Chapter Text
"Eye movement detected. What is two plus two?"
Opening my eyes is a struggle. I can hear the robotic voice above me repeating the question, but my mouth has yet to reconnect with my brain. I lay there, attempting to twitch my fingers as best I can and regain control of my body. Everything is a little numb, and a little tingly. While my body comes back online, I turn inwards.
My name is Olesya Ilyukhina. I am an engineer. I am on the Hail Mary. I was in an induced coma until right now.
No significant gaps in my memory. Awesome. I can recall Stratt's terse words, and Yáo's reassurances, and Grace's laugh, and my Father's rarely heard sobs as he wrapped strong arms around me. I can remember Sofia's lips, soft against my own. The kiss had been wet and messy, normally exactly how I liked it, but this one was wet from our intermingling tears, which was much less fun.
Yeah. Definitely good on the memory front.
I'm finally able to get my brain and body to start talking to each other after another minute of fruitlessly trying to move my fingers, and this time when the robotic voice asks, "What is two plus two?" I can respond with a very raspy, "Four."
Speaking hurts a little, and causes me to cough, which isn't fun. I expel some extra water that hadn't quite made it all the way past my esophagus.
Sitting up very slowly, I glance around the room, squinting in the harsh lights. I can see Yáo is still asleep, his stern face smoothed out into something peaceful, but Grace's bed is empty.
I begin to carefully pull various tubes and stickers out and away from myself as I continue my survey of the room. The first thing I notice is that I have much, much more muscle than I did when we had taken off. And I hadn't exactly been skipping the gym then. Being an astronaut requires a lot of physical upkeep.
A head between my thighs, hands caressing them reverently and a soft giggle followed by trailing kisses getting closer, and closer, and —
I quickly banish that from head.
I take note of any control panels I can see scattered across the room, and also make note of the mess around Grace's area. I scrunch up my nose.
Ugh, men.
Finally, I glance upward and spot the exit. We currently had gravity, which is nice. We should still be cruising towards Tau Ceti, but it could also be the centrifuge, I supposed. I very carefully make my way up the ladder and begin the hunt for my awake crewmate.
This turns out to be more difficult than expected. He isn't in the lab (which is a mess), or the cockpit (which is less of a mess, but had signs of being used). It's in the cockpit that I see the centrifuge is in fact engaged, which meant Yáo and I are a little late on the wake-up. We're already in orbit. This is also confirmed by the computer's map.
I scroll through various panels and make sure there are no pressing maintenance problems that I need to take care of. I try not to linger too long on the fuel panel, 'low fuel' blinking at me in flashing red.
The empty bays hadn't been jettisoned yet. It seems that while Dr. Grace had tried his hand at flying, he hadn't touched anything in my domain, which was thoughtful of him.
That brought me back to the mystery of missing Dr. Grace. Bathroom, maybe?
I wander back down, and that's when I finally catch a glimpse of the airlock. It's open. Swinging into a dark tunnel.
"What the fuck."
I stare, and I stare, but no matter how I do the maths, it doesn't make sense. In no world should the airlock just be… hanging open! I hadn't even noticed because, at least from where I'm standing, there's no difference in atmosphere or temperature from the inside of the Hail Mary.
I stare again. The airlock, shockingly, doesn't magically close the longer I look at it. I'm not even scared, just well and truly confused.
Cautiously, I make my way to the open airlock. As I go, I step into one of the EVA suits and grab a flashlight. It doesn't matter how similar the atmosphere seems out there, I'm not stepping out of this ship without some sort of protection. As I very slowly step into the tunnel, I glance down at the stats on the suit's screen. Somehow, the outside atmosphere has the perfect temperature and pressure for humans.
Right. Apparently space has nice, human safe tunnels ready to attach to your ship.
I turn on the flashlight I had grabbed on the way out, and I finally get a glimpse of the end of the tunnel. The first thing I see is Ryland Grace, in regular clothes, dozing off with some sort of duct taped monstrosity in his lap. The second thing I take notice of is the glass panel.
Why the fuck is there a glass panel in space.
It isn't some small window, it's huge. I make my way slowly towards the dozing Grace, and as I do, I notice there's something on the other side of the panel.
