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The Blip-A was an engineering marvel, and Grace was running out of ways to say so.
"Okay, that's just…" he gazed in wonder at the play of light on the Xenonite of Rocky's ship. "Wow, that's incredible…" He turned a slow circle inside the flexible Xenonite suit Rocky had built for him, the one that let him stand here in the heart of an alien starship and breathe his own oxygenated air.
Just ahead of him, Rocky moved proudly through the ammonia atmosphere, two arms raised as he pointed out more features of his home in space.
They made their way through a hallway, its walls lined with Xenonite akin to bars of gold. Grace gasped at the sight. It was, once more, incredible.
As Rocky explained what he was looking at, he shook his head in wonder. Again.
"You built the whole life-support redundancy into the walls? The walls are the system?"
"Yes." Rocky's chord rang in that happy, familiar harmony Grace loved. "Eridian make good wall. Human make okay wall."
"Wow. Thanks, Rock." Grace grinned inside the suit as they passed through to the next compartment.
“I can’t believe…” he whispered, completely overwhelmed by the interior of the Blip-A. Rocky’s home. He struggled to find the words again. “I can’t believe I’m the one who gets to see this…”
"Rocky happy they choose right person for job." He said it lightly, drifting ahead toward the next compartment, two arms gesturing Grace onward as his warm little musical chords filled the hallway. "Of all humans to save stars, they choose best. They choose Grace."
Grace stopped.
Rocky was still moving, still narrating in that endlessly delighted tour-guide cadence. “Come, Grace, more to see. This way.”
Half a second ago Grace had been the happiest he could remember being since he'd woken up in a bed with no name and no past and a voice in the ceiling asking him simple arithmetic.
But now Rocky’s words rang in his head.
They choose right person for job.
The words snagged on something familiar yet not fully formed. Because he'd heard that before. He could hear it now as it slowly came to the forefront of his mind. An echo of his own voice, anxious and resigned.
“I know you think I'm the right person for this job…”
He had said that. When had he said that?
Something turned over in the dark at the back of his skull. It wasn't just a thought. It was the specific cold weight of a memory that had been sealed behind a door for a very long time. He gasped as that door was flung open, the clarity of it startling as the memory came flooding through.
Stratt’s office came into view as he had sat in front of her, revealing the crushing emotional weight he’d been suffering in that long ago moment.
"I know you think I'm the right person for this job. But I can’t do it."
“I’m trying to make you understand what I’m about to do next.”
“This may seem like me betraying you, but it’s actually me believing in you.”
Realization.
Panic.
Fleeing.
Then brutal hands pinning him down on the grass, mere feet from the perimeter fence.
"Don’t do it! Don’t do it! NO!”
“Carl! I can’t do it!”
The needle. The warmth of the sedative flowing through his veins as his consciousness retreated.
Carl standing there, the last person he ever saw as his own fading voice still begged him to make it stop.
"Grace?"
He'd said no.
He’d never volunteered for this.
He wasn’t supposed to be here.
“Grace. What wrong, question?”
He stood in this glittering alien cathedral, light years from the only world he'd ever known, inside a suit lovingly hand-built by the best friend he'd ever had, having just helped save two entire species from extinction.
And the full truth of it, the thing that had been locked away from him this whole time, was that he had never agreed to any of it.
He'd said I'm not an astronaut. Some of us are failures, and they had ignored him. And he'd run. He’d fled in panic, and they had chased him down and pinned him to the ground. They had drugged him while he’d sobbed and pleaded. They had kidnapped him against his will before they'd loaded his unconscious body onto the Hail Mary.
He hadn't chosen this.
He had never, ever chosen this.
"Grace. Question." Rocky's chord had changed. The tour guide was gone. "You stop talk. You stop move. What wrong, question."
"I'm…" His voice came out wrong. Detached. "I'm fine. I'm… I’m okay, pal. Keep…keep going. I want to see the rest…"
But he turned away, unable to bear the thought of Rocky's sensory organs trained on him right now. Because his eyes had filled without his permission and the first tears were already spilling over, running hot and free down his face to collect inside the suit, with him unable to wipe them away.
