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Ryland Grace likes the stars.
Sometimes, when his parents are in bed and he’s supposed to be asleep, he’ll sit by his window and look up at the night sky and count every star he can see. He likes them a lot. They’re far away up in space and they’re always looking down at him.
He has named some of them. One is called Ryland and another is also called Ryland. There’s actually many stars up there called Ryland because he keeps forgetting where the original star he named is and this method is a lot easier.
On his birthday he gets a book about space that he reads from cover to cover in three days. At school he asks questions during his science lessons about the stars and his teachers tell him he could see them one day, if he became an astronaut.
Ryland does not want to be an astronaut. He likes looking at the sky from down here. It’s safe. He likes Earth. He does not ever want to go to space. There is nothing that could ever convince him that —
— space travel is fast and quick and really no different to being on land. It’s been several years since the ship has entered the Tau Ceti system and little progress has been made surrounding the star-eaters.
Not for a lack of trying. The leading scientists for this mission have fallen sick and it’s now a waiting game for them to recover.
It is an engineer, not a scientist, but it will keep watch while they sleep and restore their energy and get over this sickness. Meanwhile the others plan and theorise and send word back to 40 Eridani A b to keep a constant cycle of news returning back home.
A chime from further down the ship informs it that someone is heading down to take watch for the next few days, working in shifts so that things can still be done while the scientists rest. There’s some things it needs to look into, which is perfect timing.
The ship can’t move if things are broken. And it is really good at fixing things.
They have not woken yet, it will say to the other, who will chirp in response and take its place.
They will wake soon. A statement. A promise.
They will, because people are relying on them back home. It heads off down to the engineering bay to double check everything is running smoothly and as it should. Nothing unusual, nothing broken, nothing on the exterior that requires concern. Good. Everything is good and —
— he rather enjoys staying up late and watching the X-Files while his parents supervise him. Ryland heard it was about aliens and mysteries and begged his parents to let him watch just one episode. He likes aliens! He thinks they’re cool!
When he’s told that there isn’t actually an X-File department in the government, Ryland feels betrayed. But he doesn’t tell other people that. In fact, during an assignment where he needed to talk about someone inspiring, he brought up Mulder and said he wanted to prove that aliens were real one day, just like Mulder is.
Some kids in his class laughed at him but he didn't care. (He did, actually. Went home and cried and looked up at the many stars named after himself and wondered if he was being too silly with the idea of life out there.) So he keeps his head to the sky and wonders if any of the shooting stars are actually alien life forms. He should investigate that. That’s what Mulder would do, and he would prove it! One day Ryland is going to prove that aliens exist and have been looking at Earth for years and —
— the signals show that there are many stars around them. Faint dots in the flat emptiness of space. Floating in nothingness. Sometimes it wonders what else is out there. Other stars are dimming, some dying completely. How long is there left for Erid’s star? It doesn’t want to think about that now.
Surely others have found a solution? We can’t be the only ones here, it asks as news that the scientists have still yet to wake up passes around the ship. Every day that they are sleeping is a day wasted, a day that Erid’s star is being eaten, a day closer to the extinction of their kind. But they can only wait. Only sit and wait and take turns watching and sometimes, because it is getting frustrated, it doesn’t watch. It sits in the engineering bay and fixes problems that have yet to be caused.
Another gets sick and joins the resting group. It’s slowing them down.
Erid needs them. The scientists need to wake up. They need to —
— stop bugging him.
How many times can he explain to someone that their ideas are stupid and, unlike them, he wants to get good grades and get into college and study science further. Instead he’s stuck doing a group project with people who don’t care and are obviously waiting for him to take the bait and say he’ll do it himself.
But Ryland is better than that. He’s better than them. He can make it through the next two weeks without-
“And why is it our problem that the world is heating up? Surely that’s a good thing. It means our summers will be warmer,” one of his classmates says and he rests his head on the table, trying so, so hard to keep it together.
“Right? Get the people in charge to deal with this!”
“I don’t think this climate changing business is even real.”
Idiots. They’re all idiots.
The project is about hypothetical ways to help the ozone layer to heal and he is currently the only one who really understands the gravity of the situation. Everyone else has heard “warmer temperatures” and suddenly it’s a good thing.
