Chapter Text
“Mathematics and music, the most sharply contrasted fields of scientific activity which can be found, and yet related, supporting each other, as if to show forth the secret connection which ties together all the activities of our mind, and which leads us to surmise that the manifestations of the artist’s genius are but the unconscious expressions of a mysteriously acting rationality.”
19th century German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, Vorträgeund Reden, Bd. 1 (Braunschweig, 1884), p. 82
Grace was dozing, his laptop with seventeen windows open (all related to artificial strawberry flavor) tilting dangerously to one side of his lap, when he felt the first hum-hiss of Rocky waking up. He perked up instantly.
It was the start of Grace’s favorite song.
Rocky’s fluted voice ranged between deep bass tuba and bird-like whistles, and he constantly chirped and warbled while he worked. Grace could practically hum along to Rocky's favorite chords. He'd become so accustomed to the constant melodies that the time Rocky spent asleep felt... unnaturally quiet.
That first hum when Rocky stirred awake was the first note of a song Grace had listened to a thousand times. After nearly five years, he felt attuned to it, listened for it, his heart constantly reaching for the familiarity and comfort Rocky provided.
Grace had never been much of a music guy back on earth, finding math and science questions much more engaging and satisfying. He liked when there was something to figure out, a discovery to be made, a correct solution you could verify.
Music doesn't have a correct answer, and there was nothing to solve. You could create it, imitate it, or memorize it, and that was it. Music was background noise or a rhythm he could match; dancing was a series of steps he could repeat; karaoke was a game of choosing a song your friends liked and singing the right words at the right time. For Grace, music was just an activity that facilitated social bonding. Like sports. Like drinking. Like sex.
But now and then he'd witness when other people experienced music in a way he never had. It was like they... got lost in it. Friends, strangers, it didn’t matter. It might be a whole crowd moved to tears by an orchestra, or a single person swaying with their eyes closed at a party or a concert, but time and time again, he was mystified.
Sure, he liked music. There were familiar songs, nostalgic songs, songs that made him vaguely sad or happy, songs that helped him stay awake or made him want to move, songs that made him sleepy. They had every song in human history at his fingertips in Mary's archives, so they had listened to a lot of them over the years. They even made playlists of the ones Rocky found most interesting, or their go-to songs for karaoke when they wanted to let loose a little.
He'd never asked his friends what it felt like to them to lose themselves in music like that... but he imagined it must have felt something like this. A physical feeling wrapping around you like a blanket, feeling compelled take a deep breath to pull the vibrations in and hold them there, your heart swelling up to meet the sound and beat in time with it.
Grace sat in anticipation with a sappy grin on his face as Rocky booted up like a computer, his vents opening and closing slowly at first, getting more responsive as his body warmed up. Grace glanced at the time and then right back at Rocky.
~Hello, Grace. How long was I asleep? How far from Keid are we?~ Rocky sang slower just after waking up and Grace knew what he was going to ask, so hearing and understanding the simultaneous chords was easier than usual. They rarely used the translator anymore – it couldn’t handle any sentence layering and tended to skip words when Rocky spoke too fast.
"Good morning! You were asleep for 36,872 seconds. We're 1.24 AU from Keid." Grace tried and failed to pull the corners of his mouth back in. "I missed you."
~Yes yes yes, Grace always say this,~ Rocky sang, legs already kicking out stiffly and pulling his body towards his ball. The primary chords had a long-suffering tone to them, but a second voice warbled an affectionate hum underneath. Grace had learned to identify it from a specific resonance he could feel in his sternum.
"Cause it's always true."
~Rocky no miss Grace.~ He insisted, popping himself into the dodecahedron and closing the airlock door behind him.
"Only because you were unconscious."
~Picky picky picky.~ Rocky sighed and disengaged the ball, rolling it directly into Grace's outstretched arms. Grace wrapped around the ball and squeezed as hard as he could. It was slightly too hot for comfort on bare skin, but his sweater insulated his arms and torso as it radiated warmth into his achy bones.
He felt Rocky's carapace bonk into the xenonite face closest to his chest and he laughed, dropping his forehead to tap the top face briefly. "Rocky loves Grace, statement."
