Chapter Text
Dr. Grace sat back in his chair and sighed, looking out over his classroom. The kids were taking a quiz today. He tried to get away with giving as few as possible out, but the Eridians insisted. As it turned out, their society was highly merit-based, and at first, they hadn’t even given him a classroom of children. Instead, he was propped up in front of a panel of the smartest Eridians to explain Earth science. It reminded him of Stratt sticking him in the boardroom straight off the helicopter. He hated it.
After several negotiations, he finally got a classroom full of pebbles. And even then, Rocky eventually had to explain that these were a select group of students, ones who got perfect scores on their school entrance exams. Again, Grace kicked up a storm and protested. He wanted to teach all Eridian kids, not just a select few. Eventually, a compromise was reached. A random lottery was held for students to physically attend his class and “recordings” of his teachings would be distributed all across the planet. Additionally, he would still teach the original pebbles, just at a different time.
Since Eridian days were so long, he could essentially teach one class, have the rest of the day to himself, teach the next class the next Earth day, and then have one day of weekend. It was an excellent schedule. He was very grateful for the false day-night cycle Adrian had implemented into his little biodome. While Grace’s three days might be a bit shorter in order to match up with the Eridian schedule, it was much easier to adjust to than he thought it would be. Even though he knew it was a fake sunrise and sunset, it was far better than the fluorescent lights of the Hail Mary.
Grace sighed again as he watched Adrian patrol the levels of his classroom to make sure none of the pebbles were getting up to funny business during the quiz. Normally, Rocky would be his teaching assistant, but today, he had been called away for some important meeting. He was grateful to Adrian for stepping in, but Rocky’s absence made the classroom a little bit more dour. Grace had found Adrian to be much more quiet and reserved than their mate but no less welcoming.
His glasses slipping down his face, Grace closed his eyes. If any of his students failed three quizzes, they were kicked out of class and replaced. Not by his decision, of course. The Eridians refused to let a precious seat in their only alien teacher’s classroom be taken up by a “slacker.” No one had failed a single quiz yet. When asked how that was possible, Grace simply shrugged and complimented his students, tossing a little wink over his shoulder that would have surely been returned if the pebbles had eyes.
Just as Grace began to drift off, the familiar sound of the airlock caught his attention. Rocky tumbled into Grace’s biodome, tripping over his own limbs encased in Zenonite in his haste.
“Grace! Important news! House! Now!” he exclaimed, his musical voice an octave higher than normal.
Grace blinked twice, then looked back at his class. “Uh- well, kids, I guess Adrian will collect your quizzes once you’re done. That’s- that’s all for today.” He stood there uncertainly, torn between the pebbles and whatever urgent news his friend had.
“Hurry!” Rocky shouted back at him, jumping up and down. The pebbles began to whisper among themselves, curious as to what could be going on. Adrian shushed them and motioned for Grace to Rocky.
Snapping out of his paralysis, the teacher turned and scrambled up the beach towards his best friend in the whole universe.
Taking a moment to brace himself on the doorframe of his modest home, Grace struggled for air. Rocky was still bouncing around, anxious to share his news.
“What’s… what’s up, buddy?” Grace huffed out, closing the door behind him.
“Spaceship!” Rocky shouted, waving his arms in the air.
“Uh… yeah. We’ve got a few of those. What about ‘em?”
“No! New spaceship! Alien!” With that, Rocky ran into Grace’s office. Still confused, the teacher trailed behind him, only to find Rocky struggling to log into the computer. He was so excited that he kept hitting the wrong keys. Scootching into the seat next to Rocky, Grace brushed him away and logged into their shared user profile.
“Email! Open email!”
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone this excited about an email,” Grace chuckled, navigating through the multitude of tabs open. “Aaaand… here we go.” The most recent unread email was titled New Blip With Life Amaze Amaze Amaze. Grace’s eyes widened. “An alien ship?”
“Yes! Rocky say that already! Coming towards Erid!”
“Holy crap… how do you know it’s got life in it?”
“Scan. Now open email!”
Grace clicked on it and his jaw dropped. Enclosed was a semi-blurry picture of the new blip. It… didn’t look like a spaceship should. But then again, this was an alien vessel. He shouldn’t be expecting anything.
And yet, it looked familiar somehow. It was shaped like a pill bottle with two smaller tubes sticking out in parallel. The whole structure was tinged a reddish-brown and seemed to have debris breaking off from it. Grace squinted at it, then zoomed in.
“Look!” He pointed to a spot on the screen. Rocky pointed his sensor at it. “It’s like an S!”
A barely visible part of the hull was a snaking streak of white in contrast to the red around it. Rocky made a noise of excitement.
“We call it Blip S, question?”
“Yes! Blip S, welcome to Erid!” Grace fist-bumped Rocky triumphantly. “Hello to a new alien friend!” They both basked in the glow of possibility for a few seconds before Rocky spoke up.
“How we get Blip S to surface so Grace can see, question?”
Grace’s face fell. “Oh. That might be a problem.” He frowned. “Is it propelling itself or just floating?”
“No detectable propulsion, statement.”
