Narrator tells rocky an out his suicide mission. Rocky asks him how much astrophage it took to get him here. Rocky says he can easily spare that much. So narrator isn't on a suicide mission anymore. There's a flashback to a bit where the astronauts for the hail Mary mission are being introduced. Narrator isn't one of them. Talking to the astronauts one of them tells him that he also has the coma gene and he's a little uppity that Stratt didn't tell him.
He watches Rocky eat and its gross. He basically opens up his belly carapace and puts chopped up meat inside and passes out.
Ch 17 pg 277
Narrator and Rocky make their way to the planet that the astrophage is going to from this solar system's sun. They have a thing that can capture astrohphage. They do that. There's a flashback to narrator training the science officers on the astrophage. The fun thing is that the primary and secondary science officers are having an affair.
They examine the astrophage and they find a couple interesting things. The first is that there's less astrophage than expected. The second is that there's a bunch of other little animals in the sample. The theory is that one of these is the natural predator of the astrophage and that's why this star isn't dwindling like outs is. So the idea is that if we can introduce said predator to our solar systems it will eat the astrophage and the problem will be solved.
Ch 18 pg 292
Rocky and narrator are looking at the samples and they don't find the predator they're looking for. They come up with the idea that the predator must not be in the apostrophage line, but deeper down in the atmosphere. They do some science and figure out it's 9 kilometres deeper than the ship can go. So they're gonna build a chain that is 9 kilometres long to collect the predator.
Also they talk about why rocky has so much extra astrophage. The answer is that rocky and his people were basing their calculations based on newtonian physics, not Einstein's models so no relativity.
Then theres a flashback to the aircraft carrier and everyone is telling narrator hes Stratts number two and hes like, nah, im just another scientist. Allso he talks to the guy that's working on the little ships to send back data to earth. He calls them the beattles and the one hes using for earth testing is named Pete.
Jokes about the Beatles give me joy. Thats what made the powerpuff girls so great.
Ch 19 pg 308
Narrator and rocky have come up with a great system to lower the chain with the sampler down to the planet in the hopes of getting a sample of the astrophage predator. They lower down and attach new links 50 meters at a time while having just the right amount of thrust at just the right angle to keep in close orbit. The crank back up is more complicated. They can't just pull up the whole chain cause it would wrap around the ship or trail behind and get destroyed by the ships exhaust or whatever and it'd be real bad. So they come up with a system that pulls up the chain link by link and then removes the links individually so they fall harmlessly down to the planet.
That part seems to work OK and he gets the sample back inside. But theres a hole in the fuel tank and he ejects a couple tanks but all the while he's being crushed by the force of the thrust. He is saved by Rocky. The problems has been solved, but Rocky is freezing to death in earth's atmosphere on the ship and tells narrator top save his planet.
Ch 20 pg 326
Through a lot of hard work and pain narrator gets Rocky into his containment unit with his alien atmosphere. He's doing other science stuff with the samples he got from the planet. He doesn't feel real good about any of this. He's hurt and he's tired and he's not thinking straight but he's trying to save rocky and two solar systems so he keeps at it. He basically creates a leaf blower and puts it in Rocky's area and he's able to blow a bunch of smoke and dust and what not out of what he refers to as Rocky's vents.
No comments:
Post a Comment