Sampler

The Sampler is a steel sphere, 20 centimeters across, built by Rocky to capture a sample of Adrian's atmosphere from the precise altitude where Astrophage breed. It is the device that first delivers Taumoeba—the Astrophage predator—into human hands, and its design and deployment represent a critical engineering collaboration between the human Ryland Grace and the Eridian Rocky.

Design and Construction

Rocky fabricated the Sampler from steel, giving it a thick ring on top for attaching to the chain. Small holes perforate the sphere along its equator, leading to a hollow inner chamber. A pressure sensor inside triggers an actuator that rotates the inner chamber shell a few degrees, misaligning the holes with the outer sphere and sealing the local air inside with well-placed gaskets. Rocky also added a thermometer and a heater: once the Sampler seals, the heater maintains whatever temperature the air inside started at, so that any captured life-forms are not killed by a temperature shock. The Sampler broadcasts its data via a small radio transmitter that uses a standard Eridian data connection, and Rocky kept the receiver for it aboard the Hail Mary.

Deployment into Adrian's Atmosphere

The Hail Mary could not fly into the breeding zone itself—the air at that altitude would burn up the ship at orbital speed, and using the engines in the atmosphere would create an explosion that would destroy everything. Grace and Rocky therefore built a 10-kilometer xenonite chain, link by link, over two weeks of work. The Sampler was attached to the end of the chain and lowered into the atmosphere while the Hail Mary, tilted at 30 degrees from vertical, thrusted constantly away from the planet to maintain altitude. The engines' IR blast heated the air behind the ship so intensely that the external camera shut down to protect its digitizer. Rocky monitored the Sampler's signal as it descended; when the pressure sensor detected the correct altitude, the Sampler closed, sealed its chamber, and the heater turned on. "Success success success!" Rocky reported.

Retrieval and Consequences

Because the chain could not be winched back up without tangling, Grace performed an EVA to retrieve the Sampler by hand. He stood on the hull in 1.4 g's of gravity, using a special winch Rocky had designed that separated each link and let it fall away into the planet below. The retrieval nearly killed them both: the IR blowback from the engines had melted a hole in the port fuel tank, exposing the ship's Astrophage to Adrian's atmosphere. The Astrophage, seeing the planet, began migrating toward it to breed, creating uncontrolled thrust that spun the ship and crushed Grace under his own seat. Rocky broke out of his pressurized compartment, crossed into the Hail Mary's oxygen atmosphere—which burned his radiator organ—and cut Grace free. The Sampler itself survived the ordeal, cushioned by the wadded EVA suit in the airlock.

Scientific Payoff

Once the ship was stabilized, Grace placed the Sampler in a vacuum chamber and replicated Adrian's atmosphere. When the Sampler's valves opened at the correct pressure, the sample inside was released into the chamber alongside fresh Astrophage. Within hours, Grace observed through the microscope that an amoeba-like organism was enveloping and killing the Astrophage cells. He named the predator Taumoeba. The Sampler had delivered the key to saving two worlds: a natural predator that could be bred and deployed to consume the Astrophage infesting Earth's sun and Erid's star.