“Maybe our project should be about why it’s actually a good thing,” one of them says and Ryland lowers his glasses and drags a hand down his face. “Y’know, sunlight is good. It makes stuff grow.”
“Yeah! More sun means more growth. Photosynthesis, right?”
“This is good, this is a good idea. Someone write this down.”
Ryland hears other groups around him actually discussing ideas that fit the brief and here he is watching his group pat each other on the back about how unique their take is. He closes his textbook that had been open on the page explaining what the ozone layer does to protect Earth loudly.
“If the ozone is destroyed, you know we will all die, right?” he finally says, interrupting them and their notetaking. “There will be no barrier to protect us from the sun’s rays. It will burn the planet. Ecosystems will collapse, it will be too hot for anything to survive, let alone grow. Every single person on the planet will be —
—dead.
They’re dead.
The sickness killed them.
It’s been too long since they woke up and the medical officer on board called it. They aren’t sleeping, they aren’t recovering.
They are dead.
The lead scientists on board to stop the star-eaters are dead and the likelihood of the others who have also fallen ill joining them is high. There’s a quiet panic that spreads through the remaining crew. What did it? What happened? What could have caused this?
It prepares a place for the bodies to rest while the others start to make plans on what to do now. Sleeping shifts are taken more seriously - at least one of each area needs to be awake. There’s only it in the engineering bay and if it goes, no one will understand how to patch up problems. So in the downtime it starts telling others to pass on knowledge just in case.
The more everyone knows, the better.
There’s no time to mourn. Erid will remember them as heroes. But now they have to act fast before someone else falls ill.
Information is shared. It’s handed out freely. They learn and understand and continue the mission as planned, just without those who have died. It’s a collaborative effort after all and the more they can learn, the more they all know, the quicker a solution will appear.
The line of star-eaters is studied closely, theories are thrown around by those who are still learning and —
— “are you certain you want to submit this?”
“Yes. Why? Do you think there could be something to improve on?” His dissertation sits between him and his dissertation advisor and there’s a look of disapproval on his face. Sure, his theory is outlandish and a pain in the ass to research but it was fun to do. It’s fun to make people think, to throw ideas out there and find information that backs it up. Unlike his high school classes where people go with their first idea even if it isn’t scientifically provable, here he’s able to push the boundaries.
“It’s…” his advisor sighs heavily and sits back in his seat, the sound of the leather creaking filling the tense silence. “It’s rather out there, Ryland.”
“And?”
“And I think that out of everyone applying for the same place you are, the board will take one look at this and throw it away.”
“It’s backed up with evidence. I spent ages citing every source and-”
“But you have to understand that if you advance in this field you will one day meet the people you’ve written about here and, er, had very strong opinions about.”
Ryland lets his gaze drift off to the degree framed and hanging on the wall of the room. Science is all about questioning others so what’s wrong when he does it? “I have two weeks until my deadline and you’re telling me to start over? Is that it?”
“Don't start over, just tighten it up a bit. Remove all your snarky comments about other academics, first of all.” He picks up the dissertation and flicks through it. “You have solid points here, Ryland. I think we can work with what you already have and make it more palatable for when the board reads it.”
“Then I’ll be submitting something I don’t believe in.”
“Sometimes you have to cut your losses in order to advance further. It will do you good in the long run. Trust me, if I had published all my thoughts and theories when I was your age I would have been thrown out of the field. It would have ruined my career before it started.” The folder is handed back to him and his advisor smiles. “See me again before you submit it, okay? I know you have it in you.”
Ryland leaves the office with a huff, his paper tucked underneath his arm as he returns back to his dorm. The poster of Mulder and Scully taped to the back of his door makes him frown. They wouldn't put up with this shit.
He submits his work two weeks later with only minor editing - spelling, grammar. If someone on the board hates it, so be it. There will be other opportunities he will find and they will be far better than what he’s studied. Maybe he’ll be the first to discover something new because of his “outlandish” ideas. Maybe some of the bigger names in the biology field need to be taken down a notch. Maybe —
— this is a mistake. It’s getting harder to focus on the task at hand when it’s on watching duty. Every moment that passes feels like years and the longer that they are still the worse the thought of them dying appears. It’s fine. No one has fallen ill since and it may have been a fluke.