At my first glimpse of… the thing, I swear very loudly and very aggressively. This of course wakes Grace up, and I'm briefly thankful he doesn't speak Russian. He shoots forward, and the laptop/tape thing topples out of his lap. He grabs his glasses, which had been hanging from the front of his shirt and shoves them on his face.
"What— What's happening?"
I stare at him, and then at the thing behind the panel.
"Grace. What is this?"
His eyes flicker between me and the thing, and he winces a little. "Oh, um." He picks the laptop up from off the floor. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting visitors, I thought you and Yáo might've been dead, honestly. Which was not fun to think about, y'know? Me, all alone in space. Well, not alone exactly. There was another ship, and one thing led to another, and now we're here."
"That did not explain much, Grace." I frowned a little.
His brows furrow. "Right, sorry. So I've discovered something super fun, scientifically speaking. I've made first contact." He does jazz hands. "Well, if we count Astrophage then this would actually be second contact. But this alien is actually intelligent. He made me a nice oxygen filled atmosphere and we've been learning to talk. I called him Rocky"
I stare at him, dumbfounded. Ryland Grace has made first contact with intelligent alien life and has named it Rocky. Ryland Grace is currently acting as the sole impression of humanity for an alien race.
Oh god.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like Grace. He's funny, and intelligent, and wore fantastic shirts, and had volunteered last minute to go on a suicide mission to save Earth that he wasn't properly trained for. He is, all around, a pretty great guy. But if I had to pick someone to navigate the social complexities of establishing communications with an alien species, I'm not sure he'd be my pick. He's much better at conducting lab experiments than socialising. He tends to default to talking to everyone like they're his middle schoolers.
I take a deep breath, and try not to panic.
"Okay. Okay. Is that it?" I point at the rock thing currently perched statue still on some sort of platform that suspends it's… legs?
Grace nods. "Yeah, he's asleep right now. Eridians — they're from the 40 Eridani system, I decided to call their planet Erid — are actually paralysed when they sleep, so they have someone watch them to keep them safe. Cultural thing."
"Interesting. You said you have been learning to communicate, how?"
I love problems and puzzles. It's what drew me to engineering in the first place, and as he gestures to the duct taped laptop I feel the familiar buzz of problem-solving mode start at the back of my skull. I can just tell whatever he's created is woefully inefficient. Not by any fault of his own, but he's a biologist, not an engineer.
"I've got a rudimentary translation system going. He speaks like a whale, and his language is essentially music, so I've got a program that interprets the sound waves and spits it out as English words. If it's a new one, I add it to the system."
The duct tape now makes sense, he has one screen for input and the other for output.
"For a scientist, this is not bad attempt." He smiles a little at that. "But is still ugly. I will make better one."
Grace's eyebrows furrow deeply. "Are you… are you an engineer?"
I tilt my head. What a strange question. "Of course. You are scientist, Yáo is captain and pilot, I am engineer. Why?"
"Oh, well…" Grace sighs. "I think the coma messed up my memory. When I woke up I didn't even know my own name. I've gotten some stuff back about the Petrova line, Astrophage, and Project Hail Mary, but it's been slow."
That does make me gasp a little. Waking up alone, no idea of where you are, who you are, or what you're doing on a space ship this far from Earth must've been terrifying.
I thought you and Yáo might've been dead
Oh that's much, much worse.
"I am sorry, that must have been very scary."
Grace smiles weakly up at me. "I mean… yeah, it definitely was. But you're here now, and I'm hoping that means Yáo will wake up as well. And we have Rocky too." He gestures in the direction of the alien.
"You are staying here while he sleeps?" I ask.
He nods, and I take a seat across from him. "Ask me what you want to know, I will try to answer."
Over the next few hours, I do my best to answer all the question Grace has about the Project. I can't tell him everything, but I do manage to fill in some significant gaps. We have lunch about halfway through this question time, and as we eat on the tunnel floor (after I had been relentlessly reassured that taking off my EVA wouldn't kill me) I begin tinkering with a more sophisticated translation program.
"I feel like you two will get along." Grace says, looking up from his own work.
