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I stand on the shore of my own little private beach, and I still can’t believe it.
I am blind to everything that isn’t illuminated by the dome that covers my portion of Erid, but I can feel the shift. Rocky comes by every day, sometimes multiple times, to bring me news of all kinds, and through him I sense how happy everyone is. They share my disbelief over the fact that it’s really over, that we’ve really done it. Scientists all over Erid are working on a way to breed the Taumoeba to a sufficient enough number and appetite to eat what would’ve been their end. Decades down the line, yes, but these people are smart. They know what their fate would’ve been.
And so would my people on Earth. I have no way to convene with them, to feel their joy as my own, but even so it is difficult to believe.
My kids get to grow old.
Every new child is born into a world without a timer stamped on it.
Seven billion people can breathe a sigh of relief and worry about dying of normal, familiar causes when their time has come, rather than the shining red threat looming above them these past years.
And, more incredibly still, I am on Erid. A shelter has been built for me, a pocket of Earthen atmosphere within an environment that would kill me in an instant, and I stand in the middle of that shelter, breathing the oxygen-rich air, smelling the slightly different but nonetheless comforting salt of the sea, and wait for my alien friend to arrive.
Man, if someone had told child-me that this is where I’d end up at—well, however old I am. It’s hard to say with all the space travel. Point being, I wouldn’t have believed them.
It feels like the last few years have been a fever dream. Any minute now I expect to wake up from my coma all over again, pulling tubes from my body and arguing with robot arms. I worry that Rocky will finally shake me awake after I passed out in Adrian’s orbit, or that I’ll blink back to consciousness in the brief moment before Adrian’s gravity tears me apart after I fell off the ship without a tether.
But none of that has happened yet, and so I’m forced to accept reality for what it is. Erid is healing from what would’ve been the beginning of a slow ice age, and now, after recovering from the sick, malnourished state the journey left me in, I will be getting acquainted with its people.
Starting with the most important of all.
I see them both in the distance, passing through the flexible entrance of the dome and emerging cloaked in a part of it, two skintight vessels that keep them safe from my atmosphere. My skin is thin and uncomfortable where scurvy has opened the scars of my arm, but now that it’s healed again I’m able to wave to them regardless, turning to meet them halfway.
And the blob next to Rocky starts running.
The first thing that sticks out to me is their swirling green-and-blue patterns, vibrant like raw malachite. Aside from the want to immortalize his partner in something bigger than themself, I can see why Rocky chose their name for the planet Adrian.
The second thing I notice about them occurs to me very quickly after, and far more urgently than the first. Adrian is fast approaching, almost dragging Rocky by the hand as they descend the dunes that make up my beach, and as they get closer I realize just how large they are. I figured they would be bigger than Rocky; even with no reference to compare him to, I couldn’t help but feel like Rocky was lighter on his feet than his mass gave him any right to. I always had the suspicion that he was small for his species, swift in a way that other Eridians were not.
But Adrian is something else. My heart leaps into my throat as they come closer, barrelling toward me like a bear toward a hiker. I swear I can feel the ground shake beneath them.
I’m safe. I know this. As foreign as it feels to give myself credit, I know I helped save Erid, and that every sentient being on the planet knows it too.
And yet, something small and primitive in me can’t fight the brief flash of fear that zips through me when Adrian skids to a halt before me and I am forced to look up at them.
For a moment, they just stand there. I am reminded of the first time I saw Rocky, atavistic horror battling with fascination, coming together in a trembling awe. I feel no different looking at Adrian than I felt looking at Adrian, a vast expanse of green before me, knowing I am the first human to ever witness it, finding beauty in it as much as knowing it could spell my doom under the right circumstances. The light of my dome shines down on them, casting a dozen towering shadows over me.
“Hi,” I manage, forcing myself to swallow through a dry throat. If this is who Rocky chose to spend his life with, they’re cool. They have to be.
Rocky’s gaze flicks between the two of us, his cheerful demeanor calming me some. “This Grace,” he says, though Adrian is most likely aware. “Grace saved my life, gave me hope when everything bad. Saved everyone.” He adds a word I don’t recognize, a bright and triumphant jingle, and Adrian takes a deep, shaking breath through the slits in their carapace before addressing him, turning just the slightest bit away from me.
