strategic discussion” (386). Grace, terrified of the suicide mission, refuses, although the only other available candidate is a distillery worker with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and no training for the mission. Stratt gives Grace four hours to decide.

Rocky designs reinforcements for the Beetle probes so that the Hail Mary can travel at full thrust. Grace discovers that the Taumoeba experiments have failed; Taumoeba cannot survive in the atmospheres of Venus and Threeworld. Rocky tries to comfort Grace, who feels wrongly suited for the mission, now remembering that he was a last-minute substitute for DuBois and Shapiro. He consoles himself with the notion that he volunteered, which brings on another memory.

In the recollection, Grace goes to Stratt’s trailer at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and refuses to be the Hail Mary’s science specialist, on the grounds that he should stay on Earth to teach future generations to survive in the meantime. Stratt sees through Grace’s excuses and calls him a coward for hesitating to save billions of people, abandoning his academic career, and avoiding personal relationships. Grace admits that he doesn’t want to die, and Stratt tells Grace that he has no choice. Stratt plans to imprison Grace until launch day, then drug him and have Yáo and Ilyukhina induce his coma while unconscious, under the pretense that Grace asked to be unconscious for take-off. Stratt plans to give Grace a dose of a French interrogation drug, which will cause total amnesia but leave his skills intact. The crew will assume the amnesia is from the effects of the coma, and by the time Grace remembers it will be too late to hinder the project. Grace is horrified but powerless to resist. Stratt assures Grace that she thinks he is “fundamentally a good man” and encourages him, “Just think of the kids” (394).

In the present, Grace is ashamed by the memory of his involuntary participation on the Hail Mary. Still, Grace is resolved to complete the mission. Grace rallies and makes a new plan to find out why the Venus and Threeworld atmospheres are deadly to Taumoeba through trial and error, testing each element of the atmospheres one at a time. Impatient, Grace insists on a risky transition to centrifuge mode so he can begin experiments immediately. Rocky is more cautious but gives in, sensing Grace’s heightened emotion.

Grace quickly determines that Taumoeba are killed by nitrogen, which makes up 3.5% of the Venusian atmosphere and 8% of Threeworld’s atmosphere. Inspired by antibiotic-resistant diseases, Grace makes a plan to breed nitrogen-resistant Taumoeba that can survive on Venus and Threeworld and thereby manage the respective Astrophage populations. Rocky builds 10 identical Taumoeba tanks to begin breeding. Rocky and Grace are able to navigate back to the Blip-A easily, thanks to Rocky’s foresight to use pre-set engine flashes as a beacon. When Grace asks Rocky what the real name of the Blip-A is, Rocky says Eridians don’t name ships and remarks on the strangeness of the human custom of giving everything a name.

Rocky and Grace celebrate the successful breeding of Taumoeba-35, which can survive the 3.5% nitrogen makeup of the Venusian atmosphere. Rocky designs a “life-support” device for “portable thinking machines,” which is his term for the many laptops on the Hail Mary, and asks Grace to give him one to take back to Erid. Rocky has designed a camera to convert the light display of the laptop to a texture readout legible to Eridians. Grace promises to give Rocky a basic understanding of written language for Eridian scholars to work from and asks for a gift of xenonite, and the materials that make it in return, to take back to Earth. Grace sleeps easily, feeling close to success, yet is still bothered by the possibility that everything could go wrong.

Grace mucks out the Hail Mary’s fuel tanks, which are still contaminated with Taumoeba and dead Astrophage. Once they’ve been sanitized, Rocky will refuel the Hail Mary with excess Astrophage from the Blip-A. Rocky offers to give Grace ammonia, which is a nitrogen compound, from Blip-A’s artificial atmosphere, but Grace declines as Taumoeba are only sensitive to pure nitrogen. Grace regrets that he will never see the inside of the Blip-A, as his space suit could never withstand the immense heat and pressure of the Eridian environment.

Two of the fuel tanks prove impossible to sanitize, and Grace jettisons them into space rather than risk spreading the Taumoeba infestation. With only six of the original nine fuel tanks, Grace doesn’t have enough fuel storage to reach Earth before his food will run out, as the provisions onboard were never intended to last for a return journey, much less a slower one. Even if Grace eats Yáo and Ilyukhina’s provisions and the food slurry that fed them while comatose, he will run out of food a year and a half too soon. Rocky’s Eridian food is made up of heavy metals an inedible to humans. Rocky quickly devises a solution: Rocky will simply make replacement tanks and return the Hail Mary to maximum fuel storage.

Grace installs Rocky’s replacement tanks, made of an Eridian metallic alloy. Afterwards, Grace and Rocky discover that they have successfully bred Taumoeba-82.5, which will survive the 8% nitrogen of Threeworld’s atmosphere. Grace teaches Rocky to fist bump. Grace finds Ilyukhina’s vodka for a toast, while Rocky dons a special Eridian celebration costume, and the two revel in their success, making plans to put Taumoeba samples inside each Beetle, just in case.

Rocky and Grace say their goodbyes, sad that the difference between human and Eridian lifespans makes it unlikely that they will ever meet or communicate again, even with the possibility of interstellar travel. Rocky departs in the Blip-A, and Grace sets course for Earth.