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Abby was thirteen and subsequently far too sure of herself when she heard a couple sixth graders crying about their favorite teacher (practically everyone’s favorite teacher) leaving the school for good. She didn’t really believe it. Mr. Grace wouldn’t leave, he loved them. So, she’d done the logical thing and went to class like normal. Mr. Grace, like always, greeted them all with a wide smile.
As soon as everyone was sitting down, but before the lesson began, she raised her hand.
“Yes, Abby?” he asked.
“I heard a couple people saying you’re leaving. Is that true?”
Everyone snapped to attention and a dreadful silence fell. Abby kept her eyes on Mr. Grace, watching the way his smile fell into something more sad, though he was still technically smiling. It made something cold sink into her gut.
“Right. I should have expected you’d hear rumors before the end of the day.” He sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Alright, so, yes this is my last day teaching you guys. But that’s not anyone’s fault—well, no one at this school’s fault.”
“Why then?” Larry asked.
“Hmm.” Mr. Grace leaned back, looking at each of them. “So, show of hands, who’s heard of the Petrova Line or astrophage?” Abby put her hand up, and she could hear others do the same, but kept her attention forward. “Okay. So, for those who don’t know, there’s an algae, a space algae, that’s eating the Sun’s energy. The lady that’s been put in charge of fixing that problem asked me to join the team that’s studying it.”
Michael piped up, “Why do we have to fix it? Algae in the ocean doesn’t hurt us.”
“Ah, but algae in the ocean has predators and is kept in balance. Astrophage is an invasive species—you remember when we talked about that? It’s natural predators, and anything else that might control the population, doesn’t exist in our solar system, so we have to find a way to control the population ourselves.”
Abby frowned. “What’s it doing though? You said it’s eating the Sun’s energy, but isn’t there a lot of that to go around? Why is it a problem?”
Mr. Grace took a deep breath. “Even a slight decrease in the Sun’s light has an effect on Earth. You remember our lesson on climate change? All our environmental problems, the ones everyone was up in arms about, were caused by the average global temperature going up just one and a half degrees.”
“How much will this astrophage stuff change Earth’s temperature?” Luther asked.
“Climatologists are estimating a drop of ten to fifteen degrees.” He shifted his weight, grimacing slightly. “A lot of ecosystems will suffer. Entire species will die off because their habitats are too cold. The ocean water will cool down, too, and it might even cause an entire food-chain collapse. So even species that could survive lower temperatures will starve to death because the things they eat all die off.”
Abby clenched her fists. Mr. Grace never lied to them. Her horses ate grass and alfalfa, would those plants survive a temperature drop? What about Grandpa’s cows? “Even animals will die?!”
“Yes.” He met her gaze solemnly. “I’m sorry, but a lot of livestock will die. Worse, even on land, crops will fail. People will. . . be mean to each other when they’re hungry.”
Swallowing hard, Abby asked, “How. . . how long before this happens?”
“Climatologists think it’ll happen within the next thirty years.”
She relaxed into her seat, and caught sight of the others doing the same. Nothing to worry about then.
Trang even laughed. “Thirty years? That’s so far away!”
Mr. Grace’s face did something complicated Abby couldn’t identify before settling back on that sad smile. “Not long enough,” he murmured.
“Wait, so are you coming back to teach here when you’re done helping that lady?” Luther asked, frowning.
Mr. Grace shook his head. “Not for a long time, I think. I’d love to, don’t get me wrong. I’ll miss you guys terribly, but this is something I have to do, and I’m one of the few who can do it.” He drummed his fingers on the side of his desk, tapping out a soft rhythm. “I’ll still have my school email, though, so don’t be afraid to send me questions about anything you’re struggling with, alright?”
“Okay!”
“Promise you’ll come to our eighth grade graduation?” Theresa asked.
He blinked, a real smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll do my best!”
|||
She and Regina sat in the cafeteria, trading pieces of their lunches, when Michael plopped down across from them, phone in one hand and lunch in the other.
“What’s up?” Abby asked. Michael didn’t usually act like he knew either of them, hadn’t since they’d all graduated into high school.
He opened his phone and slid it over to them. “Mr. Grace is in the news.”
Intrigued, they both scanned the open news article. It covered something called Project Hail Mary, which proposed to solve the astrophage problem by sending some astronauts into space. The journalist seemed to have some reservations about how the Project apparently overstepped all country lines and circumvented standard procedure, but did apparently agree with the necessity of the Project’s aim.
