Work Text:
The thing that people don’t tell you about space travel is that most of the time it’s boring. Sure, there's the odd adrenaline rush when you and your best friend have to rush to save two planets and not die. But space is huge. Even at interstellar speeds it took weeks to reach orbit around Tau Ceti, to travel to the planet Adrian, to circle back to Rocky’s ship… and now it was going to be a multi-year journey to the planet Erid. Humans are famously poor at dealing with isolation, so most of Grace’s time nowadays was spent figuring out new ways to keep from going insane.
Today, Grace’s chosen enrichment was increasing the range of the radar notifications and trying to guess what each blip was as Mary called them out. 100% of the time it was just asteroids of different sizes, but it was still fun to guess at their origins and elemental make up. Well, ‘fun’ being a relative term here (again, not a lot to do in space).
Blip I-K detected.
The ship had run out of single letter names for the blips and taken to hyphenating them. Grace absentmindedly wondered how the ship was able to tell each blip apart. Why had the Hail Mary team thought it necessary to preserve the list of blips indefinitely? It seemed like a waste, but then again Eva Stratt was never one to skimp where the mission was concerned.
“Looks like another chunk of the big boy we saw at 5400 meters.” Grace commented, noting the blurry outline on the green sonar and comparing it to the previous blip H-Y. “Do you think they’re siblings?”
“Yes. Both parts of same original big space rock. Boring.” Rocky was not a fan of this game. With no sense of vision, Rocky had a hard time deciphering the blurry sonar readings. The Eridian would much rather be in the Don’t-Go-Crazy room learning more human movies. “Space rock far away. No reason Grace scan so far from ship. Is big waste of time, statement.”
Grace chose to ignore his grumbling companion, increasing the range by another 100 meters. There was plenty of time to be wasted on this journey.
Blip I-L detected.
This new blip showed up on the screen several thousand meters directly along the Hail Mary’s flight path. “There, see?” Grace gestured to the newest dot triumphantly. “If I wasn’t scanning, we could have hit this. I just saved all of our lives.”
Of course, Grace knew his logic was flawed at best. The scanners would have automatically picked up this blip once they were in a much closer range. Not only that, but blip I-L was also incredibly small. It was honestly a feat of impressive engineering that the scanner picked it up at all from this far out. It appeared to be the same size as one of the xenonite capsules Rocky crafted when they first met, which meant a blip of this size would bounce harmlessly off the ship.
“So, what're we thinking, Rocky? Another asteroid?” Grace asked.
Rocky was running out of patience for this activity. “Yes. Is space rock. Is all space rock. All blips are space rock! Statement!”
Grace laughed. “Your ship was my first blip, and that wasn’t a space rock. Who's to say there aren’t other aliens floating around out here? You never know. Or there could be parts of their ships left behind. Lots of interesting stuff could be in space.”
"Could be, but is not." Rocky spoke in low, exasperated tones. It was a testament to their friendship that Rocky had indulged Grace's whims this long, and Grace magnanimously decided to spare Rocky at last.
…In five more minutes. It was just too fun to rile up the Eridian.
Grace chuckled to himself, turning back to the display. The blip I-L was still on screen, just a few meters closer than before. Which…huh. That was strange. In space, there is no such thing as a stationary object; gravity is constantly pulling things closer together into orbital patterns. For blip I-L to be remaining so steadily on screen, this object had to have a velocity similar to the Hail Mary. But what was strange about that was the fact that the Hail Mary had been given thrust at the start of her journey to specifically travel out of the Tau Ceti system. A normal asteroid would not naturally travel in this fashion. Space debris gets tugged into systems, and either stays in orbit or crashes into a planet. To be traveling at this velocity in this direction in this part of the Universe, blip I-L had to have been thrust out of orbit too, and asteroids don't produce their own thrust.
But if it wasn’t an asteroid, what was it?
“Get ready to eat your words, Rocky- it’s not an asteroid.” Grace declared.
Rocky paused his busy hands. “Then what is blip, question?”
“I don't know, but I’m going to find out.” Grace pulled down the petrovascope to take a better look at blip I-L, turning on the visible light spectrum as the Hail Mary drew steadily closer. After a few minutes Grace was able to get it in his sight line. It appeared to be a solid chuck of metal, glistening slightly as it refracted the lights of the Hail Mary. It really was small; Grace kept losing sight of it in the darkness of space.
"What is it? What Grace see?"
Grace frowned, squinting at the little thing growing larger as they approached. “Any chance there’s a piece of space litter you left behind on your way out here the first time?”