“But it’s headed directly this way?”
“Yes. Blip S pointed towards Erid, moving slowly. 385,000 kilometers away.”
Grace stood up and started pacing. “Did it… come in fast and slow down? How did we not detect it sooner?”
Rocky hesitated. “...Scientists not know. Big mystery. Just appear.”
“Huh.” The teacher stared at the photo. “Thanks for getting a digital photo of it for me, Rock.”
“I insist. Mission control agree. They ask if you recognize it, question?”
Grace tilted his head, studying the ship. “Well… not really. It doesn’t look like a human spaceship… but it does look like something a human could make. Has it got any astrophage?”
Rocky made an upset noise. “No astrophage. But big radiation. And hot.”
“Hot? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Cooling. But when first found, hot.”
“Anything else noteworthy?”
“Sound like Grace heartbeat but slower. Could be life like Grace.”
Ryland Grace’s own heart jumped in his chest. He froze. Another creature with a heartbeat? What were the odds? A million possibilities rushed by him. He was going to be the first human to meet three separate alien species. Earth sent a ship after him. It’s just a machine that sounds similar. Everyone on Erid is going to get blown up. He needed to sit back down.
Rocky moved the teacher’s seat so he didn’t miss it and fall down as he staggered backwards. Grace slumped down in the chair and covered his face with hands. His head was spinning. Just as his life on Erid was beginning to settle, the universe threw him another curveball. He groaned.
“Grace okay, question?”
Grace took a deep breath in, then another. All he needed to do was focus on the next problem and cross the potential-alien-maybe-human bridge when he came to it. He sat there for a moment longer, then slapped his legs and stood up.
“Alright, Rocky, let’s figure out how to catch ourselves a Blip S.”
—
As it turned out, the solution was stupidly simple. After several failed attempts to communicate with the ship, the Eridian scientists and Grace had come up with the idea of building a bigger ship that could line itself up and catch the smaller ship in a sort of cargo hold. From there, the Eridian ship could navigate back down to the surface of Erid once Blip S was secured.
Admittedly, there were a lot of flaws. It was hard to tell how much the ship weighed, but judging from its hull composition- iron- it would be heavy. Landing was a definite risk. At first, the idea was floated to help put it in a stable orbit and then use the space elevator to investigate, but the construction of Blip S didn’t exactly lend itself to stable movement. Besides, if the potential life inside was in distress, there was no time to waste. At first, the scientists had agonized over how to replicate whatever environment was inside Blip S once it was caught without knowing the specifics beforehand. Then, Grace pointed out that it could already withstand a vacuum, so why try to match its own environment on the ride down? All they needed to do was secure it. Once on the surface, they would have access to much better testing equipment.
On Earth, this idea never would’ve worked. Grace knew how long it took humans to build and test spaceships. But the Eridians already had a ship alternative to their space elevator to take them from the surface to orbit, so all they had to do was make a bigger one. Which, for them, was shockingly easy.
Grace would never get over their ability to build. Even after seeing Rocky invent new things on the fly for years, the sheer speed at which they invented and created still astounded him. They had effectively infinite building materials in zenonite. Blip S was even smaller than the Hail Mary, and the original Eridian ship had dwarfed that. If anything, it was a surprise they didn’t already have a ship that could fit Blip S inside it.
The next few days were a whirlwind of work. Grace’s classes were cancelled as he huddled at his little office-turned-command-center with Rocky, going over blueprints, plans, and more photos of Blip S. The more he saw, the more concerned he got. For one, there was way too much debris coming off of the ship to be a good sign. Secondly, parts of the hull seemed damaged or altogether cracked. Reports showed that there was a pressure difference between the inside of the vessel and a vacuum, but the material that blocked the void of space out was… weird. The Eridians didn’t know what to make of it, and freaked out a little bit when Grace told them it looked almost organic to him. How could that be a patch strong enough to prevent a breach?
Grace fretted over everything until, the night before the launch, Adrian stomped into his house and insisted that he go to sleep.
“Grace. Sleep now.” Adrian crossed their arms, a trait no doubt picked up from Rocky, who had picked it up from Grace.
“But- but-!” Grace gestured to all of the reports scattered around him and the two extra monitors he had dug up. Eridian chatter streamed through the headphones sitting around his neck. Rocky had left to go sleep and join the actual mission control center long ago, but Grace still had not rested.
“Grace need sleep. Has been 32 human hours. I know.”
The teacher sighed. Adrian was in charge of the biodome, and by extension, Grace’s health. “Ugghhh…” He put his head in his hands.
“I will watch.”
“Fine…” Grace stood up and stumbled into his small but cozy bedroom, specially outfitted with a perch for two particular Eridians on the windowsill next to his bed. Shrugging out of his fox cardigan, he collapsed into bed, finding that he could no longer resist closing his eyes. He didn’t even bother to turn the lights out.
Adrian walked in behind him, flipping the light switch to off.
“Bad for you to sleep with lights on. Less rest,” they chided, climbing up onto the windowsill.
Grace mumbled something incoherent in response, already half-asleep. Adrian settled in to watch over the only human on Erid.