Work Text:
The thought comes to him as he cleans up his table after dinner.
His hand glides over the faux-wood table (not real wood of course, but a fairly decent facsimile, as the Eridians are wont to do), and he is reminded, suddenly, of his grandfather.
His grandfather, who had lived in the foothills of Appalachia, who had a giant, rusty-red barn full of every kind of tool imaginable, who Ryland had only visited a handful of times before he passed. He had loved to work with his hands, building sturdy, golden oak chairs, shelving with intricate inlay, and bookcases that could hold more books than Ryland thought was ever possible for a person to own, much less read.
His grandfather took pride in showing Ryland how each tool worked, tracing wood grain with gnarled fingers, scars scattered across each hand. His rough palms guided Ryland’s own hands, so much smaller under his, showing him just how much pressure to use when sanding down a stained piece of maple for a headboard.
His hands, Ryland thinks. Thinner skin, knobby knuckles, and a few liver spots here and there, simply due to age.
He stares down at his own hands.
Unsurprisingly, the large overhead lighting in his dome follows a standard 24-hour cycle to mimic Earth. But he also closely follows Eridian time, making conversions in his head between the two. Similar to timezone conversions with work colleagues back on Earth. Eridians sleep far less than humans, so their “day” is not bound by the same cycle of activities as humans. Rocky, of course, was familiar with Ryland’s usual cycle from being together so long on the Hail Mary, and the other Eridians picked up on his habits quickly. Settling into Erid, Ryland still used Earth time for his own eat-sleep-wake cycles and of course when conducting experiments, simply because making the additional conversion to Eridian time wasn’t worth the risk of a potential error. But with one Eridian day equaling a little over 5 Earth hours, his long-term calendar upkeep had become a little shoddy.
A frisson of alarm goes through him when he realizes he cannot accurately recall how long it has been since he arrived on Erid.
Abandoning his dirty dishes, he gently opens one of the few laptops remaining from the Hail Mary. It’s old, but well taken care of, and should still last quite a bit longer, but he doesn’t want to take any chances.
After figuring out the astrophage problem but before arriving on Erid, he meticulously followed the date and time on the Hail Mary, set to Moscow Standard Time, determined to keep to a routine. It had been a long, long four years. The last time he had looked at the onboard computer before descending down the staggeringly large elevator to the surface of Erid, 20 chronological years had passed since he last saw Earth. Luckily for him, and with a substantial thanks to relativistic time, he had only experienced 8 years.
He looks at the date on the laptop, still dutifully showing the passage of time despite the many light years it has traveled. But because it experienced time dilation, much like Ryland, he’s got a few different numbers to start with.
So. He does the math.
And he does not like the numbers he gets.
Well. It’s not that he doesn’t like the numbers. But they make no sense.
He runs them again.
Same result.
He looks down at his hands again, fingers stretching, turning them over, examining them.
By his math, it’s been over 38 chronological years since he left Earth. Traveling at 1.5 g’s from Earth to Tau Ceti and then from Tau Ceti to Erid means he’s only experienced 18 of those years.
That means – even relativistically, he should be as old as his grandfather was the last time he saw him.
But he… appears the same. As much as he can tell.
He finds a small mirror he brought down from the ship. He rarely uses it, just to make sure his hair doesn’t look like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket. Besides, it’s not like he needs to impress aliens who don’t have any optical input. But now, he looks — really looks.
Bare hints of crows feet line his eyes behind his glasses. He was over 40 when he woke up on the Hail Mary after leaving Earth, so that makes sense, but shouldn’t there be more? And speaking of, what about his eyesight? He should have needed a stronger prescription a long time ago. There’s a gray hair or four scattered across his crown, but again, no more than when he had left Earth. His skin retains its elasticity, no sagging jowls or fine lines etching every corner.
He should look like a man in his early 60s. Because that’s what he is.
He looks anything but.
*
In fairness, he had always been bad at keeping track of time.
When he arrived at UC Berkeley fresh out of high school, wide-eyed and full of more questions than his professors had time to answer, he spent hours at the lab, grabbing bags of chips or Twinkies from the vending machine when he could scrounge up the change. More than a few times, cool morning air and the pink of dawn greeted him when he finally stepped foot out of the Sciences building. Nights with no sleep didn’t stop his drive. He sometimes worked like a man possessed, unable to deviate from whatever goal he was working towards.
His time with Stratt had somehow both hindered and bolstered this work ethic. It was all hands on deck, a limited amount of time to figure out as much as possible about astrophage and all the logistics of how the Hail Mary crew was going to travel to the stars to solve the problem. But pretty much being Stratt’s right hand man also meant bureaucracy – a completely new experience for him that sometimes took him away from being the one in the lab doing the hands-on solving. Still, time spun away from him, and before he knew it, the launch date had come and –
Anyway.
It isn’t much different on Erid. Being on a brand new planet, he could run experiments from here until the end of time and probably still never run out of ideas. Not to mention time well spent with Rocky, Adrian, and other Eridians he’s met. He’s been… happy. Living his life. Truly settling into the situation he found himself in.
So yeah, maybe it doesn’t seem exactly out of character, but. With so many years having gone by, why does he still look and, well, feel like he did when he left Earth?