“You say Grace understand Eridian language, question?”
Their voice surprises me. It’s a lilting, delicate sound, like wine glasses clinking together, like windchimes singing softly. It doesn’t fit their body. Then again, I guess there’s plenty of space for air to whistle through the narrow passages of their skin, a carapace like a jagged cliff face to contrast Rocky’s comparably smooth shape.
“Yes,” says Rocky, bobbing up and down in excitement. “I taught. No speak, but Grace understand.”
Adrian shakes their claw at him, the Eridian equivalent of a nod. They step closer still, until their xenonite shell nearly touches my face and I feel their heat through the barrier. I’m not afraid that they’ll hurt me, but you can’t blame a guy for getting a little nervous when facing a living mountain. Adrian stares me down with the eyeless, jutting surface of their face before breathing once more, a guttural sound that clashes with their voice.
“No words,” they say slowly, “to express gratitude to Grace.” There’s a warble in their voice, one that I might have interpreted as sadness in my early days of learning Eridian, but I, too, know the feeling of barely keeping myself together when I need to. I get it. I’m about to tell them it’s okay, that I was just doing my job, whatever other platitude I might give to ease the intensity of it all, but just as I open my mouth, Adrian’s legs seem to buckle beneath them, sending them rolling over onto their back in the sand.
I shoot Rocky a shocked look, but he seems unbothered. “Eridian display of much trust,” he explains. “Tender orifices exposed. Radiator blocked by ground. Gesture give life over to other person.”
“Oh,” I say, for lack of a more eloquent reaction. I look down at Adrian, helpless. Their life support ensures that they can breathe even in this position; encased like this, I couldn’t hurt them if I tried. But the message is clear.
And just in case it wasn’t, they spell it out for me, too.
“You need anything,” Adrian says, “anything, anything, anything, speak. Speak to me, I will provide. You brought back mate Rocky, most beloved. I owe Rocky life and mine.”
I’m silent for a moment, just to let Adrian know I’ve heard them, that I am neither too stupid nor too arrogant to understand what they are offering. Getting back up with Erid’s gravity weighing me down will be a pain in the butt—and also everywhere else—but I am not the sort of person who knows what to do with a person kneeling to them. I lower myself to the ground beside Adrian, sitting cross-legged in the sand. I was about to lay on my back, but I think putting us back at a level would diminish the grandeur of their gesture.
Of all the little quirks of Eridian culture, Rocky hasn’t prepared me for this. I don’t know what to do with this. I am in need of their help, not just Adrian’s but all of Erid’s; though I’m much better than I was upon arrival, they’re still working on nutrition for me, and I might want to repair some of the damage the Hail Mary sustained on the trip. There’s still so much to show Rocky, and now that he has his camera he’ll get much more out of the projection room.
But I doubt that any of that fills the borders of a lifelong debt.
So, with nothing to offer Adrian, nothing for them to do to pay me back, I sit with them and offer something else. They love Rocky, after all, and that makes one thing we have in common.
“Rocky told me a lot about you,” I tell them. Rocky, understanding what I’m doing, joins us in the sand and translates. I smile as I watch him climb up Adrian’s body, settling into a space between their protrusions like they’ve grown specifically to fit him. “We had a lot of time to talk on the way to Erid, and he never shut up about you.”
I expect some sort of teasing glare from him, but he doesn’t even hesitate before passing it on. Adrian makes a whistling noise, one of their legs twitching. I guess embarrassment over gushing about your partner is a human concept.
“You were like his map. Everything went back to you. And me, I’m…” The urge to be self-deprecating is there, but it’ll probably make Adrian lay it on even thicker. Besides, I’m trying not to do that anymore. A certain sedimentary someone taught me that. “I don’t have someone like that. I did what I had to to save my home planet, but listening to him talk about you, it’s like… I don’t know, it was like I finally understood. Some people on Earth don’t want a mate—I mean, I never felt the need—but… I could feel that love through him when he talked about you.”
I wait as Rocky translates. He’s less hyper now, something more solemn taking the place of his fiery joy. He speaks slowly, melodically, like he’s telling me about Adrian all over again, singing the song of their love.
“So I guess what I’m saying is… the biggest favor you can do me is to catch up with your mate. He missed you so much that even I felt it.”
