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Dr. Robert Redell did not have enough guts to complain directly to the woman who had gotten him out of prison (although, strictly semantically, the Vat wasn’t that far off from a prison of its own). He’d definitely bitch about her decisions to everyone else though.
“She just had to get him a piano,” he grumbled to Hatch as they played cards. Money was pretty useless here in the middle of whatever Ocean they happened to be floating in that day, but a gambling addict is a gambling addict and so Mars bars more or less gave him at least some of the dopamine hit he’d been missing. It was definitely safer than prison rec yard gambling, for better or worse (the adrenaline and risk of being shivved was part of the rush, but it was definitely more productive not to have the constant thrill-rush-terror of not being able to fill his end of whatever deal he’d decided to make over a hand that turned out to be shitty).
“It makes him happy; what’s the harm?” asked Steve as he laid down a royal flush. Bob cursed, his mood turning from bad to worse as he realized he’d just lost the last of his weekly sugar ration (Dr. Grace got unlimited candy, but he was not Dr. Grace).
“It’s annoying,” Bob protested.
“Only because you won’t get your head out of your ass and make requests. I’ve got a walking Beatles cover band who also has all kinds of cool blueprints for alien machinery. It’s not Dr. Grace’s fault that you’re too small minded to look at the bright side of things or try to enjoy yourself a little.”
“Hey guys,” the man himself entered the room, his modified electric organ slung over his shoulders. “What are we talking about?” He punctuated the question with a D-sharp, which was the Eridian question particle.
“Bob’s complete lack of whimsy,” Steve answered easily, as he munched on his winnings.
Grace’s laugh was musical and immediate. He pressed a button on the keyboard and a recorded bdumm-tsss came through the speakers.
“Is that a word in Eridian?” Steve asked.
“Nah, it’s just fun,” Grace replied, before pressing base-C to indicate a statement.
“We’re trying to stop the sun from dying; it’s not supposed to be fun,” Bob complained.
“You’re literally gambling right now Bob,” Dr. Grace pointed out with an eyebrow raise. Another middle C, plus a turn of a different knob along with a chord from the left hand that Steve didn’t recognize but felt pretty secure in guessing was supposed to add a current of sarcastic disapproval to the words.
“You’re pretty handy with that thing,” he complimented the man.
“Well, I’ve been using one for the past two decades.” Grace shrugged. “At least when I was sitting down. I couldn’t exactly carry it around in 2G and use my cane at the same time, and even if I could have carried it, it wouldn’t have been balanced well since all the keys and knobs on the left side had to be bigger and way more touch-sensitive to compensate for my bum hand. I really like this one though; Stratt did a great job!” He finished brightly.
“Oh, is that captain’s voice?” Ilyukhina asked, poking her head into the room.
“Don’t you both have anything better to do before we launch you into space?” Bob asked, groaning. “Like a meeting or something?”
“No more meetings until I,Iλ++V today,” Dr. Grace said in (mostly) English over the sounds of his keys, finishing with another tap of the middle C. “Now it’s ‘make fun of Bob time’.”
“I thought was always make fun of Bob time, D sharp?” Ilyukhina teased.
“It is not, and you can’t just say D sharp,” Bob protested.
The Russian shrugged. “I don’t have keyboard, but I want to learn Eridiansky… I do my best with current resources!”
“That can get you surprisingly far, in life,” Grace agreed, high-fiving her. “Like, all the way to Tau Ceti far.”
Only he and Steve laughed for real. Ilyukhina’s laugh was out of pity. Bob did not laugh at all.
________
It had been a long, tense day of diplomatic discussions. Paving the Sahara was always going to have consequences, and it did the first time around as well, but Grace didn’t remember it being this difficult to talk the surrounding countries out of resource wars. Then again, he’d been quite busy with his breeding lab the first time around, trying to work with Bob (ugh, Bob) on improving production times, so he wasn’t in as many meetings during those few months due to that.
“How come you never make Bob sit in on these meetings?” Ryland groaned, rubbing his hands over his face and feeling off-kilter without his keyboard under his fingers.
“Because Bob is about as diplomatic as a hand grenade,” Stratt replied.
