In a flashback, science teacher Ryland Grace runs a lively classroom quiz before Eva Stratt arrives, introducing herself as head of the UN-backed Petrova Taskforce. She declares Grace the first to study ArcLight’s returning Petrova-line sample and, despite his resistance, has him escorted by the FBI to a sealed, argon-filled lab.

Under strict quarantine, Grace opens the Venus-return sample and examines the microscopic “dots.” Standard analyses fail: they absorb x-rays, won’t vaporize up to 2000°C, and are opaque. He observes they emit infrared at the Petrova wavelength only while moving; calculating momentum, he concludes they self-propel by emitting light. The implied energy density is extreme, suggesting a life-form that stores and uses stellar energy.

Grace names the organism “Astrophage” and posits it travels between the Sun and Venus, reproducing as a simple single-celled species. Stratt, wielding sweeping international authority, presses him to determine how it breeds, underscoring the existential stakes of solar dimming.

Back in the present, Grace unlocks a new compartment by speaking his name and enters a conical control room with a central chair and an airlock. Systems flag an “angular anomaly,” showing predicted vs. measured velocities around 11,8xx km/s that decrease by one every 66 seconds. He infers constant linear deceleration at 15 m/s²—matching the ship’s artificial “gravity.”

He finds a mission crest: HAIL MARY, with crew names Yao, Ilyukhina, and Grace. Timing sunspot drift on a live stellar image, he calculates a rotation period far faster than the Sun’s. The discrepancy reveals the decisive truth: the star he is approaching is not the Sun—he is in another solar system.