~Who told you that, question?~
"You did, yesterday."
~Was hungry and sleepy. Not in right mind,~ Rocky insisted, but his affection got louder. The direct contact of the tone rattled Grace's entire rib cage. Muscles all over his body relaxed for the first time in what felt like a week, and his fatigue suddenly caught up to him as everything loosened. He leaned his head on his arms and hummed, content.
~Ready to sleep, question? Rocky watch. Grace reserve energy.~ Rocky chirped, a warble of concern in his tone.
"Yeah, Rock, soon soon soon. I need to show you something first."
"So, what do you think?"
~Grace is correct, this object was not part of this system when Eridian Space Team departed on the Blip A.~
"Any chance they missed it?"
~No. Eridian navigators made very detailed map of the system before departing. An orbital body of this size and signature would have been noticed and recorded.~ Rocky mused, using his crystal to read a dedicated cockpit screen about the Hail Mary’s current status, heading, speed, fuel reserves, and whatever else he liked knowing for his calculations.
Rocky may not have been a navigator when they started their mission, but he had learned a lot from trial and error while flying the ship around Tau Ceti by himself. He was pretty good at local astronomical calculations, if only out of necessity. He’d asked for Grace's help for the interstellar calculations only because he wasn't sure how to account for time dilation and relativity.
Long story short, Rocky insisted that Grace take a nap while he crunched the numbers.
When Grace woke up a couple hours later, Rocky was done and had prepared a small puppet show to help explain. He started by going into more detail about where the object had come from.
Rocky determined it was pretty new – based on its current position and speed, it had been in the system for less than a year. A tiny speck of space debris floating through interstellar space minding its own business when the Keid star system whirled by like a frisbee at 1/10th the speed of light. The relatively small speck passed close enough to the star to get yanked on by its gravity, changing its speed and trajectory.
Instead of being left behind, the star was towing it along, pulling it into orbit. A riptide pulling a swimmer out to sea.
Grace briefly pictured a leaf getting snagged by wind and following a car on a highway, but that wasn’t quite the same. He wondered what might make for a better demonstration. Balls on a flat sheet? … Nah, too much friction and too imprecise. Magnets? Rubber bands?
Oh geez, Rocky’s still talking – pay attention, Grace.
The object wasn’t moving very fast in comparison to the star, but the trajectory was the main problem. It was too shallow to create a stable orbit. The object would cross multiple other orbital paths on the way back towards Keid, wobble around the star erratically, then–
~… fall into star and be destroyed.~
Grace hummed. "Why does your tone make that sound like a problem?"
~May impact one of the planets in the system and cause damage on the way.~
Oh, yikes. Imagine averting an astrophage-induced apocalypse just in time for a new one by meteorite strike. That kind of thing could cause a very dramatic extinction event – just ask the dinosaurs.
"Were you able to calculate its trajectory and find out for sure?"
~Rocky is not good enough navigator,~ He honked in frustration. ~Not enough data, too many variables. Instead calculated how long it would take to divert and investigate. More information about object, more accurate calculations.~
"Wha– oh you want us to tweak our flight path to take a look?"
~Is best option to prevent problem later, and delay is minimal.~
Grace made a face. He didn't like the idea of any delay. They only had a little bit of wiggle room until Threeworld arrived at the rendezvous zone. "Can we phone home yet? Have them send somebody out to investigate it?" Grace asked, already knowing the answer.
~Star blocks radio waves to Erid. Cannot communicate with Erid until we reach the other side. Grace already know this.~
He did know. That was the biggest downside to approaching the system with Erid on the opposite side of the star: No ability to contact the mothership and let them know they were on the way.
A while ago, they prepared some emergency probes with information, instructions, and small colonies of Taumoeba, based on the beetles Grace sent to earth. They could be launched manually, but they were also rigged to launch automatically if there was any kind of systems failure. Hull breach. Breaking apart in the atmosphere above Threeworld. Dead or dying crew. Etc.