He spends the entire next morning feeling as though the floor has suddenly shifted beneath him, unsettled and distracted. He thinks himself into a circle until he ultimately comes to: This is very silly, and I’m working myself up over nothing.
Satisfied with that answer for now (he tells himself), he awaits his friend’s visit.
Rocky comes by his dome, at minimum, once per day. It had become near impossible to extricate the two of them after they had arrived, mostly because Ryland couldn’t do anything while the Eridians put the finishing touches on his dome, weak from malnutrition and at the beginning stages of organ failure. Rocky stayed as close to him as his xenonite ball would allow, watching him sleep, monitoring any changes to Ryland’s breathing or heartbeat, all while vehemently giving commands to other Eridians tasked with helping him survive. And even after he finally, finally started feeling better, there was a palpable anxiety in being separated, from both of them. The logical side of his brain knew it was a sort of PTSD after surviving everything that they had been through together. The animal side of his brain just wanted what he felt was safe.
Thinking back to that time gives Ryland an idea. (And yes, being satisfied with the I’m working myself up over nothing thesis had only lasted about an hour and a half.)
Rocky meets him at the door in his more compact xenonite suit, and together they start down the beach. Rocky fills him in on the goings-on around Erid: minor clan political matters and the continuing experimentation on growing certain crops to diversify Ryland’s diet.
“Hey Rocky,” he says as they pause to look out onto the rolling waves. “How long has it been since we got to Erid?”
“Three hundred fifteen billion seconds,” Rocky says cheekily without much hesitation. “About ten Earth years. To help you, since you do not have your calculator with you.”
“Wow, thanks,” Ryland says drily. Not that he had any doubts, but it confirms his own calculations. He leans back on his heels, pondering how best to ask his next question.
“Have you noticed anything… odd or different about me lately? Maybe like when we first arrived?”
Rocky stills completely. “Grace okay, question?”
“Yes,” Ryland confirms quickly, falling back on their old parlance. “Grace okay. I dunno, I was just thinking. Sometimes human bodies randomly get sick or start to have problems, especially as they get older.”
“Know this,” Rocky says, his tone going high and tight. “Very much know this.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry, bud. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. I guess I haven’t really been paying attention to my Earth calendar as much lately and was a little surprised at how much time had passed since we got here.” He kicks a little at the sand. “Back on Earth, I’d be what they call ‘getting on in years.’”
Rocky makes a noise of contemplation and turns his carapace towards Ryland. “Heart good; lungs good; bones good,” he says after a moment. “You want further examination?”
Through their echolocation or maybe by other sensory inputs, Eridians are able to do surface level checks on his insides, as absolutely bizarre as that is. Mostly thanks to how squishy humans are, as Rocky likes to remind him. But he has a dedicated medical team who has studied every bit of human anatomy and medical science available to them from the massive library on the laptops, ready to assist with any issues he might have.
“Nah,” he replies. “If you say everything looks good, I trust you.”
“Maybe you get checked anyway? Just to be sure?”
Darn. He hadn’t meant to make him worry. “I can absolutely do that. As long as you’re taking care of yourself too. You’re over 300 years old now!”
“300 Earth years,” Rocky says. “Much more Erid years. Much much more. But still young.” He points a claw at Ryland. “No hiding sickness.”
“No hiding sickness,” Ryland agrees softly, reminded of when his body had started taking a downward turn on the way to Erid. Then he nudges Rocky’s suit with the toe of his shoe. “Just because you’re over 200 years older than me doesn’t mean you get to boss me around, you know.” Which isn’t true at all. Rocky’s been bossing him around since before they solved the astrophage problem together.
“Does,” Rocky says. “Smaller human brain need help sometimes.”
“Wow. You’re just full of jokes today, aren’t you. But, well – you’re not wrong.” He motions his head back the direction they came. “C’mon. I gotta show you this project I’ve been thinking about.”
I’m working myself up over nothing, he thinks as they trudge through the sand together. He puts it out of his mind.
*
Years later, he is reminded very vividly of that conversation on the beach the second his body hits the ground.
He wheezes, breath fully knocked out of him. This is it, he thinks. This is where age finally catches up to me. Adrenaline coursing through him makes it near impossible to tell how badly he’s hurt. Because he must be badly hurt. But he can’t make sense of anything because he simply can’t pull any air into his lungs –
He manages to pull in a shuddering breath. Tears leak from the corner of his eyes as he strains to maneuver in some way that doesn’t make his lower back feel like it’s on fire.
Oh, Rocky is going to be so mad at him. So so mad. The pain he feels is nothing like the regret piercing his heart. What if this is the beginning of the end. He should have just taken the stairs slower. He shouldn’t have had his hands full. He should have –
He doesn’t get to finish the thought.
He wakes some indeterminate time later.
And – he’s in the Pod.
So named for what it looks like: a pod. Built by his Eridian medical team so if anything did happen to him, he could be contained in his own atmosphere while they worked on him from the outside at their own medical facilities. It took a lot of complex engineering to figure out – but that’s what Rocky excelled at – incorporating the nanny bot from the Hail Mary with other Eridian medical technology. The result was a slightly claustrophobic, capsule-like enclosure that was tailored to fix a good number of his medical needs. Not everything, of course, but enough to mostly get by.
