Oh, and there are temperature readings all over the place. I guess temperature is important because the readings are every few meters along the hull. And every single one of them reads 96.415°c.

Hey, I know that temperature. I know that exact temperature! What do I know it from? Come on, brain…come on…

—
96.415°c, read the display.

“Huh,” I said.

“What is it?” Stratt said immediately.

It was my second day in the lab. Stratt still insisted I be the only person to look at Astrophage—at least for the time being. She dropped her tablet on the table and came to the observation-room window. “Something new?”

“Kind of. The ambient temperature of an Astrophage is 96.415 degrees Celsius.”

“That’s pretty hot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, almost the boiling point of water,” I said. “For anything living on Earth it would be deadly. But for a thing that’s comfortable near the sun, who knows?”

“So what’s significant about it?”

“I can’t get them hotter or colder.” I pointed to the experiment I’d set up in the fume hood. “I put some Astrophage in ice-cold water for an hour. When I pulled them out, they were 96.415 degrees Celsius. Then I put some in a lab furnace at one thousand degrees. Again, after I pulled them out: 96.415 degrees.”

Stratt paced next to the window. “Maybe they have extremely good insulation?”

“I thought of that, so I did another experiment. I took an extremely small droplet of water and put a few Astrophage in it. After a few hours, the whole droplet was 96.415 degrees. The Astrophage heated up the water, so that means heat energy can move out of it.”

“What conclusion can you draw?” she asked.

I tried to scratch my head, but the vinyl suit got in the way. “Well, we know they have a huge amount of energy stored inside. I’m guessing they use it to maintain body temperature. Same way you and I do.”

“A warm-blooded microorganism?” she said.

I shrugged. “Looks that way. Hey, how much longer am I going to be the only person working on this?”

***

Chapter 4