Adrian shifts, and they begin to roll back over—slowly enough for Rocky to walk along their carapace and find a new spot on top of them. They fold their legs beneath them, seeming to understand my attempt at modesty and meeting me halfway. They’re still taller than me with both of us sitting down. I’m reminded of my trip to Antarctica, the unbelievable size of the horned glacier we bombed, the deepest blue collapsing in on itself under the force of human innovation.
“This is you wish, question?” Adrian asks, and I shake my hands at them. They tilt the slightest bit, surprised to see a familiar gesture coming from a foreign creature.
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t remember the last time I had a heart-to-heart with someone who wasn’t Rocky, the last time I had to find words for something that would more accurately be described in actions, but I try. “Rocky and I became good friends up there. He’s been through more hardship than I can even imagine, probably more than he had time to tell me about, and… Well, I want him to be happy, and he seemed happiest when you were on his mind.”
Adrian chimes their understanding. I can’t tell which is more typical for Eridians: Rocky’s constant stream of words, narrating his every thought, or Adrian’s calmer, quieter nature, choosing to forgo words altogether when they can. Though I guess I shouldn’t take this as their baseline. Emotions are high on all fronts.
“We will visit, question?” Adrian asks, addressing Rocky more than me. “So Grace may witness our relationship?”
Phrased like that, it sounds more voyeuristic than it was supposed to, but I guess there’s no other way to say it. On paper, that is what I want. I want to know this person who was so important to Rocky that he kept them in his heart for nearly fifty years. I want to know who my friend is outside of our mission, who he was before he knew his world might end.
With me being stranded on Erid for the foreseeable future, I think I might also just like to have people to talk to, and if Adrian is someone Rocky loves, I imagine we’d get along as well.
“Yes,” Rocky agrees. “Catch up with Grace, too! Much to learn for both.”
I nod and shake my hands for good measure, agreement in all directions. Rocky is bobbing again, pushing himself up and down in excitement. That. That’s what I want. He’s as curious as I am, and learning about each other has been a gift, even with everything else surrounding it. It’s an even greater gift to see that joy extend beyond what I thought we would have of each other.
“Perhaps we begin by telling story of first meeting,” Adrian says. It’s a reasonable offer, but I can’t help but look up, where the light of my dome has begun to dim. It’s not a perfect twenty-four hour cycle yet, but my sleep schedule is messed up from space anyway. It’s only been four hours since my afternoon nap, but sometimes I swear I’d sleep for three days straight if I could.
I guess in Eridian time, that’s exactly what I do, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. I felt fine while waiting for my friends to arrive, but these days the exhaustion comes without warning, and much more fiercely than the situation would warrant.
“Love that,” I say. “I can’t wait to hear that, genuinely, but I think I need to sleep first. Humans get stupid when tired. I don’t wanna forget what you told me a day later.”
This time, when Rocky translates, Adrian perks up from their sitting position.
“I watch,” they say. “I do this for you whenever desired. You sleep safe and protected. Long journey done.”
Human humility makes me want to politely decline. I may have saved lives, and I may be a friend now, but these people don’t need to rebuild their lives around me. The greatest gift they can give me in return is to go about their way as usual, doing what they loved the way they couldn’t have if they’d all died.
But I’m on an alien planet. My human fears of being a burden will not be seen for what they are. I’ve already been as humble as any person in my situation could be; if I decline, I will be denying Adrian yet another chance to show their gratitude in a way that makes sense to them. They’d carry it around, forever indebted to me no matter how much I tell them it’s fine, and that more than anything would be a burden to them.
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah, okay, that would be really nice. You seem… strong. I would feel safe with you watching.”
Adrian gives a pleased trill and rises to full height, shaking the sand from the ridges of their xenonite suit. Rocky makes a sound akin to a giggle as he tries to keep his balance on top of them.
“We watch!” he declares, looking for all the world like a knight riding his steed into battle, and together we head for my house.
I realize my mistake when we reach the front door. It’s been built with my measurements in mind, though Rocky, being broader than me, can still fit through.
Adrian on the other hand is eight feet of mercury-filled rock and nearly as wide as they are tall. I don’t even ask them to try walking sideways. It’s not happening.
“Uhhh,” I say, hands on my hips. “Okay, change of plans.”