His head swims and his mouth feels like cotton, like he’s been drugged. Also not great. There’s a limited supply that came with him on the ship, and figuring out how to synthesize painkillers to make more is pretty low on the to-do list.
He can’t quite remember what happened. He had gone down into the basement to grab a couple jars of beans (he has beans now!) missed a step, and –
His heart clenches, and he can barely breathe again. At his age, a fall like that could be disastrous. Especially here, where there’s far fewer means of regaining mobility. It’s already difficult enough with the extra gravity on his bones. If this is the event that kicks off his downward spiral, he’s going to have to explain to Rocky –
He’s unable to stifle the wounded noise that arises deep within him. No. Not yet. He can’t. There’s still time. There has to be. He’ll fight with everything he has.
“Eye movement detected,” says the Pod.
One thing is odd, though. He’s not sure he… feels all that bad?
“Grace!” he hears Rocky call out shrilly from outside of the Pod. “Grace! You awake?”
He concentrates, does a little bit of a wiggle in the Pod to figure out what exactly he hit on the way down and how bad it is.
“You are in the Pod. Medical team brought you. Must stay still for now.”
He doesn’t… he can’t pinpoint a main source of pain. Maybe a few sore areas, like bruises? Guess the drugs really are doing their thing.
“Rocky,” he answers hoarsely. “‘M here. What happened?”
His friend makes a noise of distress. “House signal went off. Medical team found you on the floor. I came here immediately.”
House signal. The team who had built his dome installed a sensor system to alert them to any dramatic changes to his heartbeat and blood pressure. He had forced himself to ignore the overall intrusiveness of it, but now he feels grateful.
“I’m sorry,” is all he can get out.
“Is okay. Happy it is not worse. Could be much much worse!”
Ryland blinks. “What do you mean?”
“Medical team said you looked in great pain when they arrived. Not breathing good. Said bone at hip looks broken. But there must have been a mistake. The Pod did deep scan — not broken!”
“Oh,” he breathes. Well. That was good. Very good. From the amount of pain he remembers being in, he was sure there would have been some kind of fracture. “Is there anything else?”
“Many hematomas, but already better. Grace heals fast.”
The relief vanishes in an instant and is replaced with a curl of unease in his gut.
“I don’t,” he says.
There’s a pause outside the Pod. “Not understand.”
“I don’t really heal that fast. Or, I guess, I heal normal. Back on Earth, I’d have mysterious bruises pop up every now and again. Went through every color of the rainbow for about a week before they finally went away.”
There’s another pause. Ryland can picture Rocky’s fingers pinching as he thinks.
“Maybe different now because of the coma and time on ship?”
“Maybe,” he murmurs. Internally, he’s running the numbers again. A few years older. Were he still on Earth, it is very likely he’d have already passed from natural causes, if the astrophage crisis hadn't gotten him first. But even with his space travels and his few extra borrowed years, a fall like that at his age should have done some serious damage.
He tries to breathe evenly so as not to alert the Pod.
“Glad you are okay,” Rocky says. “Very very glad.”
“Me too, bud,” Ryland says, and he means it.
But the second he gets out of here, he’s got some major science to do.
*
He starts with the basics: blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar, cholesterol. All decent methods of estimating a biological age. Fortunately he’d become an expert at drawing his own blood, thanks to the numerous tests run when the Eridians were trying to dial into exactly what nutrients his body was lacking when they first arrived. It had taken him multiple tries when he first did it, and on one memorable occasion, full-on vasovagal syncope, which had Rocky screeching in panic until Ryland was able to get it under control and assure him that humans turning white as a sheet with full body sweats and near loss of consciousness just kind of happens sometimes around needles.
While he has a doctorate, it’s no MD. But, he knows his way around lab equipment and testing, and coupled with the full encyclopedia of human knowledge at his disposal, he’s able to run the blood tests needed and cross reference the results against biological age ranges, as well as his own results before Stratt shot him up into space. (Not that he remembered those tests being run, of course, but thankfully that data had been stored onboard.)
All normal.
And not only normal, but near exactly what they were when he had left Earth at 38 years old.
Biologically, currently, right now, he’s pushing 70.
He runs the tests again.
Same result.
He blows out a long breath, heart hammering in his chest.
He catches a glimpse of himself in the small mirror across the room.
It’s as if he’s been frozen in time. Nothing about him has changed since he last touched the surface of his home planet.
But of course, that’s not true. Everything has changed.
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what this means. He’s a man of science. There are rules, immutable laws of the universe, no matter where in the universe one is. Entropy, decay, deterioration. Everything in the universe experiences it.
Everything except him, it seems.
He rolls his eyes, despite feeling totally unmoored. Get a grip, Grace, he thinks to himself. There are still more tests he can run. It’ll take some time, but he apparently has plenty of that.
In human terms, aging is, very very very simply, the body’s inability to regenerate new tissue. Even with all the equipment they brought down from the Hail Mary, there are just some things he’s not going to be able to test without spinal fluid or muscle tissue, neither of which he’s willing to risk retrieving anyway. But he has plenty of skin cells.