And despite the tears, he would not fall apart in the middle of the single most wondrous experience of his entire life. Not here. Not in Rocky's home, on Rocky's grand tour. He would not ruin it and turn this bright shining hour into something about him and his own buried damage.
But he couldn't see the ship now. His breath rang short and ragged in his ears, fogging the inside of his suit. The tears blurred his vision, turning the whole beautiful ship into a smeared blur of refracted light. The Xenonite walls swam and doubled around him.
He fought to rise above it, yet his mind was not getting the memo.
I said no.
I said no, and they took me anyway.
Everyone thinks I volunteered.
Everyone thinks I'm a hero.
I'm not a hero.
I’M A COWARD.
I RAN AWAY!
"Grace." Rocky was closer now. Right beside him, all five legs braced, every sensory organ now swung toward him. The careful tour-guide cadence had collapsed entirely into something tight and urgent. "Your body do wrong thing. Breathe fast. Fast is bad, bad, bad.”
And then, Grace heard the change in Rocky. “Grace! Is suit broken, air bad, question. Grace, is suit hurt you, question."
And that was almost worse than the memory. Because he could hear it now, threading up under Rocky's words. Genuine fear. Rocky afraid his ship was killing Grace. Afraid that the suit he'd built with his own hands to keep his friend safe and alive in this hostile place was instead, somehow, poisoning him, suffocating him, malfunctioning in a way Rocky couldn't see and couldn't fix.
"No," Grace managed, still turned away. "No, buddy, the suit's… the suit's fine. It's not the suit. I promise it's not the suit and your ship is not hurting me."
"Then what. Grace. What. Question." Rocky scrambled to get in front of him, trying to put himself where Grace's strange flat face was pointed toward him. "You not okay. Face have leak. You say okay but you not okay. Rocky not stupid. Grace tell."
But Grace couldn't tell. He shook his head, tears flying loose inside the suit. How could he possibly explain this? That he was crying in the middle of an alien paradise over a thing that had happened years ago and light years away. That the man Rocky thought was brave had to be carried, kicking and screaming onto the Hail Mary. How could he-
His legs went.
It wasn't dramatic. It was just that, all at once, they wouldn't hold him anymore; the memory and the grief and the breathless panic stacking up past what his body could carry standing up. And he folded, sliding down the wall inside the Xenonite suit, to sit on the floor of an alien starship. He curled forward over himself; arms hugging his knees, and shook.
The effect on Rocky was instantaneous.
"GRACE!" The chord ripped out at a volume that rattled in Grace's chest even through the suit. The anguish in Rocky’s tones filled the hallway. Not words. Just sounds.
Rocky scrambled to Grace's level, all five sensory organs jammed close to his friend. Two legs landed on the suit, on Grace's shoulders. Solid and there, holding on as if he could steady the whole shaking weight of his human friend by touch alone.
"Grace. No, no no. You fall down. Your face make water. You shake. What is happen, question. What wrong. Rocky fix. Tell me, I fix."
"You can't fix it, pal," Grace choked. "You can't. It's not. It's not a thing you can fix."
"Then I be here." The frantic edge didn't vanish, but something underneath steadied in that way Rocky had been steady so many times in the dark of two ships falling between stars. "I be here. I not go. What wrong thing is, I be here, Grace. You not alone.”
Grace nodded into his folded arms, hearing his friend.
And then Rocky’s tone calmed more. “Need to breathe like human breathe. Breathe slow. Do slow. In. Out. In. Out."
And because it was Rocky, because it was the one voice in the universe that had never once wanted anything from him but his company, who had never sent him anywhere, never decided his life for him, never held him down, Grace did what his only friend was telling him to do.
He breathed. Raggedly, badly, then a little better. In. Out. Rocky kept the count, patient and unwavering, his sensory organs never leaving Grace's curled-over shape, two legs steady on his shoulders the whole time, until the worst of the gasping had eased and Grace was only crying quietly now, instead of drowning in it.
"Is better," Rocky intoned. "Good, good, good."