"Oh?" I ask, not glancing away from my screen. The coding is seriously annoying me. I'm very well-trained in computing and programming, but mathematics and engineering have always been my true loves.
He nods his head. "He's an engineer as well, he's got a photographic memory and is insanely good at maths. He's obviously also a pro with xenonite."
Suffice to say, when Grace had been reassuring me about the whole, 'not dying in the alien tunnel' thing and told me about xenonite, I had many, many questions that he couldn't answer. All he could tell me was that it was exceptionally strong, and mostly xenon. The moment Rocky wakes up I will be interrogating him about the specifics.
"He's also very sarcastic. Loves to make fun of me." Grace rolls his eyes, but it's fond.
"How long have you been in contact?"
He thinks for a moment. "A week and a half, maybe?"
"And he has already grown on you this much. I am very excited to meet him."
Grace laughs softly. "Yeah, well at least he's not growing in me, right?"
That makes me laugh wholeheartedly and Grace grins in return, looking at me over his glasses.
"Hey! It was a legitimate concern!" I laugh harder. "But yeah, he has. Being alone in space trying to save the universe together makes you fast friends, I guess."
A sad smile crosses my face. "You are not alone anymore, you have me, and Yáo as well when he wakes."
He relaxes just a little into his crevice in Rocky's wall. "Yeah, you're right."
We both return to our work in comfortable silence.
------------
Around half an hour later, I see movement start on the other side of the wall, followed by a quiet musical note.
Despite everything Grace has told me about Rocky, I still feel my heart jump in fear a little at the prospect of being across from a real, honest to god, alien.
Grace scrambles to pull up his shoddy translation program as mine was still a work in progress, and places the laptop where we can both see it. I watch words flash across the screen.
"Grace has new human, question? What is name, question?"
Smiling brightly, Grace gestures to me. "Rocky, meet Olesya Ilyukhina, she's an engineer as well."
Rocky makes a sound in return, but it comes up as 'unknown' in the software. It seems Grace was able to follow, though, as he typed in my name. It seems like Rocky was repeating it in his language.
He makes a chittering sound and spins. "Good to meet more engineer. Grace is dumb, dumb, dumb, at maths. Is sad."
Grace lets out a defensive "Hey!" But Rocky only makes a twittering sound that I assume is laughter, and I laugh along with him as the tension bleeds from my shoulders. The rock alien has a sense of humour. Awesome. Well Grace had told me that, but seeing is believing.
"It is good to meet you too. I am excited to have a fellow engineer, and I am extra excited to learn about xenonite. Is very cool." I say while gesturing to the xenonite wall.
"Yes, yes, yes," the text on Grace's screen reads, "I am happy to teach. You teach me about thinking machine, question?"
I'm not quite sure as to what he was talking about, but Grace points to the laptop, and I make a noise of understanding.
"Of course! We can do scientific exchange. I learn about xenonite, and you learn about computers, yes?"
Rocky does something akin to jazz hands with his claws, which Grace helpfully explains is an equivalent to a very enthusiastic thumbs up. I laugh a little at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
"Happy, happy, happy! Grace says not a computer human, you are computer human, question?" The text reads.
I make a so-so gesture with my hands, before realising Rocky probably doesn't know what that is. "A little. I am more like you, I build and do a lot of maths, but I also had to learn about computers, they are very helpful for human engineering, and I am computer human for the mission. We all have to know about a lot of different things for this mission."
"Understand," Rocky responds, "only three humans, so must know something about many things to work." He pauses for a moment. "Eridians were 23. Many experts. Now just Rocky."
I inhale sharply through my nose. "23? What happened?"
Rocky is silent, and shifts around in way that read as discomfort. Seeing his lack of response, Grace speaks up.
"He doesn't know. I asked the same."
They're all silent for a moment, before Grace makes a soft noise. "Hey Rocky."
"Yes, Grace."
"Did you do anything consistently different from the rest of the crew?"
Rocky makes a humming noise and taps his claws together. "Word before different, what mean, question?"
"Consistently, to do something again and again in same way." I answer.