When they return back to Erid it can be something to look into, to research, to test and theorise over. For now they quarantine the bodies and hope it isn’t contagious.
It checks the fuel levels over and over again. Checks for leaks within the hull. Checks for something wrong in the food. Nothing. No sign of anything that could cause this sudden sickness. It watches and rests when others are awake. It teaches and learns and discusses plans on what to do if they all die.
We return to Erid if there are only a few of us left.
Some want to. Some want to go back and readjust for this sickness there. To figure out the cause and then come back with more protection. But that will take time and more fuel and it will be a bad day to return with nothing but bodies of brave explorers.
No. It is demanding. We stay. We search. We get the cure to stop the star-eaters.
And that’s that.
The arc of the star-eaters has not disappeared, nor has it increased. Numbers are steady as the scopes are situated at the centre of the line. Good, maybe. It is unsure. Someone’s job used to be to keep an eye on the numbers to take note and ever since they fell ill it has been down to everyone else to work on it. When it doesn’t have any need down in its workshop it looks out at the line and counts. Well, it lets the scope count. Same number. Always the same number.
Plans are drawn up for the hands on the exterior of the ship to be used to collect data for them to analyse and it is sent out the moment it can. Another one falls ill when it returns. Analysis of the data is held back as the crew waits.
It’s all they can do.
Wait and wait and —
— “wait, you can’t be serious?” It’s raining. Pissing it down, actually. They’ve just left Murphy’s after a rather heated discussion (argument, really) and now Linda is looking at him like it wasn’t completely obvious where this conversation has been heading.
“Yes, Ryland. I am. I don’t think we’re a good match,” she says, stepping under an awning of some sandwich shop that’s closed down. “It’s not me, it’s you.”
“That’s not the right way around, you know.”
“I know what I said.”
The rain continues to batter down around them and Ryland stands out on the pavement, staring at Linda who is looking past him. That’s it, then. A break-up was not on his plans tonight and here he is, standing soaking wet looking at someone he assumed he would spend his life with getting dumped.
“What… What did I do?” he asks, a pathetic attempt to understand where things fell apart. He thought he was doing fine. Everything happened as it should. Or so he thought.
Linda is quiet for too long. She looks down, adjusts her bag on her shoulder nervously. “Not enough.”
“What?”
“Ryland, you treated things in this relationship like it’s something to tick off on a checklist.”
“No I don’t.” Ryland frowns. “Linda, I love you.”
“There! You did it just now, there’s no emotion behind what you’re saying!” Linda exclaims, pointing at him like there’s something broken within him. “You say it because you know it’s the right thing to do but there is nothing behind it.”
That’s not true. He knows it isn’t true. They’ve held hands and hugged and kissed and he told her he loved her first and he thought that it’s the normal way relationships progress. But here Linda stands, telling him that he is not emotional enough for her. How is he supposed to be emotionally available when he’s doing everything right? Everything has been correct and normal and-
“Ryland…” Linda steps towards him, hand outstretched in a condescending manner. “You’re great, you really are. I just need someone more grounded, you know?”
“I am grounded! I’m so grounded! Look!” He points at himself. “I can’t be more grounded than this!”
“I’m sorry, Ry.”
“Linda. Come on. What more can I do? I’ve done everything there is!”
“And that’s the issue. You aren’t here. You’re always up in the clouds or talking about your work and I love that you’re passionate but… I want you to have that same look in your eye when you talk about me.”
He blinks. That… can’t be right. He talks about her all the time in ways that matter!
Linda spots the silence and there’s a hidden agreement that she’s right within it. “I’ll pack my things up and be gone by the weekend. I know you’re going to be busy with your research.”
Ryland knows this is it. Linda looks away and sighs, shaking her head slightly at his quietness. He can’t understand this. Why now? Why here? He can’t form words, everything falling flat on his tongue as he repeats Linda’s words over and over in his head. She leaves, walking away from where his apartment is.