A pause as he gave him room, then, "Now you tell. Slow. Rocky have much patience. I wait all day. I wait all year. But you tell, Grace. Rocky scared. Not know is worse than any true thing."
Grace pressed the palms of his covered hands against his face, uselessly wanting to wipe his face but unable to reach it. He let out a long, shuddering breath, lifted his head and set his red-rimmed eyes on his friend.
"I remembered something," he said. "The last piece. There… there was a hole in my memory, buddy, this whole time, a piece I didn’t know I’d lost. From before. From Earth. From how I… how I ended up on the Hail Mary." He swallowed. "And it just came back. All at once. Standing here. And I-"
He stopped. The shame rose, thick and fast. He'll think less of me. He'll know what I really am.
"And I'm afraid to tell you," he whispered, looking away.
“Why Grace afraid, question.”
"Because you're going to…you’ll think I'm…”
And then it came out in a flood, his words tumbling out. “Rocky, everyone thinks I came here because I'm brave. Because I volunteered. Because I'm some kind of hero who willingly chose to save the planet."
A broken laugh fell in the air between them. "I didn't. That's the thing I just remembered. I didn't choose any of it. I said no. I told them no. I told them I wasn’t an astronaut, that I wasn't the right person, that I didn’t have it in me. And they didn't listen. They never listened. Right before launch, there was an accident. The other scientists died, and I was the only one left who could do it.”
He exhaled, eyes closed momentarily, gathering himself.
Rocky waited, all sensors on his friend.
“But I couldn’t do it, Rock. I couldn’t. I said no. And they just… so they just… forced me.” His eyes glazed over in thought as he recalled the scene. “They held me down on the ground and they put a needle in my arm while I was begging them not to do it. And they did it anyway. They knocked me unconscious and loaded me onto the Hail Mary like… like cargo. They sent me here against my will.”
His head fell to his knees again in shame. “That's… that's the truth of how your ‘brave’ human friend got to space. He had to be dragged here, kicking and screaming."
His words hung in the alien air.
"So now you know," Grace said quietly, staring at the floor. "I'm not brave. I'm a coward who got forced. And I couldn't… I didn't want you to find out, not here, not on your ship, not when you're so-" His voice cracked apart. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ruined the tour."
For a long moment, Rocky said nothing. Then he shifted his body closer to Grace, arms still on the shoulders of the protective suit.
"Grace." And the chord was so soft, so impossibly gentle. "You are very stupid."
A startled, choked sound burst out of Grace, half sob, half laugh as he looked up at Rocky again. "What?"
"Stupid," Rocky repeated, with enormous tenderness. "Brave is not the not-afraid. This is human stupid idea. Brave is the afraid, and the do anyway."
"No, Rock, listen," Grace shook his head, the old reflex. "You don't get it. That's a nice thing to say, but it's not what happened. I didn't 'do it anyway'. I ran. I literally ran for the door. They had to catch me."
"Yes. They catch you. Easy, I think. You not run fast. Human legs too few and very long and slow."
A short laugh punched out of him. "Thanks, Rock."
"Welcome. And then. You wake up. Alone. No memory. Scared. In bad place you not choose. And what you do?"
Grace thought back to that time, stumbling around an empty ship with two dead crewmates, completely unaware of who he was and what he was doing in space. “I downed three bags of Vodka and was drunk for… I don’t know how long.”
Rocky moved his body a little to the side. “Need word. What ‘drunk’ mean, question.”
Grace managed a small smile as he looked at him. “It’s when the human brain is completely flooded in alcohol and…” He waved his hand dismissively. “You know what, it… it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh. Okay. But Grace, you still come to Tau Ceti and do mission.”
"Well, I didn't have a choice in that. I was just there, and Mary was flying the ship."
"Wrong. You have choice every day. Learn or not learn. Do mission or not do. And what do you choose?"
"That's just survival, anyone would-"
"Not anyone. You. You meet scary alien monster," a tiny wry warmth flickered through him, "me, I am scary alien monster. And you do not run. You stay. You make friend."