“Okay, new question- how come I have to sit in on these meetings?” he whined.
“Because you taught middle schoolers- of two different species- for decades. You’re good at managing tempers,” Stratt replied, not at all remorseful.
“Middle schoolers are better at sharing and compromising than the leaders on that zoom call were,” Grace protested. “You know, resources on Erid are communal. I really don’t understand you humans and your whole ‘look after number one’ thing.”
“Us humans?” Lokken raised an eyebrow. Grace met her face with a look of confusion.
“What?” he asked her.
Stratt silenced Lokken with a look. “Nothing, Dr. Grace. Absolutely nothing. Dr. Lokken, don’t you have some things to spin around very quickly?” she prompted significantly. “So unless you have centrifuge-related questions for Dr. Grace, I suggest you get to it.”
“I don’t need his help,” the other woman protested, and Stratt resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It almost got boring, how predictably a scientist could be redirected by a simple poke to the ego.
At least Dr. Grace was interesting, for all that he was strange. He certainly couldn’t be as easily manipulated as the others. His ego had always been a much smaller variable than was typical when dealing with people (especially men) in STEM. Sure, he definitely wanted to prove his theory when she first went to him all those months ago (or all those decades ago, depending on perspective). But the allure of being able to say ‘I told you so’ to the people who had essentially blacklisted him from his field still wasn’t enough to get him involved; he had to be essentially kidnapped into examining the astrophage the first time, and he had only stayed on after that for his students.
Why he couldn't be led around by his ego like a dog on a leash, she could only speculate towards. Perhaps it’s because teaching middle schoolers (some of the most ruthless and blunt members of society) had desensitized him to being insulted.
Whatever the reason, it meant that getting him to do what she wanted wasn’t as simple as asking “but don’t you want to prove them all wrong?” or hinting that doing something would be an excellent way to showcase their intelligence in front of their academic peers. Getting him to come to meetings and tag along for ‘bureaucratic nonsense’, as he called it, often involved a mixture of bribes (usually candy-based), threats (of making him sleep more or wear proper shirts to work), and a reminder that she, at his request, was launching him into space, so he owed her. Plenty of qualified people would do absolutely anything to be the second-in-command of the most powerful person on Earth, and yet the one she’d chosen (almost by accident) had to be cajoled into it with Skittles.
_________
“Where is my first officer?” Eva sighed, heading to his usual table in the mess. The rest of his usual gang were there, but the two seats he and his Eridian organ usually took up were empty.
“He grabbed a breakfast sandwich and then ran off mumbling something about an enzyme,” Ilyukhina replied, mouth full of brown bread.
“Dare I ask for more details?” she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
“I would imagine that the answer to that question depends on how brave you are feeling today,” was Yao’s sedate reply to her rhetorical question as he inhaled the aroma of his tea. “He seemed very excited about it.”
“Guys, guys!” The man himself suddenly came careening back through the door holding a small sheet of metal in his hands. He didn’t have his keyboard around his neck like usual, and his shoes were untied. “Carl and I made another baby!”
“He made the baby; I was just there,” Carl remarked, following at a more sedate pace.
“No, it was your sandwich wrapper that gave me the idea!” Grace exclaimed, his glasses slipping down his nose.
“What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck,” Shapiro blurted out. She and Martin had been unable to engage in sexual congress for the past 48 hours due to their schedules, and she had not had enough coffee for whatever this was.
“Okay, so you know how I said we couldn’t synthesize xenonite without an enzyme that is native to Erid?” Grace said, still waving his little square of metal around.
“Were you incorrect in that assumption?” Martin asked.
“Oh no, still totally impossible,” Grace waved off his question. “But when Carl was unwrapping the foil for his breakfast, it occurred to me that we could, theoretically, synthesize a similar enzyme by modifying a protease found in the mitochondria of astrophage. It won’t make xenonite, but it does allow xenon gas to bond to aluminum to create an alloy!”
“So you’ve created a new metal?” Stratt asked, to clarify.
“Yep,” Dr. Grace declared proudly. “You can’t melt it with astrophage either- I tried. Hit this baby,” he motioned to the square “with a picogram of the stuff and absolutely nothing happened. Also, my working theory is that it’s much more radiation-resistant than regular xenon due to the astrophageal source of the enzyme.”