They were both hoping that wouldn't be necessary. It was just one of many contingency plans that they had developed together. After multiple years of "what ifs" and the constant weight of the fate of an entire planet on their shoulders, they were both mildly obsessive over-thinkers. Surely that would have no long-term impacts on either of th–
~Grace,~ Rocky said, interrupting the train of thought. When Grace refocused on him, Rocky chirred and described his calculations and the results. The object would slowly pick up speed and might get to Erid before they could warn them. If the trajectory was bad and they weren’t looking out for it… well.
It would also be a lot easier to deal with now while it was still moving slowly – depending what it was made of, they could chop the asteroid up into smaller pieces that would burn up or cause minimal damage, or push it into a more stable orbit to avoid the risk altogether.
Rocky was right, as usual. They needed more information. Modifying their flight plan now really was their best option.
Grace sighed and gave in.
"Soooo, if we do a minor course adjustment and cut the engines a day early, that gives us at least three days to investigate." Grace summarized. "If we don't like the trajectory calculations, we chop it up or push it away before heading to Threeworld."
~Three days is not what I said,~ Rocky honked, ~Would need to match object's speed and trajectory for λℓℓ hours before–" Rocky paused. "Ohhhhh. Is Grace 'playing safe' by purposefully reducing investigation time, question?~
Grace grinned, "You got me. I really don't want to risk missing our bus."
~Have told Grace, Threeworld is planet, not 'bus'.~ Rocky grumbled. ~Human 'margin of error' annoying. Do math. Get number. Not good enough, make up new number to ‘play safe’. Confusing. Why do math at all, question?~
Grace laughed and leaned forward from the pilot seat towards the nearest screen, "You're just mad because it works. When should I schedule the course adjustment to happen?"
Rocky squawked something about dumb squishy human brains and their so-called 'intuition' before answering, which is how Grace knew he was right. He punched in the course adjustment for Mary to execute in a few hours, then instructed her to remove about a day (22 hours, 28 minutes, 46 seconds) from the count-down clock for engine cutoff.
“Check me.”
Rocky inspected his tablet closely to make sure Mary's new schedule matched his calculations.
~Is good. Will match speed within Grace Mary visual range in ∀ℓ hours. No miss, no collision.~
“And then the countdown starts for departure to Threeworld?”
~Yes. Set you alarms to alert imprecise human brain.~ Rocky chortled like a clarinet. Grace let out a big sigh, but did as he was told.
When he was a teacher, his summer schedule was a lot more flexible and it didn’t take Grace long to get used to sleeping in. Each new school year, he set 3-4 alarms during the first week to make sure he didn't oversleep until he got used to getting up before dawn again.
This was a lot like that – just in case he lost track of time while they investigated, Mary would remind him when it was time to go. Although he did double check that none of them were set for the middle of the night cycle. He only had to scare himself out of a dead sleep twice before he learned that trick.
He sighed and pushed out of the pilot chair. "Done. Come on, Rocky. We'll worry about prep tomorrow. I’ll finish up in the lab while you pick a movie."
Grace wanted to finish up Tank 8 and eat the last of the excess Taumoeba. He optimistically hoped it would give his stomach something to chew on so that when food inevitably showed up on-screen, he wouldn't be completely distracted thinking about snacks the rest of the ni–.
Grace’s stomach grumbled immediately at the thought. He grimaced and tightened his grip on the top rung of the ladder.
~Rocky already choose entertainment for 'movie night'.~
"Yeah? What are we watching, then?" Grace asked as he started down towards the lab.
~Human thinking machine says was very popular with humans, but controversial, caused much competition and discussion. Is called Twilight.~
Grace laughed and groaned in equal measure, knocking his head on the ladder lightly as Rocky launched into a detailed explanation of the definition of the word and what he'd learned about earth's day and night cycle as a result. Grace supposed there were worse movies Rocky could have picked. Not many, but they did exist. He'd already vetoed a couple of them.
At least this one would be kind of funny. Interacting with Rocky was usually more entertaining than the movie, anyway.
He and Rocky spent all of the next day cleaning up the ship and stowing and strapping everything down. Or at least Grace did. Most of Rocky’s things were attached by default, so he mostly spent the time rolling around in whatever room Grace was working in, exclaiming how cluttered and dirty everything was.