"You're not a monster, buddy."
"You not know that, first time. I am big and strange and in dark, and your face is flat and ugly and I cannot read it, so I think maybe you are monster." He paused, shifting his body a little. "We are both wrong. Is nice."
Grace pressed a hand uselessly to his suited face, somewhere between laughing and crying. "I really can't tell if you're comforting me."
"I am. Is it work, question."
"It's… it's a process." He leaned his head back against the wall, still looking at Rocky.
"Good, good, good. I continue." Rocky pressed closer. "You were taken against will, Grace. Not say yes. And you still, every day after choose to be good, choose to try, choose to save stars. The volunteer say yes one time, in safe room, with brave feeling. You say no, but now you say yes a thousand times, when no one make you."
"Sometimes I wanted to stop," Grace whispered. "You don't know how many times I wanted to just… lie down and quit."
"I know. You complain very much. All the time. So much complain." The tone warmed impossibly. "And you do not quit. That is brave. Not the one yes. The thousand. Even with all the complain."
"Wow, thanks, pal," Grace smiled. "You're really committed to the insults inside the inspirational speech, huh?"
"I am honest inside inspirational speech. Is better. You not believe compliment with no true thing around it. Human do this. Say nice things, and the nice mean nothing, is not true. I say complain and is true. So you know nice is also true."
And the thing was, that warped logic worked. That was the maddening genius of it. Grace opened his mouth to argue the point and found that he couldn't, because Rocky was right; the praise was more believable precisely because it came bundled with you are slow and ugly and you complain too much.
He couldn't doubt the sincerity of a creature who clearly wasn't trying to flatter him.
"I've spent my whole life being sure I wasn't that person," Grace said, quieter. "The hero. The brave one. I built a whole identity out of being the guy who wasn't."
"Then identity is wrong," Rocky said simply. "Eridian see different from human. Human look at self and see the running. I look at you and see the staying. Both real. But you only count the one. Why you only count the running, Grace? Why you never once count the stay?"
And that - why you never once count the stay - went into him like something slipping past every defense he had, because he had no answer for it. There wasn't one.
"The taking was wrong thing," Rocky went on, softer now. "Very wrong thing. Your people did bad to you, and you allowed be angry. Allowed the water on face. Allowed the falling down. Grace, I not sad you tell me. I am glad, statement."
"I thought you'd think less of me," Grace admitted, small and raw. "I thought you'd find out what I really was and-"
"I find out what you really are when first meet. When both save stars. You want to know, question."
Grace nodded, tired eyes looking at his friend.
"You think this truth make you small. Make you less." The chord dropped to almost nothing, to a register Grace had never heard Rocky use. "It make you enormous. Still long leg, flat face, ugly human, but enormous."
And that did it. The laugh and the sob came up together, tangled, and Grace had to bend over with the force of it, one arm wrapped around his own middle. "Oh, my God, Rock."
"Is true. Two things can be true, statement." Pure innocence. "You are ugly and bravest human I know. You not want to come here. But you do and you save stars, statement. That is brave."
"Thanks, pal." But it came out drenched in something enormous now, the deadpan cracking right down the middle, because underneath the joke he'd heard it - the bravest human I know - and he knew, the way you only know things from someone who physically cannot lie, that Rocky meant every word.
Something broke open in his chest. But it wasn't panic this time, wasn't the drowning. It was the opposite. It was relief so enormous it hurt. The specific agony of a thing you've told yourself your whole life simply being set down.
"You really believe it," he said. Not quite a question. He was hearing it, finally hearing it, that Rocky wasn't comforting him. Rocky was just describing what he saw, with that maddening, beautiful, alien clarity that cut straight past everything human emotion and tangled self-loathing to the actual shape of the thing. "You're not saying it to make me feel better. You're literally just… reporting the data."
"Yes. I am very good scientist. Best scientist. You are okay scientist. But best friend. Number one. I do not know how to lie good," Rocky added, gentler. "You know this. I say true thing because is only thing I have."