I hold up a finger to Adrian, chuckling at the parallel to those first few days with Rocky. I head inside, overhearing Rocky explain the gesture.
Gravity isn’t kind to me, so I decide not to strain any more than I have to. I bring my pillow and blanket over first, where Rocky kindly holds them for me so I won’t have to drop them in the sand. Then I head back and somehow, with great effort, lift the mattress from my bed and huddle my way out of the house with that, too.
Once outside, I consider what to do with it. There are no washing machines on Erid, so cleaning it all afterward will be a pain, but this is the only way to have Adrian watch me as I sleep.
As I stand around in front of my house holding a mattress in my wide-spread arms, Rocky descends from his mate specifically to stand by my side and look at me like I’m stupid.
“Adrian hold,” he says, and it’s not a question. Why are you like this, I hear between the lines.
“I didn’t wanna—” I begin, but I cut myself off. I have a literal life debt. Still, I know Rocky well enough by now to know that he’s being annoying on purpose. He can’t blame me for feeling a little weird about all this. “Would that be okay, Adrian?”
I shuffle on my feet to look at them. Adrian plops down in the sand, holding two arms out to me. “Anything.”
Fine. Guess I’m not getting them out of that anytime soon.
I hand them my mattress, and they briefly examine it before arranging it horizontally in their arms. Rocky climbs up a third arm to place my bedding on top. Adrian has become my bedframe.
“Thank you,” I say, because it feels wrong not to. Adrian makes a sound that I read as disbelief, a rising drone not unlike a whale’s song.
I toe off my shoes and climb into bed, and Adrian adjusts as needed, holding me at a slight angle that lets me rest against them. They’re warmer than Rocky. I think on Earth, before everything, it would’ve been too hot for me, but even in my carefully regulated atmosphere I get the shivers sometimes. Sometimes, at a perfect twenty-one degrees, I’ll feel like I had cold water dumped over me, like I can’t get warm no matter what.
Over two hundred degrees filtered only through a thin layer of xenonite might do the trick, though.
My simulation of vague, omnipresent sunlight hasn’t quite gone down yet, but I close my eyes regardless, content to relax in that warmth until sleep takes me. It’s nice to feel the pressure of a blanket again, too, as opposed to the weightless floating of zero g. More than that, the blanket is twice as heavy as it would be on Earth. It’s comforting.
“Rocky?” I speak into that comfortable buzz. Even now my brain won’t stop thinking, searching for scraps. I’m a scientist. Sue me. “What was that word you used earlier? When you introduced us?”
I blink one eye open to watch him think. He lowers his carapace, tiptoeing around the surface of Adrian’s body, before straightening again when he finds the right words. I smile like an idiot at how a faceless creature can be so expressive. “Person who do great, dangerous achievement. Help many people. Brave brave brave person!”
And then that smile curdles, melting into something else.
Not for the first time since arriving on Erid, my eyes water just from that, from Rocky talking like this. I think of Stratt’s words, her very true and very valid accusations when I told her I’d rather stick to the comfort of my old life than to die in space for the good of humanity.
To her, I was a coward, and I cannot blame her for a second for thinking it.
But to Rocky, who has witnessed nearly every one of my waking seconds on the Hail Mary, who’s seen me in every nuance of fear and despair, who nearly died because of me, I am as brave as can be.
He isn’t as alarmed by my tears as he used to be, letting it happen like it’s just another thing I do, like sneezing or scratching an itch on my leaky human skin. “What is English word, question?”
I give a weak laugh, my face distorting. Adrian rumbles gently, a wordless comfort, even though they probably don’t know what crying is, nor that humans can tremble for reasons other than being cold.
“Hero.”
I don’t like being in the spotlight. My classes back on Earth have never been just me talking and everyone listening—that’s just not how I do things. But lying there with absolutely nothing that needs my attention, no problem I need to solve, nothing at stake that I might lose if I don’t get to work, something washes over me that I’ve been avoiding in favor of greater, more important things.
Hero is not the word I would use, but I feel the magnitude of what Rocky and I have done, just by virtue of being free of that weight. Adrian is right: a long, arduous, terrifying journey has come to an end. Rocky is home. Our job is done. I can rest in the arms of a scarily large alien and fall asleep to the fruits of my labor: my friend catching up with his partner after being apart for so long. My friend being happy after decades of grief.