So: testing cellular senescence – the ceasing of cell division. Normally, cells experience environmental stress factors, oxidative stress, and so on that limit cell division to about 50 doublings before becoming senescent. Those cells can’t contribute to tissue repair or regeneration. Should be easy enough. Cell turnover occurs within about 30 to 40 days, so he won’t have to wait long. He sets up a control and then five culture vessels. He only has one incubator that works, which still feels extraordinarily lucky, so that’ll have to do.
And then he waits.
He continues on with his life, meeting with Rocky, teaching, having his regular check-ins with other Eridian teams, sleeping, eating, rewatching Gilmore Girls for the seventh time. He very decidedly does not look at or think about the experiment set up in the corner of his living room.
Multiple times he almost tells Rocky while he waits. But he just… doesn’t want to yet. The obsessive, overly analytical part of his brain wants to exhaust as many avenues as possible before broaching the subject.
Finally the day comes. Flow cytometers and lasers are in short supply on Erid, but the Hail Mary had been stocked with a few different assays for testing. Luckily, he’s got one that distinguishes senescent and nonsenescent cells through staining, making the division between the two easier to spot. Gloves on and pipette in hand, he leans in over his microscope.
There’s not a shade of blue to be seen.
The second sample shows the same. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth.
No senescent cells.
He slowly sinks to the floor and starts hyperventilating.
How. How. Even if his aging had slowed, there would still be some evidence of cell death. There’s none. There is simply no logical, rational explanation for it. It defies all basics of biological study from here to Aristotle.
Like the claim you staked your career on, that life doesn’t need water to evolve? That was proven right? his brain unhelpfully supplies.
He presses his palms against his eyes. That’s different. That had a scientific basis, a hypothesis that could have been viable had more of the community been willing to even just have a discussion with him. This… this was science fiction.
He realizes the absurdity of such a thought as he sprawls on the floor of a house built by aliens on a planet nearly 12 light years away from Earth.
It does explain the fall, at least. Any injuries would have been swiftly taken care of thanks to his apparently robust cells.
The weight of what that possibly means is simply too much. He can’t even think the thought straight on, instead deflecting with question after question that mostly consists of how? and why?
Ryland breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to calm his jackrabbiting heart, lest the house sensor go off again and his place becomes overrun with Eridians.
There’s no denying it. He knows what he needs to do next.
He needs to talk with Rocky.
*
He tries to remain patient, but he feels as though he’s going to crawl out of his own skin.
Rocky mentioned stopping by in the afternoon, so he doesn’t have long to wait. Meanwhile, Ryland is once again thinking himself into a circle, but this time, he is sure he’s most certainly not working himself up over nothing.
The thought did cross his mind that maybe… maybe his medical team had something to do with this? Or his nutritionists? Whether unknowingly or not? Maybe something in Erid’s atmosphere triggered this, or maybe some kind of new viral strain introduced here that makes his little cells go haywire?
He dismisses the idea almost immediately. The amount of back and forth with Erid’s top scientists would have surely sussed something like this out. But he hopes Rocky might have an idea or two.
Per usual, Rocky meets him at his door, and they set down the beach. Rocky tells him excitedly about the strides they’ve recently made in aerospace development now that astrophage and the understanding of radiation have been incorporated into their advances.
Ryland tries to listen as attentively as he can but knows he fails when Rocky says, “You are distracted. Are you sleeping okay?”
“Yeah pal, sorry, I’m sleeping just fine. I just, um. I have to talk to you about something.”
That gets Rocky’s full attention. “Time to leave Erid? Go back to Earth?” he asks, and only because Ryland has known his friend as long as he has does he pick up on the slightly tremulous tone.
“No, no,” Ryland assures. “Not yet, anyway. So, um. You’ll probably think this sounds crazy, and believe me, I feel crazy just thinking it, but I think something has happened to me, physically. Either here, or back when we were hanging around planet Adrian. I’m not… aging. I think. Even with all the time dilation during space travel, I should look much older than I do. There are certain biological effects that happen as humans age, and they’re not happening to me.”
Rocky shifts on his legs a little as he takes this in. “Maybe these biological effects just haven’t happened yet? Maybe they are delayed somehow?”
Ryland nods. “I wondered that too. So I ran some tests. It goes down to my actual cells. It’s like they’re not dying. And I have no idea why.”
Rocky is still for a moment longer and then springs upward with a little hop. “This is… good news! Very very very good news! This means you….” He doesn’t complete the sentence, but Ryland knows exactly what he means.
“It maybe is. I dunno. I’m worried that there’s a trade off. We have this disease back on Earth called cancer that occurs when cells have uncontrolled proliferation – basically they just keep dividing and dividing and cause tumors that eat away at the body. And yes, I checked for those markers, and I didn’t see any. But maybe we could get the medical team involved to run some of their own tests.”
“Yes yes,” Rocky responds, more subdued. “They are experts on human biology now. Maybe more than you, the human.”
He snorts. “I don’t doubt it.” He wonders if he should ask his next question, but he just has to know. “You haven’t heard of anything the science teams might have done that could… cause this?”