And Grace knew that to be true. Rocky genuinely couldn't dress a thing up, couldn't soften or flatter or spin. Everything he'd just said, insults and all, he'd said because it was, to him, simply factual. The bravery wasn't a kindness Rocky was extending. It was a measurement. As real to Rocky as the temperature of a wall or the mass of a star.
For the first time in his entire life, Ryland Grace wondered if maybe he was the one who'd been getting the measurement wrong.
"Okay," he breathed, cracked and drained. "Okay. I think I’ve got it. I’m slow, ugly, complaining, too few legs and am brave. I believe you, Rock."
"Good, good, good." Pure warmth, pure relief. "Took very long. You are slow at this also. But you arrive. I tell you one more true thing, and then you stand up. The taking was terrible. And I am grateful for it, every day, with my whole body. Both true. Same time. Because if they not catch you, I am dead. My people are dead. And I never meet best friend of my whole life." The chord wavered, landing somewhere raw and complete. "Terrible thing, and best thing, is same thing. This is only truth I have."
Both true, at the same time. The exact unresolvable shape of it. So much wiser, so much more right, than anything Grace had ever told himself.
And this time, when fresh tears came, he was already moving.
Rocky’s two legs had never left his shoulders. Now Grace pushed off the wall of the alien ship, the Xenonite suit shifting easily around him, and moved all the way forward, right up to Rocky, as the realization went through him: there was nothing between them. No ball. No glass. No wall. Just the flexible suit Rocky had built, the suit that meant Grace was completely, perfectly protected from the searing ammonia world that would otherwise kill him in a breath.
For the first time, he could actually touch Rocky.
And he didn't ask. He didn't stop to think about it or hesitate. He just closed the distance and put his arms around his friend for the first time.
He remembered the previous hug. What Grace do? I do same? Of Rocky finally understanding and pushing close to him through the wall of his ball, careful and earnest and trying so hard to learn a thing his species had never invented. Of Rocky asking, with that desperate scientific sincerity, How do you know when hug finished? And his You just feel it. And Rocky, instantly, anxiously, wanting so badly to do it right. You feel it now?
Rocky didn't ask that now.
As Grace's arms came around him, Rocky didn't freeze, didn't question, didn't ask if he was doing it correctly or when it was supposed to end. He simply rose to meet his friend, opening, knowing and wrapping two forelegs around Grace in return, sure and unhesitating, the way you hold someone when you have learned, all the way down, exactly what the holding is for.
He understood hugs now. He understood this hug. He knew what Grace needed without a single word, and he gave it without missing a beat.
And oh, Grace could feel him. Through the suit, muted but there, he could feel the strange architecture of him. The natural heat radiating off his body even through the insulation, and the subtle living shift of Rocky himself. Not the cold panel of a Xenonite ball between them. Not glass. Not a wall. Him.
Grace held on. Rocky held back. And neither of them said anything at all. No questions. No jokes. No narration. Just the two of them holding each other in the heart of a starship light years from where either of them was born, yet both somehow, impossibly, exactly home.
Rocky didn't ask how Grace would know when it was finished.
He already knew the answer. You just feel it.
And he could feel that Grace wasn't finished. Not yet. So he stayed, and held, and waited, patient as the dark between stars, for as long as his friend needed him to.
Rocky never let go first.
When at last Grace was the one to ease back, reluctantly, only far enough to see him, he was both drained and hollow and yet somehow lighter than he'd been in longer than he could remember. Rocky kept one leg resting against his arm, unwilling, it seemed, to break contact entirely now that they had it.
"Grace better, question."
"Better." Grace breathed out, long and shaky. "Yeah. Much better. Thank you, pal. For all of it. For seeing it. For seeing me."
"Rocky not have eyes. But Rocky see always,"
Grace huffed a laugh and scrubbed uselessly at the outside of the suit again. "I probably look like a disaster right now."
"You always look like disaster. Flat human. Leaky face. Strange."
"Thanks, Rock."
"Welcome." Then a warm pause, before "But today is okay disaster. Better disaster than before."
Grace laughed. Really laughed, the kind that empties you out and leaves room for better things. "I don't know why I thought telling you would break this."