It wasn’t even that bad. Anything he left on the floor had the potential to be crushed by his bowling ball of a roommate, so he’d gotten in the habit of keeping fragile objects on table surfaces or putting them away. The floor mostly held blankets, clothes, and other soft stuff.
He washed his quilt by hand early in the day and hung it up to dry. It just didn’t feel right to blast something handmade with industrial-grade disinfectant or microwaves or whatever the Hail Mary was doing to his clothes in the decontamination compartment next to the shower where he shoved the rest of the laundry for Mary to work on. It was a lot of work to get everything cleaned up and Rocky forced him to take a few breaks, but being worn out meant that Grace actually managed to get a good night's sleep. Which for him meant the stomach cramps only woke him up three times.
Now he was wearing a clean Nasa jumpsuit, strapping into the pilot seat and eagerly eyeing the engine cutoff countdown. Yeah, they had been slowing down for the whole second half of the trip, but this was like actually getting off the highway. It made it feel real.
Rocky was just a few months away from Erid.
They were almost home.
He allowed himself to get a little excited about it.
~Almost time go!~ Rocky exclaimed. He was excited too.
Grace grinned at him and laughed. "Operation Go Home in full effect. First stop on the Keid system tour is the Unidentified Foreign Object formally known as ‘Prince’. All clear for landing, roger roger?"
~Who is Roger, question?~
"Never mind, don't worry about it. I'm being silly."
~Grace always silly.~ Rocky said fondly, settling into the copilot chair he’d installed in his little bubble in the cockpit. It even had a flexible xenonite harness on it that crossed over his carapace in an X.
Grace thought back to the first time he arrived in a new star system, when he had no idea what was going on and had only just remembered his own name. He didn't even realize how far away from home he was. He definitely felt more prepared for it this time, but he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with zero gravity again.
Approaching 40 Eridani A orbit. Prepare for engine cutoff.
Fourteen, thirteen...
Just like the first time, Mary counted down until she reached zero. A background hum that had been there for almost four years abruptly disappeared, leaving Grace's ears ringing softly with the absence. The ship wasn’t spinning or moving in any new directions, but it felt like the ship tilted around him as the deceleration stopped and gravity went away - he was very glad to be strapped in this time around.
Grace squeezed his eyes closed as his stomach twisted around his Taumoeba slurry unpleasantly. He clamped his jaw shut and willed himself not to throw up. After a few moments, his brain settled back in his skull and the lopsided feeling faded.
You are now orbiting 40 Eridani A.
Wow. Wow wow wow.
The surge of emotions surprised Grace. He had a lot of them. Relief was at the top of the list, but there were some other ones in there that he decided to leave unpacked for now. He called for a status check, and Rocky rattled off a bunch of numbers, math, and current speed and trajectory. It all matched what they had calculated earlier, so that was good.
Grace turned his head to the window while he listened, eyes automatically locking onto Eridani B and C. He’d decided to call the red one Kirk and the white one Spock.
They had switched places and the pair were further left of center since the last time he’d looked at them.
Blip A detected.
Grace checked the screen. Nothing was wrong, Mary was just re-alerting to the same object. The ping was much closer, almost at the center of the radar. Since they had entered orbit backwards, it was technically on their starboard side. They'd need to flip the ship to get a visual.
Grace wasn't a pilot, but he was the closest thing they had right now. He tested the rigs or simulators to approve their use for the actual astronaut training, but usually bailed as soon as he started to feel motion sick. His hands-on experience had been pretty limited due to his... discomfort with G-forces.
Since then, his only real practice had been piloting the Hail Mary around the Tau Ceti system... and the close call in Adrian's upper atmosphere. Over time and with Rocky's help, he'd gotten more comfortable with the controls.
Too bad it had been multiple years since he'd needed to actually touch them.
Like riding a bike, right?
He hovered his finger over a switch on the left-hand panel, hesitating and tilting his head until Rocky sang an affirmative note. Grace flicked the switch, took the control stick in his hand (and a deep breath), then tapped the stick to the right before he could overthink it.