Rocky makes a low, startled burble. “Absolute no! I would have heard.”
“Sorry – I figured that would be the case.”
“Could just be special,” Rocky offers.
Ryland feels his cheeks warm, but he shakes his head. “Let’s not go crazy. There’s nothing different about me.”
“Grace saved two planets. Special.”
“Yeah, along with you, you big goof,” Ryland says, but his heart overflows with warmth.
“True,” Rocky wriggles, self-satisfied. “Don’t worry. Eridian scientists will figure it out.”
Ryland isn’t so sure – not in Eridian scientific capabilities, but because of the depth of the challenge. But he feels lighter than he has in a long time.
*
Weeks go by. Then months. Despite the combined knowledge of Ryland’s molecular biology background and the Eridian science teams, everyone is at a loss.
“Maybe it is just new law of the universe,” Rocky speculates. “Something we never discovered before. Catalyst from something.”
It feels like such a cop out, but Ryland is starting to warm to that line of thinking. It drives him crazy, though, not being able to find a solid answer.
They’re back in his house after a long stint at the science center nearby. Fog drifts lightly by out his window, and he hears the muffled roll of waves against the shore. For a fleeting moment, he feels out of time, his body both here on Erid and back in San Francisco.
He takes a long breath of oxygenated atmosphere into his lungs.
“Catalyst from what? Space travel?” he says. “Back on Earth, we had a space program. A good handful of humans have been to space, and nothing like this ever happened to them.”
“How many humans travel light years?” Rocky asks.
“Well – ” He stops, completely frozen by the thought.
“How many humans orbit a different star from Sol for so long in a ship? How many humans exposed to atmosphere of planet Adrian?”
“I see your point, Rock,” Ryland says faintly.
None, is the answer. No one except him has ever experienced those very specific and unusual circumstances, so completely and utterly disparate from the normal human experience.
No one except Rocky.
A thought blooms.
He opens his mouth and then closes it again.
“What,” says Rocky.
“I…” he tries. His mouth feels dry. “Eridians live a lot longer than humans. But. There are still signs of aging, right?”
“Yes,” Rocky says slowly. “Joints crystallize. Internal system slows down and cools off. Carapace becomes brittle.”
“And… when do Eridians start to experience this?”
Rocky pauses, then gives off a slight tremor in his suit. “Grace….”
“I’m just… thinking,” Ryland says gently. “I don’t know. You and me… you’re right. No one on Earth or on Erid has ever experienced what we’ve gone through.”
“Special,” Rocky says, his tone sounding like a rueful mumble.
“Special,” Ryland confirms, now his turn to reassure. “But, look. We don’t know. All of this is new territory, even just me being here, an alien on your planet. If you want, the science team can run some tests on you too. Or we can just… see how things go.”
“Yes,” he says. “Would like to know. I will ask.”
There’s a silence where neither of them quite know what to say.
“When we returned to Erid, thought it would be ordinary again. Only help you, show you everything, do science together.” Rocky shifts leaning closer in his ball toward Ryland. “Maybe not.”
“Hm.” A very small jolt of adrenaline washes over him – from apprehension, or from anticipation, he’s not totally sure. He leans an elbow on the xenonite next to his friend. “Maybe not.”
*
A few months later, Eridian scientists can also confirm that Rocky is experiencing the same phenomenon, and neither can they explain it: he too shows no signs of the usual Eridian biological breakdown that comes with aging.
*
Two hundred and seven years after that, Adrian passes away.
*
“Want to go to Earth,” Rocky says suddenly. “If Grace does too.”
Ryland isn’t surprised. He figured this day was coming.
The Hail Mary is still in low orbit. Every now and again, Rocky and he go up for a visit, making sure the structure still looks good. Other Eridian engineers have made various upgrades over the years, especially now with their aerospace advances. They could pretty much take off tomorrow without much trouble.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about that too.”
He had grieved deeply with Rocky when his friend’s mate had passed. Ryland had considered Adrian one of his closest friends on Erid; they had been so incredibly welcoming and understanding while both Rocky and Ryland navigated what they had been through, especially in the early years. The first few weeks, Rocky had not left his side, adamant that he watch Ryland sleep. And Ryland, for his part, couldn’t find it within him to tell Rocky that he should go home with his mate. Adrian had been so patient, and oftentimes came with Rocky as a silent sentinel, watching them when exhaustion won out for both of them.
He will carry that kindness with him forever.
“Problem, though,” Ryland says. “Humans don’t reach 300 years old. Let’s just say they’d be more than a little suspicious. And then probably want to dissect me.”
Rocky hums in thought. “Send probe first. Tell them we’re coming. Demand to talk to other scientists only.”
“That’s… not a bad idea.” He purses his lips. “It’ll still freak them out a whole lot and they probably won’t believe it’s me, but probably better than showing up on their doorstep unannounced.”
They get to work.
They model the probe after the Beetles – familiarity and all that – and work with the aerospace team to get the Hail Mary fully stocked up once again. Astrophage fuel, plenty of food for both of them, the works.