"Friend does not break from true things," Rocky said, gentler now. "Friend break from hiding of true things. You hide less now. Now we are more strong. Is science."
"Science, huh?"
"Best science." Rocky stood taller, all five legs unfolding now, and Grace could almost hear the smile come back into him.
But Grace caught his arm before he could turn fully toward the next compartment. "Hey. Wait. One more thing, and then I'll let you finish showing me around your ship."
Rocky went still, attentive. "What thing, question."
"Not a question. A…" Grace searched for it. "A thing I need you to know, because one day you're going to think back on this and you're going to worry you did something wrong, so I need you to understand something. The thing that set me off? Right before I…" he gestured vaguely at himself on the floor, at the wreckage of the last half hour. "It was something you said. You said they picked the right human for the job. That they chose me."
The change in Rocky was instant. A sharp dissonant chord, all five legs flinching back. "I do the hurt. I say bad words. Rocky make you fall down."
"Listen, that's exactly why I'm telling you this." Grace reached for one of Rocky’s legs, and tightened his grip, anchoring him, refusing to let him pull away into the guilt.
"No."
"Listen. I need you to know you did nothing wrong. You couldn't have known. Those words 'the right person for the job' they're the exact words I said to Stratt. Back on Earth. Begging her to understand I couldn’t do it. You had no way of knowing that. You couldn't have. It's a landmine that's been buried in my head for years, and you happened to step on it, and that is not your fault."
Rocky's chord wavered, uncertain. "But I make memory come. Bad memory. I make Grace face leaky and sad."
"But listen. You made the memory come while I was here," Grace said quietly, gesturing at the surrounding ship. "With you. In the one place, with the one person, where it was safe for it to come back." He swallowed. "Rocky, that memory was always going to surface someday. It was always in there, waiting. If it had hit me alone, in my bunk, in the dark on the Hail Mary, I don't know what I would've done with it. I really don't. But it didn't. It waited until I was here. With my best friend, who caught me and held me and told me I was, what was it, slow and ugly and brave."
A tiny, watery sound that was almost a laugh slipped out before he continued.
"So no," Grace finished. "I don't ever want you to feel bad or doubt anything you said in this. If anything, you should…" his voice cracked, but he pushed through it because this was important, because he needed Rocky to have it. "You should feel good. Because the worst memory of my entire life finally came back, and the very first thing that happened after it did was you. That's not a thing you broke, buddy. That's a thing you fixed."
For a long moment, Rocky said nothing.
Then, softly, "Both true. Same time. I say words that hurt. And I am the one who help." A pause. "I not like first part. But I like second part. Is okay. I keep both."
"Yeah," Grace said, his throat tight. "You keep both, buddy."
"Okay." Rocky's chord steadied, warmed, came home. "Then I not feel bad. Because you say not to. And because you are very bad at lying, I know is true."
Grace huffed out a laugh at that, "And the compliments just keep on coming."
"Welcome."
He looked around the ship, at the glittering Xenonite, the impossible alien geometry, the home of the alien being who'd just put him back together. His red-rimmed, blue eyes held his friend. "And I'm sorry I…"
"If you say sorry for ruin tour," Rocky interrupted, "I make ship temperature very uncomfortable for Grace."
Grace laughed out loud, a real one this time, coming from deep within. "Okay. Okay. Not sorry."
"Come, Grace," Rocky said gently. "Stand up. Tour not over."
The tour resumed, but something had changed in it now. It was gentler, somehow, both moving through the glittering dark a little closer together than before. Rocky showed him the engine spaces, the storage where his half of the Taumoeba was held, the strange, beautiful organ-like systems that kept this whole impossible place alive, and Grace made all the appropriate awed noises, because they were all genuinely true.
Then Rocky slowed.
"This," he said, and there was a different note in the chord now, quieter, almost shy. "This where Rocky sleep."
It was a simple space. A broad, low platform, contoured to the shape of him, worn smooth by use. Grace looked at it and felt an unexpected ache, because it was so plainly Rocky. Practical yet snug and exactly right for a body built like his.
