Chapter Text
“Rocky, there’s nothing out here, we should just go back.”
Grace sat with his legs up, spinning the chair of the control deck of Hail Mary II whilst Rocky was messing around with different controls on the deck, searching the nearby solar systems for any signs of life on the neighbouring planets.
“Grace need nice food, statement,” Rocky’s automated voice was an odd change from the chirps and clicks he was used to back on Erid.
The last three years had been peaceful; with Grace finding time amongst teaching the younger Eridians all he could on the topic of intergalactic science to learn their language, which had a unique set of sounds and intonations, and begin to have relatively complicated conversations without the need for the robotic translator.
The translator had been an extra bit of software built into Hail Mary II when they were originally constructing the ship at the start of Grace’s time on Erid. Neither Grace nor Rocky had expected him to pick up the language so quickly.
Hearing the robotic voice now was sending him back to when they first met. How scared they had both been, and how happy to have each other they were (after the original terror of becoming acquainted with an alien species).
“Adrian’s farm is okay as it is,” Grace pulled himself from his thoughts to watch Rocky bash at a button on the side control panel.
“Button broken, Grace,” Rocky’s voice filtered through a speaker on the deck closest to him. Another unique feature they spent way too much time developing; it was so Rocky could move without a computer attached to him; so his voice could be heard from whichever speaker was closest to him in the ship.
“Yeah, bud, maybe that’s because you’re beating it up,” Grace half-laughed and walked over to the panel to inspect it.
Rocky moved to the scanner instead, clearly over whatever task he had been so fixed on moments before. The button had been thoroughly knocked out of place, but wasn’t damaged, so Grace began attempting to click it back into shape.
“You know, I’m happy eating what we’ve got already,” Grace began, idly fiddling with the button. “Adrian did a good job at getting me set up, and now I’ve got my foods to pick from.”
“Grace. Statement.”
“I just think you’ve all been so accommodating to me, there’s no need to travel all the way out here, using up all the astrophage when we could be using it for something else-”
“Grace. Question.”
“-and risking a repeat of-”
“Grace. Exclamation.”
“-Sorry, not to bring that up, all I mean is…”
Grace trailed off as the rapid repetitive sound of the robot repeating his name became drowned out by the scale with which Rocky was chirping at him.
The button clicked back into place as Grace spun around to see Rocky jabbing one of his arms at the screen, which was flashing with a warning sign at a moon Rocky had focused the scanner on.
COLOSSAL LIFE FORM DETECTED
The text was, fittingly, in red. Grace didn’t remember programming the warnings to be red. Let alone state those words in that order.
“What the…”
“Moon, moon, moon!” Rocky’s robotic voice was now louder than the clicks from Rocky.
Grace grabbed the controls next to Rocky and zoomed into the moon. On the monitor, it was a deep red colour, and Grace got the awful thought that it looked like a moon made entirely of blood. Or at least with a sea of blood.
The monitor changed screens.
CLASSIFICATION: MOON
UNKNOWN BIOMASS DETECTED
UNKNOWN NUMBER OF LIFE FORMS DETECTED
LIFE FORM CLASSIFICATIONS: 2
Grace frowned as the last line updated.
LIFE FORM CLASSIFICATIONS: 3
And then again.
LIFE FORM CLASSIFICATIONS: 5
And again, and again until the number sat somewhere between 17 and 20, flicking up and down as the computer rushed to de-code whatever information the scanner was feeding it.
Grace reached to start zooming further into this moon, but the computer was apparently not done.
Another pop-up warning filled the screen.
ABNORMAL LIFE FORM DETECTED
SCANNING FOR INFORMATION
Grace frowned further.
“What is-”
LIFE FORM IDENTIFIED: HUMAN
STATUS: ALIVE
STABILITY: UNKNOWN
Grace’s heart dropped.
“Amaze, amaze, amaze!” Rocky’s robotic voice pulled him out of his stupor. “Grace find other human. Grace find mate, question.”
“I don’t know, Rocky,” Grace could only gawk at the screen.
Another human. So close to Erid.
How could that be possible? They were years away from Earth, even travelling with the astrophage as fuel.
Had they sent out another Project Hail Mary shortly after Grace’s departure from Earth? It couldn’t be possible, considering how long it had taken them to reproduce the astrophage safely.
So, how was there another human?
“Go find Grace mate, statement,” Rocky was excitedly smashing at keys on the driver’s panel, in between darting around the cabin in excited circles.
Grace blinked out of his amazement and rushed over to the pilot seat.
“Not a mate, Rocky,” Grace said idly, tugging his seatbelt over his shoulders. “Just another human.”
.
.
.
Every second of the sixteen minutes it took Hail Mary II to travel from where they had been to just outside the gravity for the unidentified moon had felt like a year to Grace.