Then they got to the section on Project members. Mr. Grace’s school photo grinned up at them from the screen, with the words Dr. Ryland Grace, microbiologist beneath it. Abby read the blurb on him more thoroughly.
“He’s. . . the leading expert on astrophage?” Regina breathed, glancing up at Michael.
“That’s not all.” Michael reached over and scrolled to the section labeled ‘Crew of the Hail Mary’ where, sure enough, Mr. Grace was listed as the primary science officer. “He’s one of the astronauts they’re planning to send into space.”
An astronaut. They hadn’t seen Mr. Grace in person since that last class two and a half years ago. He had set up a monthly Zoom meeting for each class during the rest of that year, and he had video-called in with the help of one of the other teachers for their graduation as promised, but once they’d gotten into high school they’d lost even that contact with him.
They hadn’t known about this part of his job at all.
One of Regina’s friends, Owen, who wasn’t from their middle school, leaned over to look at the article himself. “You guys know one of the ship’s crew?”
Regina showed him the picture. “He was our science teacher at GCMS. He’s hands down the best teacher I’ve ever had.”
Owen stared at them. “. . . why are they sending a middle school teacher to save the world?”
“Beats me.” Michael shrugged. “My dad says he was waaay over qualified as a teacher. I don’t know why he started teaching, but he does have a doctorate.”
“Huh. Neat.”
Abby tuned them out, reading further in the article.
We thank these brave people for giving their lives to find a solution, it read near the end. The ominous words had her scrolling back up to reread it, trying to figure out what that meant. She found the answer in the description of the Hail Mary itself.
“It’s a suicide mission,” she whispered, mostly to herself, but it got Regina’s attention.
“Huh?”
Abby pointed out the paragraph that said the ship would only have enough fuel to get them to the Tau Ceti system where the Project claimed they would find answers and that they’d send probes back to Earth with those answers.
Regina paled. “Oh.” She passed the phone back to Michael and didn’t say another word the rest of lunch. Abby didn’t either. Instead, she drafted up an email on her phone, and sent it to Mr. Grace. She wasn’t sure he’d get it, since school emails wouldn’t let anyone outside of their system get through, generally. She tried anyway.
She never got a reply.
|||
By the time Abby was twenty-seven, the Crisis was in full swing. America had weathered the worst of it better than most, but not by much. The new greenhouses and crops were finally starting to offset the riots and such, but new and terrible natural disasters still occurred frequently.
It had been fourteen years since the launch of the Hail Mary, and according to the projected timeline, the beetles should be on the first leg of their journey home. According to that same timeline, the astronauts who crewed that ship were now dead. Tonight, millions of people, bundled against the spring chill, stood vigil. Millions of precious candles lit all around the world.
Abby stood with a group of her friends, some who knew Mr. Grace, more who didn’t, and prayed he’d found something out there that would make that sacrifice worth it. The candle in her hand flickered, still as warm and bright as fire would always be, even when the sunlight cooled day by day.
Someone in the crowd started singing when the moment of silence had passed. “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger, I’m trav’ling through this world below; there is no sickness, toil, nor danger, in that bright land to which I go. I’m going there to see my father, I’m going there no more to roam; I’m just going over Jordan, I’m just going over home.”
Voices from every part of the crowd joined in with the next verse, until it felt like the whole world was singing along. She wasn’t familiar with the song, but the haunting melody was something she could hum along to.
It felt like goodbye.
She still remembered the last time they’d seen him, still remembered the horror of learning what his fate would be. Looking back on that day as an adult, Abby knew Mr. Grace had stopped short of explaining how humans usually reacted to food shortages and the like, but she also remembered the look on his face when they’d expressed that thirty years was a long time. She knew now what it had been, that their utter lack of understanding had broken his heart.
None of them had understood the seriousness of what he had told them. Of course they hadn’t. Thirty years was more than twice as long as any of them had lived.
Just two days ago, she’d held her nephew in her arms for the first time. Her brother had handed the little guy over, so fragile and ugly and utterly helpless. Her first thought as she’d looked down at him had been Oh God, he’s going to grow up in this apocalypse.
At that moment, she’d understood perfectly. That last conversation, when he’d looked out at a room full of young faces who would bear the brunt of the Crisis, must have only steeled his resolve to do everything in his power to spare them as much as he could. He’d tied himself to the tracks that day, and his students were the reason, for all that he’d told them it wasn’t their fault.