His body yanked in the harness, inertia trying to keep him where he’d been as the ship moved around him. Kirk and Spock spun away along with the rest of the stars that had been visible in the window.
He quickly tapped it back to the left to stop their spin, aiming for 180 degrees. Once his head stopped spinning in turn, he checked their position. A little bit too much. He tapped it very gently back to the left, then right to stop the momentum, until he was roughly in the right place and, most importantly, not spinning anymore.
He glanced to his left briefly, then looked again and squinted, pulling his glasses down around his neck.
What?
Grace unbuckled and shook himself free from the harness so he could float closer to the window, transfixed and speechless.
Rocky hummed, ~What Grace perceive, question?~ He tapped twice, curious to know why Grace reacted this way.
That was a very good question, and Grace didn’t know how to answer. He couldn't see a lot of detail, since the object was still pretty far from the ship and Keid was a glaringly bright light behind it. It should look like a rock, right? Most asteroids look like rocks.
This thing looked like a tin can. Or an oil drum.
"...I honestly have no idea. It definitely doesn't look like a normal asteroid."
~Grace describe for Rocky?~ He grabbed onto the handholds inside his xenonite bubble and unbuckled from his copilot chair, bobbing nervously. He didn't like being in the dark, so to speak.
“Hold on. I need a better view.”
Grace turned away from the window and grabbed onto the nearest monitor, tapping through the menu quickly to access the Petrova scope – it could zoom in and see a lot more detail with a lot less light, even in normal camera mode.
He put his glasses back on and leaned in, not believing his own eyes.
The portion of the Hail Mary they lived in was basically equivalent to a luxury RV. It could be hard to tell in space where there's no sense of scale, but this object felt even smaller than that. And while the Hail Mary was much bigger for the purpose of carrying the huge tanks of fuel for the giant spin drive... This thing had no fuel tanks. No engine.
No movement besides the way it slowly rotated in place. He flicked it over to the Petrova view, and it was black. No light. No big deal, he thought. It's just a mysterious unnatural something floating aimlessly through space. Foreboding, dark, and apparently dead in the water.
"O-okay – metal cylinder, maybe 6-7 meters long, with…. bits poking out and some large round skids on one side. There’s a… rough organic texture covering a lot of the surface, but there’s no visible airlock, engines, fuel tanks, or anything related to space faring as far as I can tell. I'm really hoping this is something the Eridians made after you left, because I—" Grace cut himself off with a sharp intake of breath.
Something on the side of the cylinder became visible in the light of the star.
SM-13
This definitely wasn't Eridian.
"Rocky, you are going to think I have space madness."
They quickly decide that since it appears to be human in origin (or at least resembles a manmade object) they need to go in for a closer look. All of their previous assumptions are out the airlock. This is not a “cut it up and let it go” scenario anymore.
Grace was now very glad that Rocky made him do all those space walks before they left the Blip A to transplant his remote-controlled robot arms. The process had required multiple 4-hour sessions and many untranslated expletives from Rocky, but eventually Grace got all the tracks installed and the robots working to Rocky's satisfaction.
It took a lot of time and diminished his already low food supplies, but he hadn’t been completely convinced he was going to survive after reaching Erid anyway. Even with Rocky's suggestion to eat the Taumoeba, he hadn't really wrapped his brain around the idea that he might actually survive.
They were down to just one functional ship for a journey of 3-4 years, and it was important to Grace that Rocky have every possible tool available... just in case something happened to him.
And now it was coming in handy, because these are the same robot arms that built the airlock tunnel between their ships all those years ago. They started a short xenonite tunnel extending from the human airlock and Rocky coached Grace as he carefully pulled up to the side of this thing, once again challenging his limited piloting abilities.
The way he piloted drove Rocky nuts, but he would rather make a dozen tiny adjustments than miscalculate one bigger movement. The last thing they needed was a fender bender in the middle of space.
Once they got the Hail Mary in a good position, Rocky reached out his robot and touched the side of the vessel with a friction tip to cancel out its rotation, then began printing a xenonite glue gasket so the tunnel could seal onto the vessel.