While Rocky had been excitedly chatting about the potential for a new friend for Grace, Grace had been anxiously turning over all possible outcomes of the scenario.
STATUS: ALIVE
STABILITY: UNKNOWN
The computer read clearly. This person was alive, but they may not be stable enough to be recovered, let alone conscious.
It was hard not to get his hopes up as Rocky switched to the grab-hook on the base of the ship as they entered the moon’s atmosphere.
Following the sensors on the monitor, Grace piloted them as close to the surface of the sea as he could. Getting a closer look confirmed his original thoughts. The sea looked like blood.
In a more positive context, the sea could have just been stained by coloured metals from the sea floor, but Grace knew, from the sluggish consistency, that it was unmistakably blood.
“Rocky ready, statement. Grace ready, question,” Rocky’s robotic voice filtered through the speakers.
“Ready,” Grace knew his voice was shaky.
Rocky deployed the hook and, for a suspended minute, he thought it would never hit anything.
“Camera blocked, Grace,” Rocky complained and Grace nodded.
“Try to go based on the sounds from the cable,” Grace suggested, remembering Rocky’s echolocation.
A chirp of confirmation came from the control room at the back of the ship and Grace held his breath as Rocky slowly turned the levers on the panel, searching for something different on the bottom of the sea floor.
Then, Rocky jumped slightly and smashed the recall button for the cable. It clattered back up to the top and Grace craned his head out the small circular window to see what was attached.
A large wave broke the surface of the sea, quickly followed by a dark grey metal container. Grace sighed in frustration.
Great. Space trash.
He was about to tell Rocky to drop it when the computer began flashing red again.
WARNING: UNKNOWN BIOMASS DETECTED
Grace clicked through the useless warning pages until he stumbled on the diagnostics option, and he began to scan the metal container. Just before the computer could begin to display any information, a pop-up warning blared in the way.
WARNING: HIGH LEVELS OF RADIATION DETECTED
Grace closed the tab and re-ran the diagnostics. It began to de-code when the pop-up showed again.
WARNING: HIGH LEVELS OF RADIATION DETECTED
Tutting, Grace closed the tab and re-ran the diagnostics scan.
“What see Grace, question,” Rocky asked.
“Nothing so far, bud,” Grace said, idly watching the loading bar. “There’s too much radioactive interference."
Then, the diagnostics page began to fill out with information.
LIFE FORM DETECTED
SPECIES: HUMAN
STATUS: ALIVE
STABILITY: UNKNOWN
Grace was about to run further diagnostics on the container, but the warning shot up again.
WARNING: HIGH LEVELS OF RADIATION DETECTED
“Okay, Rock, here’s the plan,” Grace spoke. “We’re going back to Erid carrying this thing outside of the ship. Contact any architects there on the way and let them know we need a landing site that can take high levels of radiation. The person is alive, but probably highly irradiated. We’ll need medics, too.”
“How Grace land, question,” Rocky’s voice came through the speakers.
Bringing the ship up out of the moon’s atmosphere, away from its orbit and off back towards Erid, Grace sighed.
“We’ll see when we get there, Rock.”
.
.
.
The landing hadn’t been as smooth as Grace had intended, but he was in a rush, okay? Give him a break. The person inside the container was probably dying and he didn’t have time to mess around with how pretty the landing was supposed to be.
Grace threw off his seatbelt and burst out of Hail Mary II, running towards the ship. He forgot all about the potential radiation poisoning and dangerous biomass, focusing solely on the fact that there was another human on the other side of the hull of that container.
Some of the Eridians had already made a crack in the hull, and they used a nearby suspended hook to search inside the container.
The container which, now open, was spilling blood and other thicker clumps of red onto the landing site. Luckily, the Eridians on site had the foresight to line the ground with xenonite to protect the ground from any biomass or radiation.
After a painful moment of fumbling the makeshift crane, and an excess of spillage of whatever gross mix of blood and other flesh onto the floor, Grace released his breath as it began resurfacing.
The crane lifted slowly, too slowly, and a body emerged from the container of blood.
Limp and soaked, the body of a man surfaced and was placed gingerly onto the xenonite floor.
Grace couldn’t see past the blood, but he was young-looking, not soft, but not elderly, with a mop of dark black hair stuck to his face and neck.
Forgetting all safety, Grace pushed the hair out of the way to reveal a face. It was probably a bad time to notice how pretty the face was; with thick eyebrows to match the hair, and stubble on the top of his lip and chin, running down his neck over the pop of his adam’s apple.
God it had been so long since he’d seen another person in the flesh. Pun not intended.
As if sensing his uselessness the man stirred, choking and vomiting up an unnatural amount of blood from his body before going still.
Grace would’ve rushed forwards if it weren’t for the cold xenonite arms that gripped his shoulders, holding him back as three other Eridians carried the man off to a medical bay nearby.