So tonight she thanked him, a whisper for just the stars and him to hear.
Thank you for loving us.
||
On her way home from a long day’s work, driving perhaps a bit too fast beneath the intermittent patches of dim yellow from the streetlights, Abby blared the radio. Traffic was fairly sparse, unusual for this time of the night, but the advertisements were still fewer (at least on this station). As if summoned by the thought, the radio crackled with the words, “Breaking news! The president has announced that the beetle Ringo, caught by the astronauts aboard the ISS, contains a predator for the astrophage!”
She slowed down a tad, listening intently. The host continued on, explaining that the Hail Mary mission was not only a success but that the crew had made contact with intelligent alien life! She nearly choked on a laugh. Unbelievable.
“But that’s not all! There was one other piece of news the President had to share: these Eridians refueled the Hail Mary. Our heroes, who were willing to sacrifice their lives for just the chance to find a solution, are coming home!”
Her vision got blurry. Blinking back the tears, she signalled and pulled over onto a decently wide gravel shoulder. The host said something else that she missed but the radio crackled back over to music, this time an old song she only dimly recognized.
Here comes the Sun, doo-doo-doo-doo~ Here comes the Sun, and I say~ It’s alright~
Perhaps it was stupid to cry tears of joy over the ‘they’re coming home’ part rather than the ‘Earth is saved’ part, but sue her, that was the part that made it feel like the world would be okay again. Mr. Grace had been the one to sit with her through her first panic attack, the one who made science and even school something to look forward to. The world had looked so vast and bright from that classroom.
So, yes, she sobbed on the side of the road at seven p.m. because her middle school science teacher who’d been willing to throw his life away for them would live.
||
It took a full week from the day the Hail Mary made contact with the ISS for the news to break. The time of the announcement had been posted online so that people could watch it live, so Theresa and Larry had sent out invitations to everyone of their classmates—as well as any of those from other years—anyone who’d survived long enough to crowd into an old veterans hall to watch the broadcast on the projector screen.
Abby stood off to one side, shoulder to shoulder with people she hadn’t seen in years, as the news anchors did a brief recap of everything that brought them to this moment. Most of it was more of the same as it had been since the beetles had touched human hands again, but one thing stood out to Abby.
“Now, the crew of the Hail Mary only experienced a little less than nine years of time, thanks to relativity. As strange as it sounds, they left in their thirties and forties, and will have returned nearly thirty years later, not as sixty and seventy year olds, but just barely middle aged!”
The anchors continued their discussion but she tuned them out. She’d been freshly seventeen when the ship launched. Mr. Grace had been thirty three. Now, she was forty five, and if what they were saying was true, he was younger than her now. She looked over at Theresa, who looked just as stricken. Regina, bless her, was already crying. Abby took her hand in hers and squeezed.
The view of the footage changed to a conference hall, where the director of NASA stood at the podium and greeted the reporters politely.
He cleared his throat, and the room fell silent. “Last week, the ISS made contact with the Hail Mary through radio transmission. This morning, the Hail Mary docked safely and her crew entered the ISS. We have waited to share the news they sent us from that first contact until now because some news must be delivered in person before a nationwide broadcast makes it public knowledge.”
His tone and the words themselves had the feel of a gavel coming down. Their little ‘private theater’ and the conference room on screen were silent enough that one might hear a pin drop. No one dared breathe.
“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that on their way home from Tau Ceti, one of the crew succumbed to an unknown complication with the coma system. The scientists and programmers aboard the ISS are looking into the cause as we speak, but for now we must honor the sacrifice of Dr. Ryland Grace.”
Behind him on the projector screen, a picture of Mr. Grace faded into view and subsequently filled the screen of the news feed. It wasn’t the one from the first announcement about Project Hail Mary, nor even one of the many she’d seen used whenever the Hail Mary crew came up in the news. No. It was Mr. Grace as they knew him, standing before a whiteboard with a big grin on his face, clearly midway through some explanation or other.
Abby’s ears rang. The broadcast went on a little longer, but she wasn’t really listening. She was back in that cold field with a candle in her hand, listening to a crowd sing a hopeful farewell. I guess it was too good to be true.
And yet, he’d always kept his promises to them, even calling in to watch them graduate when he was half a world away. She had hoped, foolishly, that he’d be able to keep this last promise too.