Rocky huffed defiantly. “Rocky does not litter. Rocky respects space.”
"I love you buddy, but I have also witnessed you release our entire friendship bridge into space, and also dump 10,000 meters of chains into a planet." Grace pointed out. To Rocky's credit, this thing didn't look like any kind of xenonite Grace had come to know. But if it wasn’t xenonite… what was it? Who sent it? Was it a probe? What was it doing all the way out here in deep space?
Grace pondered the risks of investigating further. There was a chance this item was filled with a noxious acid, harboring some terrible parasite, or any other number of dangers that they couldn’t risk. Their supplies were already so limited. The return trip to Erid was going to be brutal. Even traveling at their fastest speed possible, Grace had done the math, and the calorie situation was looking to be a small-to-medium 'whoop'. It would be incredibly stupid to put their entire mission at risk over a random anomaly.
But on the other hand, if Grace had to spend the next four years just thinking about an alien mystery object he didn't bother to investigate, Grace really might go insane.
“Ok, team huddle.” Grace crouched down, grabbing the sides of Rocky’s ball to look Rocky ‘in the face’. “Putting it to a vote, do we pick up the blip? Pros: we could do some more dope science, maybe make some alien pen pals. Cons: this thing could blow up in our faces. Possibly literally.”
Rocky shifted in the way that meant he was weighing the pros and cons. It was clear Rocky was also very curious what they had found, but equally cautious about dooming his entire planet. “Plan: we contain blip, no contaminate. Easy science in lab. Investigate further if safe. Drop again if unsafe. Question?”
Grace clicked his tongue and gave finger guns. “I like your way of thinking, buddy. Science for the win.” Grace quickly headed down to the lab, grabbing one of their last plastic bags and a roll of duct tape. These he brought to the airlock and taped to the wall for safekeeping. Then Grace efficiently wriggled into his EVA suit and began depressurizing the airlock. Once it was a vacuum and he was properly tethered, Grace opened the exterior door and took a lil' moon walk.
Grace oriented himself on top of the hull, locking eyes on the approaching unidentified-floating-object. The UFO itself appeared to be traveling slowly, relatively speaking, so it was easy for Grace to get into position with ready hands. When it was in range, Grace carefully wrapped his big gloved hands around the football-sized object, pulling it closer for inspection. A small piece of the UFO that had been extended chipped off under Grace's hold, spinning off into space. Grace tightened his grip on the remaining object, not wanting to lose it too.
With the light of his headlamp Grace could now see that the entire surface was covered with a viscous red fluid almost resembling human blood. Gross. Grace held it away from himself to avoid getting any more contamination on his suit. Moon walk successful, Grace used the tether to help pull himself back into the airlock. Once the exterior door was closed Grace untaped the plastic bag from the wall and put the UFO inside, taping it firmly shut.
“Unidentified floating object acquired!” Grace announced once he was re-pressurized and out of the suit, holding the bag up proudly. In the artificial gravity the object had some heft to it but still was easy enough for Grace to lift one-handed. Grace looked down at the bag. The blood-like substance had begun to smear along the walls, blocking Grace’s view of his prize.
Grace walked into the lab, a curious Eridian following, now in the xenonite tunnels. Rocky’s tapping was audible as he tried to get a read on this new finding, peering over Grace's shoulder, so to speak. Grace placed the bag inside the vacuum chamber, inserting his hands into the attached black gloves to safely do his own inspection.
First Grace removed the bag with baited breath, taking the UFO out of the bag. Grace took a few samples of the outer liquid coating and placed it in a petri dish. Grace also took a sample in one of the test tubes for molecular analysis. Grace set that spectrometer to run first (it was important to know just what this was made of) and in the meantime continued inspecting the solid object, collecting the rest of the coating in a beaker as best he could.
As the coating was removed, solid rivets of metal were becoming apparent. Grace rubbed his gloved thumbs along the edge, feeling various bumps and ridges. The material was a soft metal, compressing beneath his fingers when he firmly grasped it. (Grace made sure to loosen his grasp after indenting it, not wanting to cause any more permanent damage). It was as though a large patchwork of metal panels had been wielded together clumsily. Well, Grace said 'clumsily', but the level of precise detail needed for work at this scale was insane by human standards. Surgical tools would have been necessary to position each minuscule rivet.