Ryland doesn’t quite know how to feel, knowing he’ll be stuck on the Hail Mary without touching solid ground for another five years. It feels like it’s been a lifetime since their mission. It has been a lifetime. Multiple of them. He still quite can’t think about it head on. It’s too much for his brain to process. Probably not the healthiest way to cope. He tries not to think about that either.
One could say that enough years have passed on Erid that he’d be ready for space travel again, but there is a lingering tightness in his chest the closer their launch date gets.
He’s not the only one.
Rocky is overly meticulous and high strung, making contingencies and ordering around his fellow Eridians to put them in place.
“You sure you still wanna go, bud?” Ryland asks one evening when Rocky stops by to fill him in. There’s obviously nothing Ryland can do to help with prep, except help with input and calculations when needed. “If this is too much….”
“Not too much,” Rocky snips. “Why would it be too much?”
“Well. Last time we were in space together, we went through some pretty harrowing stuff. And then before that, you lost your crew and were alone for a long time. I’d be surprised if you weren’t feeling nervous.”
“Not nervous. Just… want to be prepared. For all scenarios.”
“Uh huh.”
“Just in case.”
“I hear ya.”
Rocky makes a disgruntled sound and stomps a foot on the ground. “You are not nervous?”
“Of course I am. But also… I think about how much we were able to accomplish with half the technology we have available to us now. I have faith in us.” He smiles, rotating a hand in a circle between the two of them.
The day comes, and they say their goodbyes. Ryland profusely thanks every single Eridian who helped build and maintain his living habitat and kept him alive. They ask him if he’ll ever return. He tells them it’s certainly a possibility.
And then they’re off.
Despite how long he’s been alive, boredom is still a thing. Fortunately, they had created a whole list of experiments to conduct, both in zero g and not. The Hail Mary had also been retrofitted with better xenonite dividers so Rocky had more room to move around in his own atmosphere instead of just simply using the xenonite suit.
When they pass the Kuiper Belt at the edge of his solar system (an absolutely insane thing to say, he is aware), they launch the Beetle (named Pete) and hope for the best. Depending on the advances made to Earth’s communication technology, he’s not totally sure when they’ll hear a response, or if they’ll even hear one at all.
The closer they get, the more time he spends peering out of the added telescope like he’s a sightseer at a national park hoping to spot prominent landmarks, since he was too busy being in a coma the last time he flew by. Pluto and Uranus are too off axis and far away to see, but Neptune – they fly by at only a 800,000km distance, and Ryland is glued to the viewer, gasping at each angle he observes. He tries to explain the visuals to Rocky the best he can.
It’s very shortly after that when they receive a hail.
Just a series of three short, morse-code-like beeps.
Hands shaking, he returns the hail.
He paces, Rocky mimicking his movements, the wait to hear more interminable.
Then, suddenly, his satellite comm comes to life.
“Dr. Ryland Grace aboard the Hail Mary, are you receiving? This is Galileo Station on Ganymede transmitting, over.”
He feels as though he might suddenly shake apart and never recover. He gasps for breath and feels his vision closing in.
“Grace?” Rocky says anxiously.
“Sorry,” he breathes out. “Sorry, I just – it’s….”
“Understand,” says Rocky.
He allows himself one more sob, scrubbing a hand down his face, and engages the comm.
“This is Dr. Ryland Grace aboard the Hail Mary,” he chokes out. “I receive you.”
*
It was a lot to contend with at first, he’ll admit.
The first real human voice outside of recorded material he’d heard in hundreds of years. That humans survived. And not only did they survive, they had a research station. On Ganymede. Around Jupiter.
His mouth hangs open when they get close enough to dock. Lights, electricity, civilization, on a moon, almost 400 million miles away from Earth.
They got lucky. The research station had spotted the Beetle headed towards Earth and intercepted it. Of course they had known what the craft purported to be – everyone knew what a Beetle looked like – but they were completely and totally blindsided by the material within.
Ryland knew that when he loaded the Beetle with data, it had to not only get their attention, but also very quickly convince them he was who he said he was, despite what the laws of nature might say.
Rocky and he had filled it with calculations, videos, recordings, anything he could think of from the original mission that might prove his claim. And a gamble he hoped would pay off.
He didn’t want to disclose the fact that Stratt had drugged him and put him on the Hail Mary against his will. Not only was that ancient history at this point, something he had not so much forgiven her for as just simply accepted, but he also guessed that knowledge had probably died with Stratt.
“I don’t know if this ever became public knowledge,” he had said to the camera. “I’m assuming not – the government probably sealed off what really happened. But nine days before the Hail Mary was supposed to launch, both science officers, Dr. Martin DuBois and Dr. Annie Shapiro, were killed in an explosion at Baikonur. The research center’s quartermaster gave them one milligram of astrophage by mistake, instead of one nanogram. I was – I went in their stead.” He had taken a deep breath and let it out.
“I know this all sounds crazy. Believe me. But I – we – are hoping to share what we’ve learned over the years with other scientifically-minded people.”
It must have worked, because here they were. A station that was only populated by researchers and other scientists.