He is alone. Alone and quiet and —
— the workshop has a heaviness to it that it can’t place. What has changed? Nothing in the air, nothing about it, nothing too noticeable. Maybe it is in need of rest.
Its name is called followed by frantic chimes of the location it is needed at - medical bay. Everything is dropped as it runs, bashing into the chimes along the walls as if to say I’m coming! I’m here, I’m alive, please wait!
Four others are still. There is a mournful song.
The crew is down to half.
Why, why, why?
No one knows. No one knows what to do to stop it. How can they stop something that they cannot find?
At this rate we will be down the entire crew over the next few years. We must turn back to Erid.
Star-eaters are still there. They will not go anywhere. But home will go and die off and disappear. Panic sets in at full strength now. It busies itself again with work and figuring out ways to collect samples that make better sense than what the scientists had in mind. Starting all over with less crew and less information and less time. They learn, they teach, they research. It’s all they can do. They are few but they are strong, they will work this out somehow. With time they will find the reason behind the star-eaters and perhaps with all minds put together it will come quickly. There is grace in teamwork and—
— the entire science field can get fucked.
Ryland has never felt more infuriated in his life. What is the point of academic research if he can’t express his opinions on others research? They’ve published it, they should be willing to get criticism. And he thinks they are wrong.
He kicks his suitcase into the room and falls face first onto the sofa, letting out an exhausting groan into the seat. Sure, he may have said some things that he might regret later down the line but who cares? Words are words. Theories are made to be debunked. He’s allowed to believe that there is life without water because there is so much out there that is undiscovered that he has to be right.
Why is it that he can have his ideas ripped into but the moment he does it to someone else it’s suddenly “a problem” and “not professional.”
When he wakes the next morning with a headache and jetlag there’s an email on his computer with his termination due to his words spoken at the UNESCO conference.
Fine. He didn't want to be a part of this anyway. There’s better things to do, after all. Why waste his time pushing against the status quo in a field that he has spent years getting into? He’s always wanted to work in a store or a cafe or literally anywhere else that his degree won’t be put into good use! This is fine! Totally and completely fine and he is reacting normally to the long termination email in his inbox.
The science field isn’t ready for his ideas. One day they’ll come crawling back to him and tell him that they were wrong and he had good grounds for his theories. One day —
— it will find the answer. The team works hard. Too hard. They’re sick. The rest of them are sick and trying their hardest to figure things out. Someone does tests. Nothing comes up. Nothing. There is something invisible killing them one by one and so far, it has felt nothing. No symptoms, nothing like what the others are feeling. It takes notes, it makes theories, it comes up with ideas that lead to nowhere and then it is back at square one.
What can it do except wait? Wait and watch. Wait and hope.
It cycles through data. The numbers stay the same, the scope is showing that the star is still the same in terms of brightness, there is nothing physical that suggests why the star is not dimming. If only the scientists were alive. They would know. If they had not died, could they be travelling back home by now?
Whatever is killing the crew it needs to fix it. It needs to fix it fast so no one else dies. Once it fixes the problem then they can continue working as a group. A group will be faster. A group will get the job done.
It watches them sleep. Days and days pass by and it watches over them, waiting. It makes more sample collectors because they will wake up and they will need to gather samples while it fixes things. Because that is its job - to fix.
If it can’t fix the crew then what can it do? Except sit and wait and wait.
How long can it go before calling the end? It doesn’t want to. What if they wake up later? What if this is a longer healing process than normal? What if —
— the Petrova line is something to worry about?
It sounds like classic fearmongering right now, the type to divide the nation and get people scared over nothing. In a few years it will all die down until it’s a distant memory. They’ll find a way to stop it and that will be that. It’s just a small blip in the world of things that the public need to worry about. He doubts the sun will dim enough for him to see results in his lifetime. Space is known to be slow at these sorts of things. There’s plenty of time for people to live out a full life and not stress over something that’s out of their control.
Researchers are on it, most likely. They’ll know what to do. They’ll fix it, because —
— it’s job is to fix and it can’t fix this.
Not when they are gone.
Gone, because too much time has passed and it can’t keep waiting anymore.
It is alone.