The UFO was cylindrical, with a protrusion at the front resembling the remains of a headlamp, the rest of which had broken off when Grace first caught it. The back of the UFO had a series of propeller-shaped objects, but the fan blades were designed as if to use fluid dynamics, not a propulsion like the Hail Mary’s spin drives. How did this thing get into space, anyhow? It didn’t appear to have any means of traversing space on its own power. It could have been jettisoned out here, of course, but it would have needed to be fired relatively recently to still be maintaining its non-orbital velocity.
The strangest discovery came about when Grace noticed the vessel had the painted alphanumeric "SM-13" along the side. Grace's mind stalled out as he stared down at those damning letters. The scientist supposed it was possible some alien race happened to evolve their written language to look like Latin letters and Arabic numbers. Unfortunately the chances of that convenient coincidence were infinitely stupefying. Was this… from Earth? Taking a moment to re-examine this object under the assumption of it being human-made, Grace's eyes widened. The vessel had a striking resemblance to a human submarine. One of those old ones that were built for deep sea travel, perhaps having been re-enforced with metal panels for even deeper sea travel.
But space, as everyone knows, is not the deep sea.
"What are you doing here?" Grace murmured, frowning as his brain raced to find any logical conclusion.
Grace pulled out his scanner and analyzed the metal exterior. The reading came back as a clear: 'Lead (Pb)'. Grace frowned. Submarines weren't usually made of lead, were they? Well, perhaps lead was used in nuclear submarines for radiation shielding. Oh shoot, did that mean this was radioactive inside? Or maybe the opposite, were they trying to protect this ship from the external radiation associated with space travel?
Grace set the ship down and pulled his hands back out of the gloves. The scientist leaned back in his chair, contemplating. "Hey Rocky, have we watched 1000 leagues under the sea yet?" (Rocky shook his carapace in the equivalent of a human 'no'. It was very nice of Rocky to adopt his mannerisms to help Grace's primitive brain.) "Add it to the list. But basically, humans have these ships called submarines, which we use to traverse the depths of our oceans."
"Eridians have ocean ships as well, term is ♬♪♫."
Grace got up and added the word for submarine to his laptop archive of all Eridian language. "So, here's what's got me stumped right now. This thing is looking remarkably like a human submarine. And on the side, I can see what looks like human letters painted on it too: 'SM-13'. I'm not sure what that means, it's probably just the name of the ship, but it's still very strange that I can read it at all."
Rocky trilled, shifting as he thought over this new observation. "Humans send second ship, question?"
Grace shook his head. "This is too small to fit a person- obviously- so it would have to be some form of probe. But who would make a probe out of lead? No human would make one like this, that's for sure. It would melt on exit or re-entry in our atmosphere. And humans wouldn't be able to send it out this deep into space without firing it from a vessel that was already in space, which we don't have.
"And then the next problem is lead isn’t great once you're out in space, either," Grace continued. "It can cause secondary radiation problems as it collides with incoming radiation, and it's too soft to withstand much pressure on its own. Heck, given the speeds this was traveling at, it's kinda miraculous that this thing didn't just melt already. We're not going our top speed yet but we're going pretty gosh-darn fast." Several thousand kilometers per second, to be exact. The fact that this football hadn't melted like putty in his hands was insane.
"If this is a probe, it's a poorly designed one." Grace concluded aloud. Grace put his hands back in the rubber gloves, turning the object end over end. It felt hollow, like something was shifting around as he tilted it. A solid lead cylinder of this size would be expected to weigh more, so the hollow interior made sense, but what could be inside? All possible access points were sealed up, wielded shut as if the maker wanted to be certain that whatever was inside didn’t escape.
That hypothesis gave Grace pause. If he were wielding something firmly shut and sending it out into space, the contents would probably be something like an incredibly deadly and viral disease. Probably not the best thing to release in the very close quarters of the Hail Mary.
But again, the lead was such a strange part of the puzzle. It kept stumping Grace. Maybe the strange material choice did point to extraterrestrial life, and they just happened to make very human-like engineering choices. Did the beings who propelled this into space not have any better materials to build with? Or maybe this was intended to break apart in atmosphere and scatter its contents? That might make more sense. Perhaps this container was shot out by another ship already in space with the intention of traveling to another galaxy and releasing its contents there, like interstellar pollination. But would the contents be friendly, or an invasive species?
"If ship is human design, most likely explanation is humans sent second ship." Rocky continued to support his own hypothesis. "Perhaps supplies for Grace, help with astrophage problem."