"Hm. Yes, statement." His tone seems a little more forceful. "I sleep near engines, rest of crew in sleeping room, in middle of ship."
That meant nothing to me, but with the way Grace's eyes widen, I'm guessing he just had some sort of hypothesis confirmed.
"Radiation. I think it was the radiation." He says that in my direction, and I nod in understanding. It would certainly make sense, but why would the Eridians not take precautions against radiation? That was one of the key safety concerns for space missions.
"What word mean, question?"
As it turns out, the Eridians hadn't taken any precautions because they didn't know radiation existed. I don't say much as Grace explains, this was more his domain then mine. But I did feel my heart squeeze as Rocky made soft noises of distress. I place my hand on the xenonite barrier, trying to provide a sense of comfort through it.
“Radiation is here too,” he says. “Stay in your workshop as much as you can.”
“Yes.”
“Bring Astrophage to this tunnel and put it on the wall.”
“Yes. You do same.”
I sigh a little. "It is okay Rocky, we do not need—"
"Because human's are very resistant to radiation! Our atmosphere is much thinner than yours, so radiation gets to Earth all the time." Grace directs a slightly desperate look at me, and I raise an eyebrow.
Very resistant? That's categorically untrue, and Grace knows that. We might be more resistant than Eridians, but it's still very much a concern. It just doesn't matter if we get cancer out here, it wouldn't get to us before our various suicide methods would. Why would Grace lie to Rocky?
Considering how frantic Grace looked, whatever the reason, it's clearly important to him. I decide that contradicting him isn't worth it. I don't want to cause problems this early in the mission.
Rocky thanks Grace emphatically, and I watch with growing curiosity as guilt crosses his face.
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That night during dinner, which Rocky insisted we did far away from him, I sit next to Grace as he squints at his screen. He's reading some paper about Astrophage, and from the way his eyes keep jumping to the top of the paragraph, it was clear the reading isn't going super well.
"Why did you lie to Rocky?" I point my fork at him accusingly.
He freezes. After a few seconds he takes off his glasses and lets them hang from his ears while pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I haven't told him about the suicide part of the mission, and I don't plan to." He rests his head in his hand and looks over to me.
"Why?" I ask.
He sighs a little. "His whole crew died and he's been alone for decades. It, very reasonably, gave him a bit of a complex about death. I think he'd freak out if I told him. I was honestly hoping that he'd head back to Erid, none the wiser about us not going back to Earth."
I hum in understanding. "I am not sure if that is very fair, Grace. Especially because he will have incomplete understanding of radiation."
Grace slumps into the table, resting his head in his arms, it makes his next words a little muffled. "Yeah, I know. I think you're right, not telling him would be a bit selfish, but I worry about him."
I tap his shoulder, and he turns his head to look at me. Now that I'm looking at him in the light, I can see the bags under his eyes in stark detail. I open my arms in invitation.
"Come here."
Huffing a little, he obliges. He plops his head against my shoulder and wraps his arms loosely around me.
"Grace, you are on suicide mission to save not just our planet, but now two planets. A little bit of selfish is okay."
"Thanks." He says into my shoulder.
"But you should still tell him."
"Yeah, I know."
We stay like that for a while, reluctant to let go. We may have been in comas, but neither of us had touched another human in years, and I had always been quick with physical affection. On Earth, I had loved lounging across my friend's laps, quick hugs, bumping shoulders, and linking arms. Sofia used to bat me away to get work done, because trying to do complicated physics while someone was crushing your arms wasn't exactly helpful. I wonder if Grace was the same. He had always seemed a little distant, but I wasn't sure if that was because he preferred to be bit solitary, or because he was being worked to the bone by Stratt and had no time for friends.
Considering how quickly he had relaxed in my arms, I suspect his isolation wasn't entirely voluntary.
Eventually, I feel Grace's breathing slow, and I quickly realise that he's falling asleep. I laugh a little and poke his back.
"Grace. Up. Time for bed."
He groans unhappily but does disconnect himself. "Yes mom."
He stands slowly, and I place a hand on the flat of his back, guiding him towards the dormitory. He starts to point towards the airlock but I stop him before he can say anything.