Rocky is just as excited if not more so to be in the presence of other humans, skittering around his side of the ship and chirping to himself while tidying up. Meanwhile, Ryland could hear his heartbeat in his ears and had to sit down multiple times before he had multiple full-on panic attacks.
Ganymede had a station similar to the ISS in a low orbit around the moon, and after a bit of back and forth, Ryland explained they could easily dock after matching orbit thanks to Rocky’s xenonite tunnel builder.
And now they wait on their side of the tunnel for the hatch to open.
Metal groans as the wheel turns, and there, before them, are four humans, their eyes wide in disbelief, matching Ryland’s own expression, overwhelmed and speechless.
Everything kind of blurs together after that, for a bit.
They greet him like a long-lost friend, and when he reaches out to meet them, his fingers graze skin, and he cries a silent, unending stream of tears that float around him in zero gravity. It’s like that for a while – he loses track of time for a bit – until he has the wherewithal to introduce them to Rocky while still holding on tightly to the arm of the person on his left. He translates for them, but he thinks, maybe, the team can understand Rocky just a little bit. When he sent off the Beetles to Earth all those years ago, he attached a copy of the cobbled together audio dictionary he’d made from Rocky’s recordings. He wonders if people have studied it, their little inane conversations. He wonders if people have dissected their interactions, how an alien and a human figured out how to work together. He wonders if they understood the dichotomy of their timeline, both the boring and tedious, and the constant scrabble for survival.
Additionally, they are as fascinated by Rocky as Rocky is of them.
“Grace!” he warbles. “Tell them they are amazing scientists! Engineering on a completely different atmosphere than Earth, how! And so far away! Need to know everything!”
One of the astronauts gives a little laugh, and just that sound alone fills Ryland’s heart with such joy he laughs as well.
“We’ll see what we can find out,” he tells him. He turns to the astronauts. “He’s very excited to be here. Be prepared for nonstop questions.”
“Sounds just like a certain human after they landed on Erid,” Rocky says pointedly.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ryland replies, smiling down at his friend.
*
They make their way down to the surface of the Ganymede.
Ryland has now stepped foot on two different celestial bodies other than Earth. He thinks that’s pretty cool.
There is so, so much to discuss. They have their assurances that their presence is only known by a few handful of people at the station. Earth is not yet aware of their existence for various political reasons.
“Guess bureaucracy never changes,” Ryland jokes as they sit in a conference room. Rocky swivels his carapace behind him this way and that, probably absorbing every bit of information around the base that his echolocation can provide him.
“You are correct,” says Dr. Nadig, another biologist at the station. “Not to worry, we will contact them shortly. I’m sure you are eager to see how much your home has changed since you’ve been gone.”
As they dive in, Ryland has to sometimes take a beat to process what people are saying. He can’t quite place certain accents, and the words and cadence some people use completely throw him for a moment. Fortunately he’s able to pick up on the overall context. It makes sense – language and syntax evolve over time. It would be as if George Washington had been plucked out of the 1700s and attempted to have a conversation with people from the early 21st century. There would be some confusion from both sides, but ultimately they’d be able to understand each other.
Either that, or his brain has just been completely rewired to Eridian grammar thanks to living on Erid as long as he did.
They also produce a fancy tablet of sorts with the Eridian audio dictionary so Rocky is able to contribute to the conversation. Ryland still has to step in for a good amount of words. He mentally moves creating a full Eridian dictionary a little higher up on the to-do list.
They speak for hours. Everything from the original mission to the realization that Ryland wouldn’t be returning to Earth, to acclimating to living on Erid. And then the aging discovery. He’s not sure how much he wants to divulge, especially about Rocky, so he keeps it as high level as possible. But the researchers are absolutely fascinated in a way that feels curious and altruistic instead of predatory. They offer to run more tests, now with their advances in medical technology, but he declines, for the moment.
They catch him up too. Everything that had happened since he’d been put on that rocket and shot to Tau Ceti. As Stratt predicted, billions of lives were lost during the astrophage crisis. But billions had also been saved with the destruction of Antarctica and, of course, the Taumoeba.
There were statues. Songs. History lessons. Stories. And an explosion of technology that came from being able to harness astrophage properly, as well as eventually being able to create solid xenon, allowing for a kind of space travel they had never thought possible.
All because of them.
Face completely flushed and ears burning, Ryland doesn’t know what to think. He hadn’t ever stopped to consider that aspect of saving the stars.
Rocky, like all Eridians, has no such inhibitions. To them, good work is good work and should be praised.
“Grace, we must visit every statue!” Rocky exclaims with jazz hands. “Want to see how I look too!”
And yeah, that was something else.
Initially, when the Beetles reached Earth, everything had been kept under strict lock and key from the public, with gradual minor releases being made available to the press. But the task force handling the project wasn’t able to combat the public’s deep thirst for what exactly had happened on the mission and how it had happened. Somehow, either by intentional leak or data breach, a large amount of visuals sent on the Beetles got loose, and the realization swept the world by storm: aliens did exist, and they helped save their sun.
Eventually the conversations and revelations take their toll; Ryland feels delirious with a head full of knowledge and overwhelming emotions.
Someone leads them both to a spare dormitory, and the second his head hits the pillow, he’s nearly asleep.