And it was definitely a vessel. Up close, Grace decided it looked like a cross between a subterranean digger, a submarine, and a space shuttle. The cylinder shape was not aerodynamic at all and it was hard to tell if it was built to withstand pressure from the outside, inside, or both. Maybe neither.
Every form of propulsion it had was useless in space, from the propeller on the end to the drill edges on the big round skids – maybe it was intended to trundle on the bottom of the ocean?
He made a mental note to look through Hail Mary's archive later to see if there was ever anything like this built on earth. Finding something similar in the archive might give them a clue about when and how something apparently human-made ended up almost 15 light-years away from earth.
Oh yeah, time to get hung up on that again. How the heck did a big metal ship get into space in the first place? The propeller alone was huge. There's no way any self-respecting space program would send something up with all that extra weight on the outside. Was it some sort of time capsule from the cold war? The space race? Some early satellite or piece of machinery that accidentally escaped earth's orbit and just... kept going? Was it a bomb?
And why was it covered in what looked like tree roots?
Grace started to feel a little hysterical. Giddy and light-headed, he hummed nervously and fiddled with one of the tubes on the undersuit as he floated through the cockpit.
For years, his number one and two priorities were to get Rocky home safe and keep himself alive. That already felt like a lot, given their situation. Now he was presented with a baffling mystery that introduced so many unknowns and potential dangers. It was stressful, but it was also incredibly interesting.
It had been so long since he he’d had something to investigate. He wanted to pick it all apart and figure out a reasonable explanation for all the things that didn't make sense.
He wanted to science the heck out of this thing.
Grace awkwardly pulled his body through the inner airlock door. He grabbed at the EV suit and shoving his legs into it, curling his feet up into the magnetized boots to hold him there while he pulled on the rest of it. Gearing up with the EV suit would limit his exposure to any bio-hazards – the closed systems of both the suit and the airlock could isolate any possible contaminants from the rest of the ship. He also stuck a med kit to the side of the airlock, just in case. Wouldn’t want to break the quarantine to get back down to the nurse bot if something happens.
As soon as the xenonite tunnel sealed onto the vessel, Rocky chirped at Grace and skittered away through the tunnel. After a minute or so, he rolled up the ladder using his magnets to go with Grace into the airlock. In zero gravity his hearing in the ball wasn't great, but he could at least get a sense of the vessel's shape and structure.
Rocky attached every magnet he had and let out one low, resonate click, his body stock still as he listened carefully to the echoes.
Rocky relays the information to Grace, confirming the vessel is mostly iron (which is what Grace said it looked like). He also reports that it is hollow and he can hear an unidentified liquid sloshing around in there.
There are also a couple of breaches in the iron hull that are sealed with a material that Rocky doesn't recognize. He describes it as having a very different density and low resonance.
"I think it's wood." Grace tells him.
~Wood. I recognize that word. Firm sugar polymer from tree plants, correct?~
"Yeah. I'll have to get a sample to confirm, but that's what it looks like."
~You stated wood is used for earth dwellings and old earth vessels, not space vessels. What is wood doing in space?~
Grace had been wondering that too. Maybe the capsule originally had plants or saplings in it, testing what could survive in orbit around the earth or out in space?
Okay, the endless theorizing was starting to get annoying. He needed to actually open it up and find out.
"I'm as confused as you are. Let's check it out."
As soon as Grace is fully suited up and has all his tools on his belt, he reaches out to the control panel to cycle the airlock. The door behind them swooshes closed. He overrides the depressurization sequence and enters the command to open the exterior door.
He floats out into the xenonite tunnel and approaches the foreign hull. They specifically picked a section of clean metal to ensure the best seal possible. He pulls the handheld chemical analyzer off of his belt and points it at the metal hull of the ship. It reports 26Fe just as expected.
Rocky is now much closer to the vessel and can get a better sense of the atmosphere and pressure inside. He starts rocking back and forth excitedly. Despite there being no visible life support system, it is apparently full of oxygen and carbon dioxide at a slightly higher pressure than the ship. Grace gives Mary a verbal command to pump more oxygen into the airlock to match.