"Grace. Your eye-bags? They have baby eye-bags. They have started family. You need bed, not a xenonite barrier. Go. I will stay with Rocky."
He laughs, and quickly concedes. He makes his way to the dormitory and I return to Rocky duty. I want to grill him on xenonite anyway, and test my translation software. It would be much easier without Grace and Rocky's constant bickering.
I grab my laptop from where I had left it on the lab bench, as well as Grace's tape monster and quickly make my way back to Rocky.
As I approach, he absentmindedly taps his claws together.
"Where is Grace, question?" He doesn't stop working on whatever xenonite model is his current project.
"Sleeping." I respond as I take up residence Grace's crevice. Rocky makes a high pitched noise.
"You do not watch, question?"
I look up from Grace's output screen and shake my head. "I promise he is okay. Humans need somewhere soft for a comfortable sleep, he is there."
It's clear Rocky isn't super happy with that, but he doesn't push the issue. I quickly open up my own laptop.
"I want to learn about xenonite," I see a 'yes' pop up on Grace's screen. "But first, I will test my translation software. Grace's is good for scientist, but I can do better."
"Word after translation, question?"
"Software. I will explain later in my computer lesson for you." He does his jazz hands in response.
I boot up the program, and select a text to speech voice.
"Okay Rocky, please introduce yourself."
"I am Rocky from Erid. I am engineer."
He jumps back a little at the voice that comes out of the computer, and I cheer quietly. It had worked.
"Next, say a word that you have not told Grace, but is similar to another word."
"No understand. Similar, question?" The text to speech tells me
"Um." I think for a second. Communicating to an alien in your second language is not fun. That's a thought, maybe I can add Russian and Mandarin to my program. "Similar root, or base."
Rocky is quiet for a moment, but finally says something. As expected, the software doesn't know the word, but it provides a little text box that says that the first note in the word is the same as the first note in 'human'. Fantastic.
"Is that word connected to word for human?"
Rocky does his jazz hands again, and this time he even spins as he does it. I felt like I've just been given a gold star.
"Yes, yes, yes. Ocean animal on Erid with mouth like human. Name you after it."
I'm a little upset that we're fish people, apparently, but I'm mostly excited that my program is working as intended.
"Next question. How does conjugation work in your language?" I can feel my excitement building. I had always loved languages, they were similar to mathematics in so many ways. They rewarded logical and pattern based thinking, and I had always been quick to pick up on them.
"New word, what mean, question?"
"How you change movement or state of being word depending on the context of using that word. For example; I walk today, I walked yesterday, I will walk tomorrow."
"Understand." Rocky says. "I have not been using to make easy for Grace, have only been using one."
I can't help it, I groan.
If Rocky's been modifying his speech to make things easier, it means I have to rework my program. I was building it on the assumption that Grace had just managed to work out Rocky's grammar. In hindsight, I should've expected this. Grace is a biologist, he's focused on the Astrophage problem, not accurate translations.
"Can you say a sentence without changing anything, please?"
He obliges, and I immediately see the issue. Very little actually shows up in the translated box, but there is a lot in my suggestion box.
First note in second word same as first note in walk
Third note in fourth word is same as note for you
Fifth word is same notes as word for Grace an octave higher.
And on it goes...
I take a screenshot. "Okay, repeat the sentence, but how you were talking for Grace."
"You walk here, Grace stay in ship to sleep."
I sigh. It seems xenonite would have to wait, first I have to take an alien linguistics lesson.
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It takes so, so long. But eventually I've worked out the basics. Eridian - or at least Rocky's language - uses a subject, object, verb sentence structure, there are notes for the various tenses that are attached to the beginning of words, and which octave things are said in changed meanings in a variety of ways. Sometimes it's similar to tones, in that the same notes in a different octave are two entirely different words, but it could also imply emotions, or a grammatical mood like the subjunctive. There are still so many gaps, Rocky's language had irregularities just like any other, but that would have to wait for another day.
I sigh and lean my head against the barrier. It's pleasantly warm.
"Do you want to sleep, question?"