“Could we make a spaceship out of it?” Steve asked, leaning forward eagerly.
“Abso-fluffin-lutely, we can make a spaceship out of it! Heck, we could make a space elevator out of it since our atmosphere isn’t as heavy as Erid’s, so we wouldn’t need pure xenonite.” Then he made a face as a thought occurred to him. “But you better not do that until after I’m off this planet- I hate elevators.”
“So if we promise not to make an elevator, could you synthesize enough of this new metal to be used in the hull of The Hail Mary?” Stratt prodded him, taking the square of metal to examine.
“Oh yeah, easy peasy! But we’d need more astrophage than we’re currently planning on- I’d make a preliminary estimate of about 1000 kilos for enough xenaluminum to coat the entire hull and all the centrifuge cables, so it would involve taking that out of the breeding tanks in the Sahara,” Grace mused.
“We need 2 million kilograms of the stuff,” Shapiro pointed out. “Seems like temporarily redirecting the breeding farms’ output towards this new material would be worth it for the additional structural security and radiation protection.”
“Hypothesized radiation protection,” Grace corrected. Martin gave him a thumbs-up, appreciating the attention to detail.
“How long would it take to get 1000 kilograms from the farms now?” Stratt turned to Reddell. He thought for a moment.
“We’re still in the early stages of paving so the output is lower, but even so, it shouldn’t take any longer than a week,” he responded.
“That seems like an acceptable delay when you look at the cost-benefit analysis,” DuBois stated. “And we are ahead of schedule.”
“Incorporating it into the blueprints of the ship would take longer, though,” Hatch pointed out. “It could realistically delay launch by about three months, and I know Dr. Grace is very eager to return home.”
“Yeah, but Mary wasn’t doing so hot by the time we got to Erid the first time around; without Rocky, I think the ship honestly might have fallen apart around us.” Ryland grimaced. “The original blueprints simply weren’t designed with a round-trip in mind. I know Olesya and I were worried she wouldn’t be able to do the coma at all on the way home with all the anticipated repairs…”
“But if every delay costs lives, that’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Yao argued. “If increasing our chances of survival will result in saving fewer people, I cannot in good conscience allow it.”
“I mean, I’d love to not go crazy and reduce my chances of space cancer, but I agree,” Ilyukhina seconded. “Ryland?”
“I don’t think I get a vote on the return trip; I’m going back to Erid with Rocky, so I don’t think it would be fair of me to weigh in on a decision that will only effect the two of you. Darn it, I just wanted to show you guys Carl’s baby, and now we have another trolley problem,” Grace sighed, shoulders sinking.
“Doctor Grace, do you know how many of the Beatles made it back the first time?” Stratt asked him suddenly.
“At least one, since Sol brightened, but I couldn’t tell you for sure,” he answered, trying to catch her train of thought. “You’re thinking that if we coat the probes in this, there will be a better chance of them making it back?”
“Potentially,” she agreed. “Just because we know that things worked the first time that you did this does not mean that everything will work the exact same way again. It would behoove us to take every possible action that may improve our chances of survival. A ship that has a better chance of returning, in addition to the probes with those same improved odds? It is worth the delay.” She put her hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Your foreknowledge has already saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives by moving up the launch date. A small delay to maximize the chances of our probes and our astronauts returning safely is acceptable. I’ve made my decision.” She turned and walked away, Dr. Grace’s new invention still clutched between her fingers. “Meeting with the crew and department heads in 1 hour, do not be late.”
Grace blinked after her, dazed.
“You know,” he declared eventually, reaching for the orange juice. “I think it’s a lot easier to appreciate the trolley operator now that I’m not the one tied to the tracks.”
“What the fuck, Ryland?” Dr. Lokken glared at him. “That’s not funny.”
“Well, it wasn’t the thing that actually killed me, so it’s a little funny,” he protested.
A chorus of groans went up around the table. Dr. Grace looked scandalized for a moment and clutched his chest.
“Jesus guys, language! How did you somehow groan at the exact pitch and frequency to cuss me out in Eridian?”