“Good day?” Rocky asks, settling up nearby to take watch.
“Good day,” Ryland confirms, and then he’s asleep.
*
Whatever communication needed to happen between Galileo Station and Earth gets ironed out over the next week. They are instructed to dock with the greatly expanded ISS and from there take a shuttle down to the planet’s surface.
“You’ll meet with a representative of the GSA,” says Dr. Nadig. Ryland and he had spent the majority of their time together simply just trading off biological studies they’d both made across Erid and Ganymede. At Ryland’s confusion, Dr. Nadig clarifies. “Global Space Agency. Nearly every country helps fund and take part in astronautics now.”
Goodbyes said, they make their way back up to the Hail Mary. The hatch closes, and then it’s just the two of them again.
“Amazing humans. Amazing science. Can’t wait to see more,” Rocky says, stretching out on his side of the divider.
Ryland agrees, though he’s as anxious as he is excited. He has no idea what to expect, what it’ll all still look like, if it all looks the same way it does in his dreams.
It takes only three days from Ganymede to reach Earth.
He spends most of his time glued to the telescope, watching the planet get bigger and bigger in the viewfinder.
And when it’s close enough to visibly see out the window, he cries so hard that he falls asleep, face pressed against the glass towards home.
It is stunning. He never knew. The blues so deep and vibrant it doesn’t seem real. Thick clouds wisping across jet streams. The rich sorrel browns of deserts starkly contrasted against emerald greens. Seemingly suspended in space, a single system, fragile and interconnected.
And alive. So alive.
*
“I think what gets me the most is that it looks so different and feels so different, but sometimes it’s exactly as I remember it. You know? Like, we went for a walk in the forest near the apartment, and I got a good whiff of that sweet, earthy smell of decaying leaves, and I think I went catatonic for a full minute. Rocky had to give me a little nudge, and he hates doing that, still always worried that he’s gonna break a bone because his mass is so much greater than mine, even though I tell him I know there’s no way he’d ever be that careless. But that smell. It was like I had never left. Like I was still a kid, at my grandfather’s place in North Carolina, tromping through the woods.”
Ryland gazes across the square, watching a toddler point excitedly at a fountain while gripping her mother’s fingers tight with her other hand.
“But it’s not the same. So much has changed. I feel kinda like a fish out of water. Like I stick out. And I do, for obvious reasons, but it feels like I’ll never catch up to current times. I’ll always be stuck in the past. What’s that saying? ‘You can’t go home again’?”
He peers up at Stratt, but of course, she says nothing.
“Anyway. Rambling again. I’m… sorry I haven’t come by sooner. I thought about it. A lot. You’d think I’d be over it by now, but, um. I guess just being back here brought up some feelings.”
He taps a finger absently on the bench.
“I know you did what you had to do. I get it. Believe me, I’ve thought about it a lot. I just wish….” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I wish. If you had backed down when I said no, I know how bad it would have been. I know that. And obviously I wouldn’t have met Rocky. And lived the life that I’ve lived. I guess that’s the trade off. But I still – ”
A crisp, autumn wind blows through the nearly barren trees around him, the rustling of branches making his eyes close at the sound.
“I wish I could have been braver then. I was so scared to die. And now I….”
The bronze statue above him has dulled over time, though retained her features perfectly. The slight downturn of her lips, the small crease between her eyebrows, either in concentration or judgment, he’s not sure. She deftly holds a globe in one hand and a ring of stars in the other.
While there are a multitude of statues in honor of Yáo, Ilyukhina, Grace, and Rocky across the continents, there is only one of Stratt. Here, at the University of Amsterdam, in a quiet plaza, erected posthumously.
Despite what she did to him, it doesn’t seem fair.
“I wish you were here too. To see what you saved,” he says simply.
He spots a familiar figure ambling up the path his way and smiles.
“As long as we’re wishing, I wish you could have met him too. You guys would get along like a house on fire. He’s very serious about his science. And enjoys bossing me around.”
A squirrel runs by on Rocky’s path, making him jolt to a stop in surprise and excitement. He remains still but shifts his carapace to “see” the little creature better.
“We’ll be here a bit longer. After that, it’s back to the Hail Mary. Setting off to the stars to do a bit of exploring in our corner of the galactic neighborhood. Send the data back to the GSA and to Erid. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’m as shocked as you are that I’d get back on that ship and leave Earth again. But it just feels right. And I’ll have the best company a guy could ask for.”
“Hello Grace!” Rocky trills as he approaches.
“Hey bud. You have a good time with the engineers?”
“Yes! They show me many ways how they build on Earth. I show them how we build on Erid. They tell me about explosion welding! Use chemical explosives to weld components at high velocity. Why did you not tell me about this? Would have come to Earth sooner! Amaze!”
Ryland laughs. “I guess I would have told you about it if I knew that was even a thing.”
“I forgive. You have good conversation?”
“I think so." He meets Stratt’s gaze, her staring down onto him and nods a silent goodbye.
“Tell me more about explosion welding. Sounds dangerous,” he says. Rocky immediately launches into an exuberant and detailed explanation of the process.
They set off down the road, taking the long and winding path together.