One by one it takes the crew down to the quarantine bay. They will be there together, all twenty two of them.
It’s all it can do.
Alone—
— in a clinical white lab, looking down at something that he cannot quite believe exists. Alien life form. The dots that eat the stars.
Astrophage.
The sun is really dying.
In a spur of the moment decision he helps, because even if it goes against his theory that not all living forms need water to survive (and really, his little crashout at that revelation was totally deserved) the least he can do is help.
“Get to work, Dr. Grace. The world is counting —
— the days it would take to travel back to Erid. Empty handed, with a dead crew and no further information than what they started with. It paces back and forth and cries out at how unfair this is. It should be a group effort. It should know what killed the crew. It should be fixing this!
Instead all it can do is pace —
— and pace aboard Stratt’s Vat, the fresh ocean air doing wonders after being cooped up inside a lab all day. It gives Ryland time to think, to process what he’s doing without the weight of saving the world on his shoulders. No pressure. Not that he’s doing anything important, that’s the job for the astronauts.
He just needs to make sure there’s enough Astrophage for them to get there safely.
For the most part, when he has free time, it’s a waiting game. In between meetings he will sit and wait for news, for updates, for Stratt to haul him to another meeting that is important enough for him to take notes. His hand hurts from taking notes. And then he waits and waits and —
— waits for nothing to happen, because no one is coming for it because no one knows it is alone.
It scans the sky. It travels towards the star-eater and sets the ship there for a while to collect more samples. The samples are processed but it still doesn’t have a proper grasp on what it all means. If only the scientists hadn't died so early on. Maybe then things would be different. Things would be a lot different. They would have the —
— “solution.”
Stratt looks at him, silently pleading for Ryland to agree. But he can’t do it. He isn’t brave.
Grace is good at running away from things he doesn’t want to do. And this is something that is not up his alley. He never wanted to be an astronaut.
“My place is in the classroom,” Ryland says, nervously fidgeting with his hat, knee bouncing rapidly on the spot.
“Stop pretending this is about your students, it’s so insulting.”
But it is, he wants to scream. It’s about his students, his love for Earth, the need to die with everyone else here! Sure, he has no loved ones - as Stratt so kindly reminded him - but is it not enough to simply love the planet he is on?
“You just can’t talk it into me,” Ryland says through tears that he is trying so hard to not let fall. That’s that. He should go and leave and —
— wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and —
— “stay calm, please.”
The door opens. A man walks in. Ryland frowns. His thoughts are rushing in his head but nothing is sticking.
“What is this?” he asks nervously, looking at Stratt for the answers she is refusing to give him,
“If it’s any consolation, you’ll be remembered as a hero.”
A hero? No, no, no he is not —
— a hero would fix it. It is not a hero.
It taps on the chimes. No one replies.
It is alone and —
— Ryland Grace is alone.
Which is odd, considering space ships need to have a crew and he hardly feels qualified to be the captain and the pilot and the engineer and the comic relief and the scientist and everything else that makes a ship run smoothly. In fact, he feels as if he is the least qualified person to run a ship. Was there no one else? Has all of humanity died and he was the only one who missed it because he’s out here and they were down there and —
— loneliness as a concept is something so far-fetched on Erid that the thought of being lonely on the ship is one that it doesn’t want to believe in. Because it isn’t alone. The others are still here. Still. Dead.
Still dead.
Still dead and pushed up against one another so it can watch them sleep and pretend like they are watching it sleep in return. Sometimes it is scared of not waking up. Of being number twenty three in the casualty report back to Erid. If it dies then the mission fails and the star dies and Erid dies and —
— they’re dead.
Nausea bubbles inside of him and Grace takes three uneasy steps down and back and falls onto the soft floor of the dormitories and tries not to throw up. He’s alone in space, drifting closer and closer to a star that is not his and has no idea how the hell he is supposed to navigate this. Did he know these two? He must have. Crews often spend time together before a launch. There has to be some form of camaraderie otherwise it will be a rough time out in space.
Something small flits into his mind, a conversation about induced comas to lower the risk of the crew killing each other on the mission. He didn't really get it then and doesn’t now. Regardless, two people are dead. So much for that.