"It's perfect, buddy," he said softly. "It's really you."
"Yes." A pause. The chord dipped, dimmed, went thoughtful in a way Grace had learned to listen for. "Is good place. But," he paused. "Rocky sleep alone. No one to watch sleep." Grace let his hand drop to rest lightly on Rocky’s carapace. "On Hail Mary, sometimes I wake. And you are there. Sleeping, working, or making the bad human music." A small flicker of a smile crossed Grace’s features at that as Rocky continued. "But I think is good. Someone here. Someone watch me sleep." The chord lowered. "Here, my ship, no one."
Grace's throat tightened. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, I'm sorry, I know, me too-
"But Grace! Look, look, look!" And all at once his entire demeanor brightened, shot up into something so delighted and proud and pleased with itself that Grace was startled. "Look what Rocky have! "
One arm shot out, pointing.
And there, beside the sleeping platform, sitting in a place of obvious honor, was a tiny, soft Xenonite ball. Grace could see the give in it, the slight yield of the material, made gentle and pliant on purpose. And cradled inside it, safe and whole and unmistakable, was a tiny, lumpy hand-knitted Earth. Blue and green and a little crooked, the continents not quite in the right places, more blobs than landmass.
His Earth.
That’s lava. It’s not.
The one he'd had for years, used in all his classes for the lightning rounds. The one he'd pressed into Rocky's grip at their little celebration, throat thick, saying so you don't forget me and Rocky taking it with infinite care, squeezing it through the soft Xenonite of his ball, asking what is, what is, and Grace explaining it was Earth.
"That’s," Grace's voice cracked. "That’s a good place for it, buddy."
"Is Earth. Is your world. Is Grace's home." He nudged the soft ball, squashing it just slightly, with the very tip of one claw, a touch so tender it made Grace's chest hurt. "I make soft ball. Special. So I can hold. I can squeeze like Grace. So Earth stay safe inside, never break, never get the dust, never get hurt. And I put here." He drew his arm back, settling, the chord going soft and certain and shy all over again. "By my sleep place. So…"
He stopped.
"So?" Grace breathed.
"So your Earth watch me sleep. So when wake in the dark, Rocky not alone. Little piece of you watch Rocky sleep."
Grace couldn't speak.
He stood there in the heart of an alien starship, eleven point nine light-years from home, looking at his own little bean bag Earth cradled inside a soft ball an alien had made specifically so he could have a piece of his best friend's planet watching while he slept.
"Rocky," he managed, and it came out wrecked.
"Is good gift," Rocky said, a little anxiously. "I do right, question. Your face leak again. I do not mean to make the water-"
"No, no, buddy, it's…" Grace laughed, scrubbing uselessly at the suit for what felt like the hundredth time that day. "It's the good water. It’s the happy leaking. I gave it to you so you wouldn't forget me. And you… you turned it into a way to never be alone, to feel safe. That's… Rocky, that's so much better than… that’s so perfect."
"I make gift better," Rocky said, pleased and shy at once. "Like everything. I take human thing, I make better." But there was no smugness in it. Only something soft and enormous and full. "You give me your entire world, Grace. Smallest world. Most important world. I take care of it forever. I promise this."
"I know you will," Grace whispered.
For a moment they just stood there, the two of them, looking at the little knitted Earth in its soft cradle by the sleeping platform. A tiny crooked, blue-green planet that would watch over an alien in the dark, so he'd never have to wake up alone again. So he would feel safe.
Then Rocky stirred, and the chord lifted, gentle, ready to move on but not hurried, as if he understood, with that uncanny alien grace, that this was a moment that deserved its full weight before they left it.
"Grace, tour done now. I leave best part to last. Your tiny Earth best part. Is safe here. Always. Watch me sleep."
Grace took one last look at his Earth, safe in its soft Xenonite ball, and followed his friend through the ship. The official tour was done; now the two friends walked together through the incredible architecture of an alien ship, slowly making their way back to the tunnel that led to the Hail Mary.
And Grace felt lighter than when he'd come in.
More free in every way there was.