And, in the background, outside of my realm of perception but real nonetheless: every living thing on both Erid and Earth getting to live, as well as whatever other extraterrestrial life might’ve been affected by Astrophage on other stars. My brain won’t let me feel proud, but I do feel an absence where fear used to be so very heavy. Even in Eridian gravity, I feel the lightness where the responsibility of trillions of lives used to sit.
It’s done. We did it. I’m free to feel whatever comes up, and no time will be lost because of it. Nothing and no one will come to harm if I don’t pull myself together.
So I don’t. I put my hands over my face, less out of embarrassment and more as an attempt to self-soothe, and I let myself tear open further with every choked-off breath I take.
We did it. It’s obvious in the fact that I’m here, that we’re still alive, that Adrian is there, that I can smell the salt of the sea and hear the rush of the waves, but we actually did it.
I hear Rocky climb down Adrian’s body, and that, too, drives it farther home. He’s alive. Everything’s okay.
He positions himself beside me like a parent tucking their child into bed, and I look up at him through a layer of tears, endless now that it’s begun. He makes a little crooning noise and lays two arms over my stomach, letting me feel the warmth seeping through the xenonite. He has no facial features I can read, but I know a smile when I see one.
“You say I looked most happy on ship when talk about Adrian,” he says, and I nod. The motion makes me a little dizzy, and I try to take a deep breath to compensate.
“Yeah.”
“Is true,” Rocky says. “Mate Adrian very important. But is not only important thing.” He pushes down very gently on my torso, a pleasant pressure. “Time with you is very close second. Same, maybe. Different but same.”
I sob into the open sky, where Adrian awaits me. It’s terribly vulnerable, laying in the arms of a stranger, bonding with them over the thing that’s grown roots under my ribs, that will forever keep me tethered to wherever Rocky is. I kind of expected that Rocky would want some time alone with his partner at first, a few weeks or months for them to catch up, but now I’m somehow in the midst of that catching-up, entangled by virtue of being included in Rocky’s adventure. In learning about his journey, Adrian will also learn about mine, and I feel torn open in a way that feels scary but not unsafe.
“I am happiest now,” Rocky says, his little claw pressing down on my heart. “Now I have both.”
Lost for words, I run my hand over the top of his carapace, shaking apart like I did so many times on the ship, only this time I’m allowing myself more than a few tactical minutes of it. It feels like I could cry for the rest of my life and still not wash out everything that’s left in the wake of the mission, both the grief caused by it and the joy that grew from the ashes. Rocky pushes himself up into my hand like a cat, and another feeling roars up within me, somehow louder than all the rest.
“I’m happy too, bud,” I say through my tears, meaning it even more just by saying it. “For you and me both. I’m really happy.”
Rocky does not translate this to Adrian, but I get the sense they understand the gist of it anyway. They do not pull me closer, remaining as distant as our position allows, but they hum a gentle sound, one I recognize from Rocky’s many attempts at optimism during our mission. It sounds more natural coming from them than it did from him, something inherently soothing about their demeanor.
“I am grateful Rocky not alone,” they say. Had it been someone else, I might’ve read it as a slight: it’s good that Rocky found a friend up there, but now he’s back with me where he belongs.
Seeing as it’s Adrian, though, and as Rocky only seems to light up more upon hearing it, I remain small and comfortable in their arms. Rocky stays put also, keeping two arms folded over me. I watch him look up at his mate with all the love in the world, so radiant I can see it plain as day on his featureless face, and I close my eyes and try to keep that image in my mind forever, right alongside all the rest. Every stupid bit Rocky’s ever done to get a laugh out of me. Every word of comfort we shared, every heartwrenching tale of loss and impending apocalypse. The waver in his voice when I came back for him, when I swore to the very universe that it was him and me, even if it was the last promise I’d ever make.
More tears leak out of my closed eyes, and I let them. I hold Rocky’s claw to my chest and allow my heart to arrive.
There is love all around me, and in a weird way, I have become part of it. The world I live in now is foreign in every way, and hostile enough to kill me instantly without the safety of my dome, but as I drift off to sleep little by little, I come to the realization that there is space for me.
There is space for me, and I think I want to stay.