“Grace okay, question?” Rocky’s chirps were concerned.
Grace could only nod. Then he shook his head. Then he nodded again.
.
.
.
It had taken three days for the mystery man to recover consciousness, and Grace, once allowed in the bay, had not left once. Rocky had insisted on sending him home, but had resorted to watching him sleep in the bay instead, just in case the man woke up.
By the third day, Grace had lost most of his hope that the man would recover. Cleaned up, the man was awfully relaxed looking.
He’d lost an arm somewhere along the way, which had been bandaged well. His head had bandages around the gash on the side of it, and his other arm and two legs were covered in scattered bandages and plasters over the many lacerations he had suffered.
His chest was the worst. Grace had not flushed when he’d walked in on the shirtless man, feeling it was not okay to be interested in someone who wasn’t conscious. But he couldn’t help notice the lean muscle underneath his darkened skin. The man, despite being in bad shape, was in incredibly good shape.
Grace wondered what happened to him.
After a conversation explaining races back on Earth to Rocky, he’d headed to get Grace some food and drink.
He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the last three days had been filled with such intense anticipation and anxiety about this new addition to their life on Erid, Grace hadn’t slept much at all.
Of course it had to be the one time he actually managed to sleep that this man chose to wake up.
.
.
.
Simon was quite possibly the most interesting person Grace had ever met. And he’d taught quite the oddballs in his time on Earth.
They started off small; introducing him to the new space. Grace felt a bit like he was treating him like a cat, but Rocky insisted they didn’t want to overwhelm him. Simon had spent who knows how long in the ship (based on the state of his vitals and malnourishment, too long), and they both knew he was jumpier than either of them had been when they’d met.
As Grace let Simon familiarise himself with the makeshift environment in the medical suite, he allowed himself to stand off to the side and relax for the first time in a couple of days.
Remembering the state of the moon they’d found his ship on, Grace couldn’t help but wonder how or why Simon had ended up at the bottom of a blood ocean in the first place. As far as Grace was aware, humans only populated one planet – Earth – so there was no reason for one to be as far away from home as that.
Grace ran through the possibilities in his mind. Maybe he was an independent space explorer who’d gotten into difficulty. Maybe he’d been exploring the moon, searching for god knows what, and misjudged the hull’s capacity for the ocean’s weight. Grace preferred that idea. Because the alternative…
Maybe Simon was another Project Hail Mary.
“Grace, Rocky did not find food, statement,” Rocky’s chirps broke into his train of thoughts.
“That’s okay, bud,” Grace turned half of his attention to the Eridian beside him, but his gaze was still trained on Simon, who was reaching out to feel the xenonite wall.
In all honesty, Simon didn’t seem entirely… there. It was as if his body was on Erid, but his mind was elsewhere.
Grace had seen it in his eyes back in the medical bay; when Simon had thrust the knife around, he had been present. His eyes were alight with fear, but he looked entirely focused on what was happening. And then…
Then Grace asked what his name was and it was like a switch had been flipped. Like one second he was there, with Grace, and the next he was gone. His eyes dulled and his face was hollowed out. As his breathing quickened, Grace knew what was happening and had wondered, for a moment, if Simon didn’t remember, or didn’t even have a name.
Grace had gently sat him on the bed, completely unsure if he was supposed to touch the man, to comfort him, or if that would make it worse. Instead, he focused on his breathing, slowing it down with verbal instructions that Simon had taken to well.
And then he’d calmed down and said his name and Grace had felt almost as relieved as when he realised Simon was awake.
Simon’s voice was raspy from lack of use and dehydration, but the tone was still present; a deep warmth to it; something inherently human. Grace hadn’t realised how much he’d missed hearing English from a human, not just a robot.
Watching Simon now, Grace sighed and leant against the xenonite wall behind him. He was deeply tired, so much so that he felt it in his bones. Years on Erid were different and Grace realised with a start that he didn’t actually remember how old he was.
He was 33 when he was sent to space, that was all he could remember. That must’ve made him 37 when they arrived on Erid. An Eridian year is 42 days long, give or take, so Grace could assume he was pushing 38. At the youngest.
Still, that was too young to start getting body aches. He knew he should rest, but he found himself too preoccupied by the new addition to Erid.
It might take a while to settle Simon into the medical suite, let alone get him set up temporarily at Grace’s house before the Eridians could help him build a new one. Maybe he should ask for their environment to be made bigger.
“Grace okay, question,” Rocky’s voice once again broke into his train of thought.
“I am,” Grace said.
Simon sat himself down on the xenonite floor, being careful to not bash any of his injuries. He seemed to sigh and contemplate something before he laid down fully, staring up at the temporary sky.
“I don’t know if he is, though.”