Night Reader

Project Hail Mary: A Novel

Andy Weir

pages 581–688 of 688  · 89 min

Ryland Grace and Rocky successfully breed Taumoeba-82.5, a strain that survives both Venus-level and Threeworld-level nitrogen concentrations, completing their core mission. After refueling the Hail Mary with Rocky's Astrophage and exchanging parting gifts — a laptop loaded with human knowledge for Rocky, xenonite samples for Earth — they say a tearful goodbye and launch for their respective home systems. A flashback to Baikonur shows Stratt explaining to a captive Grace why she condemned him to a suicide mission: without the Hail Mary, Astrophage means war, famine, plague, and civilizational collapse.

• Taumoeba breeding used 10 tanks with incremental nitrogen percentages each generation; Tank Three was Grace's lucky tank; Taumoeba-82.5 (surviving 8%+ nitrogen) was confirmed in Tanks Nine and Ten after 82+ generations.
• Fuel bay problems: two bays couldn't be fully sterilized and one had to be jettisoned, leaving Grace short on fuel storage and facing a 5.5-year trip home with insufficient food — Rocky solved this by fabricating three replacement bays from Blip-A scrap metal.
• Rocky built a life-support enclosure for a laptop loaded with human knowledge (effectively all of Wikipedia), including a camera-to-texture converter so Eridians can read it; Grace requested xenonite samples in return.
• Grace installed mini Taumoeba farms on each beetle as redundant backups, and Rocky set up six redundant Taumoeba-82.5 colonies on the Blip-A for Erid.
• The goodbye scene: Rocky wore ceremonial Eridian dress; Grace drank Ilyukhina's vodka; both acknowledged they will likely never meet again given human lifespan limits, though Rocky suggested future interstellar visits once Astrophage technology matures.
• Stratt's Baikonur flashback explains her reasoning: without a solution, Astrophage triggers food collapse, then wars fought over farmland, then plague — 'War, famine, pestilence, and death' — making any sacrifice for the mission justified in her view.

Where you left off: Grace has just fired up the Hail Mary's spin drives and set course for Earth, with a fragmented final thought cutting off mid-sentence as she reflects on returning to confront Stratt.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

Nosrat, Samin

pages 133–134 of 846

These pages cover how to identify bad olive oil and how to buy and use it well. Rancidity — detectable by a crayon, wax, or old-peanut-butter smell — is the key quality killer, and Nosrat notes most Americans have grown so used to rancid oil they actually prefer it. She breaks olive oil into three categories (everyday, finishing, flavored) and gives specific brand recommendations for affordable everyday options.

• Rancidity test: smell for crayon, candle wax, or old peanut butter — color tells you nothing about quality.
• Olive oil goes rancid 12–14 months after pressing; check the production date (usually November) on the label and don't hoard it.
• Flavored olive oils often mask low-quality oil — avoid them, except agrumato oils, which are made by milling whole citrus with olives at first press (a bergamot agrumato over chocolate ice cream at SF's Bi-Rite Creamery is cited as a standout example).
• Use finishing oils where flavor really shows — salad dressings, fish tartare, herb salsas, olive oil cake — and save everyday oils for general cooking.
• Recommended everyday brands: Seka Hills, Katz, California Olive Ranch, and Costco's Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin (noted for scoring well on independent quality tests).