Project Hail Mary: A Novel
Andy Weir
Ryland discovers the real crisis: Taumoeba escaped containment and ate all the Astrophage fuel throughout the Hail Mary's systems, leaving the ship dead in a decaying orbit around Adrian. Rocky saves the day twice — first by cleaning and resealing the generator with his own Astrophage supply to restore ship power, then by rapidly reverse-engineering three of the four beetle probes (John, Paul, and Ringo) to use their sealed, uncontaminated Astrophage fuel as propulsion to reach the Blip-A. Ryland does a harrowing EVA on the spinning ship's nose cone to retrieve all four beetles, keeping George unmodified as a backup.
- Taumoeba leaked from the lab into the fuel lines through micro-cracks from the Adrian incident — ate all Astrophage, leaving only methane waste
- Rocky cleans and reseals the generator using his own Astrophage, restoring ship power
- Beetles (John, Paul, George, Ringo) are self-contained with 120 kg of Astrophage each — untouched by Taumoeba
- Ryland does a dangerous EVA on the spinning ship nose to retrieve all four beetles
- Rocky disassembles and modifies three beetles in ~3 hours, bypassing electronics and rigging audio-controlled remote activation (Eridians use sound, not radio)
- Ship is in decaying elliptical orbit, grazing Adrian's atmosphere every 90 minutes — urgency is real
- George kept unmodified as reserve/backup for original Earth-return mission
Where you left off: Rocky has just finished modifying three beetles (John, Paul, Ringo) and the plan to use them to reach the Blip-A is about to be executed; the sentence cuts off mid-thought.