Project Hail Mary: A Novel
Andy Weir
Pages 512–522 cover Ryland's discovery and naming of Taumoeba — an amoeba-like predator from Adrian that envelops and kills Astrophage within seconds — and the immediate effort to breed and test it. He and Rocky set up two atmospheric simulation chambers replicating Venus (−100°C, CO₂-heavy) and Threeworld (−82°C, thin CO₂/SO₂ atmosphere) at 0.02-atmosphere pressure to see if Taumoeba can survive the conditions where Astrophage breed on each planet. Just as the hour-long experiment begins and optimism peaks, every light and system on Ryland's ship cuts out completely, leaving him blind in total darkness until he spots a single red LED on a physical button panel.
- Taumoeba is amoeba-like: it oozes around Astrophage, immobilizes them (possibly via chemical excretion), and kills them within seconds — Astrophage lose their heat-absorption ability and their organelles become visible as they die.
- Rocky builds a breeder tank; 50 million Taumoeba are cultured quickly because the Astrophage supply acts like sugar water for yeast.
- The key experimental setup: a glass slide coated one-cell-thick with Astrophage is seeded with Taumoeba — as Taumoeba eat, the opaque slide becomes transparent, giving an easy optical measure of predation rate.
- Venus analog: 0.02 atm, −100°C, mostly CO₂/N₂. Threeworld analog: 0.02 atm, −82°C, 84% CO₂, 8% N₂, 4% SO₂ — Ryland had to synthesize SO₂ from sulfuric acid using salvaged copper tubing as a catalyst.
- Threeworld is only moon-sized (0.2 g surface gravity) yet somehow retains a thin atmosphere; Rocky's people never named it, so Ryland coins 'Threeworld.'
- The ship suffers a total power failure — all lights and electronics dead — ending on Ryland finding a single glowing red physical button in the darkened control room and pressing it.
Where you left off: Ryland, blind in the powerless control room with Rocky overhead in his tunnel, has just pressed the single glowing red button on the one physical-button panel still showing any sign of life.