He pushes himself up to his feet and makes his way back to the hatch, climbing up the ladder as quickly as his body can. The bodies of his crew - he has to remember them, they have to have been friends - watch him in their still, deathless state. He likes to think they would egg him on, calling out for him to move faster.
Go, Grace, go! Climb up that ladder! Go see the ship!
Ryland Grace is good at running away. He thinks he is, anyway. A coward's choice is to flee. Run from the problems and avoid them until they either disappear completely or they come back to bite him in the ass. He is a very good coward.
So he runs. Running into the sides of the Hail Mary because he still has yet to figure out how his legs work up here. A crash and a bang and the sound —
— echoes through the ship until the noise fizzles out. There is no one else to reply to the notes, to signal back, to let it know that things are working. It does it again anyway out of habit and the same thing happens. The chimes are loud, they echo down the walkway until they fade. No reply.
Alone, alone, alone.
It doesn’t like this feeling, but what else is there for it to do? It busies itself with repairing things and triple checking the ship is on the right course and sending things outside the ship for exterior repairs. It’s good at doing that.
Soon the ship will arrive at the Tau Ceti system. Soon it will be down to it to find out what is wrong with the star at home.
It needs to figure out the problem and find a solution. So much rests on it to not let the others die for nothing and —
— is he even prepared for this?
Grace busies himself with reading, (right after his rather dramatic and rightly earned breakdown over the thought of being alone in space), and tries to figure out his place on board. Scientist, probably. It makes sense and given the weird amount of science pun t-shirts packed away in his bag, it’s the right conclusion to jump to.
Someone would have found these shirts funny. Each space morning woken up by Mary he would walk into the lab with another ridiculous shirt and they would roll their eyes and laugh. It’s slightly concerning that he’s already imagining conversations with those who are dead. How long does he have until he loses his mind? A day? Two days? A week —
— since the last recorded notes about the position of the ship. It should update it but that was never its job. For now it stays hidden down in the engineer’s deck and keeps an eye on potential problems to fix. With one Eridian on the ship there’s a lot less damage, less things to repair.
So much space for one being. It hardly seems fair that the Eridian engineers who crafted this ship to fit twenty three others will find out that there’s only been one crawling through the halls for a long while.
A chime - not from another but from the ship. Three notes played, followed by two ticks. It heads to the nearest viewpoint and angles the outer ship scopes to find what has been seen. Tau Ceti? Already? It can’t be, there’s still a while to go and —
— he is not a pilot! Not a pilot at all! Steering the ship is nothing like the flight simulator games he played a few times before and spent way too much money buying the proper controllers for it. He tries to think back to the gameplay but nothing arrives. All he knows is that he wasted money on it and it gave him nothing of use!
Zero gravity makes him feel sick. It makes him sick, actually. Has he always had such a weak stomach? Or has space worsened it? Grace finds a research paper about space and its effect on the human body to read to pass the time. Wasting time, actually. He’s still unsure on what it is he needs to do now. Tau Ceti is close. Now what? Is it a waiting game? Is it a “hope for the best” type thing? The paper gives him nothing of note and —
— there’s a lot of information about what to do once the ship arrives at Tau Ceti. Collecting samples, running data, running experiments, figuring out the cause of this star not dimming. Can it really do the job of twenty two others alone? There’s no choice. It’s either that or let Erid die.
And it has too many things it cares about on Erid to let that happen.
It has to succeed.
Another chime as it walks out of habit. There’s no response. It’s time to double and triple check the plan of action so it can get this done as quickly and accurately as it can.
It wants to go home. It wants to go home with results. To save Erid, —
— to save Earth is a mighty big task and too much responsibility. How? How is he supposed to do it alone?
There’s a lab that’s only useful in gravity with as much science equipment as he can think of. What is he supposed to do, sit in the middle of the Petrova line, catch some Astrophage and find out why this star isn’t dimming? It’s easy in theory and with three people but him? Alone?
There’s a sound coming from the outside signals of the ship. A blip is detected a little ways away. Grace frowns as it reads the sign. What is it? What is —
— out there? Is it no longer alone? The scopes zoom in and in it, it can see —
another ship.
They are not alone.