I had worked out pretty quickly that the 'word' Grace had translated as question is actually just the Eridian equivalent to the English tonal change when asking a question, not a word, but I think it's cute so I kept it in there. Similarly, what Grace had translated as 'statement' is the equivalent of an exclamation mark.
"Yes."
"I will watch you."
I nod tiredly, and let myself drift off, the warmth of the xenonite against my back, and Rocky above me.
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I dreamt of Sofia. It wasn't a crazy or fantastical dream, or a sexual one. I was watching a movie, head in her lap as she worked on an equation in her notebook. She was humming something under her breath, and would occasionally ask for my input, holding the notepad in front of my face. It was nice.
I miss her.
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I wake up slowly, and to the sounds of hushed whispering. Well, hushed whispering from one party, and a decently loud text to speech voice from the other party.
"Grace, your model is bad. I thought you were a teacher. Why is it bad?"
"You're the engineer! Why don't you make it!"
"I like laughing at you."
"Rocky. Rocky I'm going to declare war on Erid if you keep this up. I'm going to do an alien invasion."
"That is fine. You would not be able to make battle plan, because your battle map would be bad. Why is a school teacher in space, question?"
"Huh?" There's some brief shuffling. "I'm not sure, I can't remember."
Rocky hums. "That is okay, Grace can learn when you all go home."
That really wakes me up, but I don't move. I don't want to interrupt.
"Well… Rocky, bud, there's something I have to tell you. Something I haven't been entirely truthful about." Grace's voice is tense.
"What, question?"
"Once this is over, we aren't going home, we don't have enough fuel. This is a one way trip for us, pal."
There's silence, and then a low, distressed sound comes from Rocky. "What, question? Grace and Ilyukhina will die, question? You lied to me, statement!"
I hear Grace wince, and I sympathise. "I know buddy. And that wasn't fair. Ilyukhina set my head straight about that. It's okay though, I've made my peace with it. We'll save Earth and Erid, that's all that matters now."
"What does, 'make peace' mean, question, statement?!"
"I know what I signed up for, and I'm okay with it. I'm not going home, but I'm still going to do my best to save it."
Rocky makes an unsure humming noise, and speaks up slowly. "How much fuel do you need, question?"
"Two million kilograms." Says Grace softly.
There's some brief tapping. "I can give you the fuel. Strange things happened on the way here, we had more than the scientists on Erid thought we would once we got here. Very strange. They were sure their mathematics were correct."
In that moment I decide to stop feigning sleep. I sit up, and I can feel tears coming to my eyes. I had long since accepted that I would never see Earth again. That I would never see the Christmas markets in St. Petersburg, or fresh snow falling, or hike to the top of a mountain and take in the view of the planet below. I had accepted I would never see Sofia's smile again. Suddenly, everything shifts. Home is within my grasp.
Grace looks over to where I had sat up, and I see matching tears on his face. We stare at each other, the only sound being our rapid breathing. Grace turns and places his palm flat on the xenonite wall.
"Thank you," he gasps.
I cry a little harder, and a distressed sound comes from Rocky. "Why are you both leaking, question?"
Grace laughs. "It's called crying, bud. We do it when we feel strong emotions. We're happy."
I nod in affirmation, but my smile is quickly replaced. "Even if we have the fuel, we do not have food. There was only enough to last three months."
Matching my expression, Grace is silent for a moment. "Do we have any of the stuff they were feeding us in the coma left over? I can see if I can synthesise more of it. Otherwise we can see if we have any sort of plant growing capabilities on the ship."
"I will check medical robot and see for coma food, I do not know about plants."
Stratt was famously over-prepared, but I'm not sure if even she would've bothered with any sort of plant life.
"While you're down there, can you see if you can find out why Yáo's still asleep. It's getting concerning how long he's been under."
"Other human is okay, question?" Rocky chimes.
Grace shrugs. "He's not dead, but he also isn't waking up, which is a bit scary."
Rocky makes a noise of understanding.
"Okay," I say with a hint of trepidation. "But I am not medical doctor. You are closer to doctor than me. You are a biologist. If it is machine problem, I might be able to fix, but if it is human problem, I am useless."
"That's alright," Grace reassures, "I just figured it was worth checking."
"I will look. But no promises."