"Vessel full of oxygen like Grace atmosphere and you say maybe human vessel. Suitable for human or other earth life, question?”
Grace avoids agreeing or disagreeing, just whistles a low note that’s simultaneously impressed and doubtful. He’s picturing the Russian space program in like, the 1950s. They were only just starting to send animals in to space at the time and they didn’t have the technology to put people into comas or cryostasis, so he’s not expecting much.
Grace thought again about the cold war. Nuclear energy.
He takes the Geiger counter off his belt with his other hand, and... oh. That’s not great. A little bit of radioactivity is to be expected and Rocky has astrophage in his portable life support system, but… the Geiger counter is beeping a bit too frequently for comfort.
Grace manages to convince Rocky to stay in the ship and close the exterior door between them. There wasn't much Rocky could do from the hamster ball anyway other than boss Grace around, which he can do from inside using the helmet's radio. Rocky takes him up on that and provides running commentary for the entire half an hour it takes to cut through the iron hull.
Grace misses him anyway.
When he thinks he's done cutting, Grace presses on the hull section with his gloved hand. It doesn't budge. He revisits a few spots along the cut, trying to find where it was still attached. On the third push, the section of hull finally gives and falls inwards with a loud, wet shlorp. Grace freezes.
What?
Grace cranes his head tentatively towards the opening and slowly scans the interior with his helmet light.
It was a horrible, gory, bizarre sight to behold.
Coagulated clumps of what appeared to be live flesh and blood clung to every surface in the low gravity. On top of that, the whole mess was interwoven with pale twisting veins that looked a lot like tree roots.
Rocky was right. Again. Despite all probability, the whole sub was filled with life. And it made Grace feel sick to his stomach.
His theories all abandon him. Grace can’t even begin to guess what might have led to… this.
This was impossible.
It's horrifying, but he has to get inside and look around. There must be an explanation. He tells Rocky to listen closely and be on alert for any changes.
He tucks himself through the gap carefully. It’s dark on the inside, but so was the xenonite tube he just passed through. He pushes his body down until the magnets on the soles of his boots give him tenuous purchase on the metal grate below. He assumes it’s the floor, but it’s hard to tell when everything is covered in a thick layer of viscera.
He is really trying not to think about it.
The fact that it looks so unappealing is probably a good thing. If he found something in here that reminded him of raw steak instead of goopy veins and blood, he might legitimately start drooling.
Despite his surroundings, his brain conjures the smell and sound of a steak sizzling on a grill and his stomach clenches painfully at the thought.
He’s glad that he can’t smell anything through the EV suit.
There’s something catching the light that’s partially floating in the middle of the vessel, attached to a pipe on the left by a gnarly mass of vibrant red tissue. It has a bandage or cloth around it about halfway up and looks… vaguely familiar. There was something white-pink protruding slightly from the floating end, too.
Wait, is that —
Grace wretches suddenly and doubles over, his empty stomach twisting painfully. Nothing comes out, but stomach acid crawls up his esophagus anyway, stinging his throat and sinuses. He coughs into the neck of the helmet, eyes clenched.
~Grace okay, question???~
Rocky's voice comes through somewhat tinny and flat, like a distant radio station that exclusively broadcast pipe organ music. The iron must be creating a partial Faraday cage. Grace grunts an affirmative and breathes out roughly as Rocky keeps chattering in a worried tone. Grace focuses on his voice and lets the wave of nausea shudder through him.
When Grace feels well enough to open his eyes again, he deliberately does not look back at the disembodied arm.
Instead, he points his helmet light towards the front of the vehicle, following the roots that weave between the pipes along the wall as they became thicker and darker, more bark than blood, which is almost a relief. There is a rudimentary control panel in front of him, but it doesn’t look functional with all the thick roots spilling over it.
The roots lead up into a solid, gnarled trunk, and here the bark is so black that it’s barely visible in the light of his helmet. He keeps following it up, searching for any hint that might unravel this mystery even a little bit.
The bright white light catches on inky black hair and illuminates the right side of a pale, peaceful face.
That was a human.
That was a human person.
"What the fuck—"