"Or, it's something they just didn't want on Earth anymore," Grace said, playing devil's advocate. It was hard to imagine something more dangerous than the astrophage problem being found on Earth in the last few years. Maybe they found a dangerous life-form dormant in Antarctica? "But what could fit inside this tiny submarine and be worth shooting into space? And why a submarine? Such a strange choice. And what shot this thing in the first place? Where is the other ship?"
"Other ship?"
Grace nodded. "Yeah, the spaceship that shot this submarine."
Rocky looked confused. "No understand, do puppet show."
Grace sighed, but he obligingly pulled out a few of the xenonite pieces Rocky made for him back when puppet shows were more of a common necessity, when they were still learning to translate each other's languages. Grace held up a mini version of the Hail Mary. "This is us." Grace held up a rounded ball of xenonite. "This is blip I-L." Grace showed the two moving in tandem. "Both were moving along, similar velocities. But blip I-L has no engine." Grace put down the Hail Mary and picked up a new piece. "So this is blip I-L's mother ship. That ship must have propelled blip I-L -" (Grace mimed shooting the blip out of the ship) "-but the blip is made of lead, and lead melts at a pretty low temperature compared to our aluminum ship. So, going this fast, all the lil space dust it hits creates friction, aaand-" Grace mimed the blip I-L melting, which really looked more like blowing up. "So blip I-L shouldn't exist. But as we can see, it does. It's weird."
"So blip must have been fired recently, statement." Rocky concluded.
"Yes, exactly, but- with its trajectory, we should have seen blip I-L's ship, in fact we should have passed right by it, but we haven't passed any ship recently." Grace explained. "Or, at all. So where's the other ship? We're the only ones out here for light years as far as we know. Just you and me and our new UFO. I mean it's as if this thing just appeared out of nowhere-" Grace stopped, his eyes widening. "…a wormhole."
Rocky hummed. "Need word."
"A wormhole, it's a-" Ok, they were definitely going to need a puppet show for this, but a 4-dimensional concept didn't translate particularly well into 3-dimensional puppetry. Grace did his best to explain to Rocky the theoretical concept of a passageway in spacetime that could connect two distant points, like a paper folded over on itself with a hole punched through it. "-so then, if wormholes do exist, and this thing traveled through a wormhole, it could have been fired 'recently' out of one end and appeared in front of us now. Heck, we don't know how wormholes function, maybe this blip had a further coating to protect it from space travel that got destroyed by the hole!"
The idea was incredibly intellectually stimulating to Grace, who now had potential proof of a wormhole having existed a distance of kilometers from their very own ship. If only he knew how to trigger one in the first place… and how to avoid one, since that's not something Grace wanted to accidentally enter, if it could be helped. (They were already on a pretty cramped schedule, no time for inter-dimensional detours). As far as human theories went it was often proposed that black holes were wormholes, but if a black hole had been this close, the Hail Mary and all its occupants would already have been turned into spaghetti.
A small ping was heard, and Grace turned to see that the spectrometer was indicating it had finished its readings. The results displayed a distinct mix of hemoglobin and water. “...What?” Grace frowned, trying to make sense of the impossible readings. Rocky came over to ‘view’ the panel too. “It’s human blood."
Rocky trilled nervously, his carapace lowering. Rocky never liked the thought of human blood exiting the body, especially after all he had witnessed when Grace hit his skull. "Humans sent ship, question?"
Grace looked back at the containment chamber and the beaker of red viscous liquid still sitting there innocuously. Grace thought he might be sick. "Uh, maybe." Grace admitted, his face going pale. "Certainly explains the blood bath, at least. You need humans to uh- to get human blood. Adds up. But we don't know how to operate wormholes. Or, we didn't. Maybe we did? Do? Wormholes can traverse dimension and time, theoretically, so… so what, future humans sent this into space? At our exact space and time?"
Maybe this was the equivalent of the 'bloody mary' game done at teenage sleepovers, but instead of contacting spirits you sent blood-covered relics back in time to prank unsuspecting ancestors. It was a completely ridiculous theory, and frankly the only one Grace could think of at this moment. Well, really all Grace could think about was the fact he had a liter of human blood resting in his workspace. Even just sitting there it was greatly disturbing knowing it was there at all. Gross. Can a human even lose that much blood? How many red cross donations would it take to fill a beaker?
Grace laughed, pushing a hand through his hair as he tried to calm his racing heartbeat. Grace had seen a lot of strange things on this voyage but a package absolutely coated in human blood out in the middle of nowhere was not on his bucket list of demonic anomalies to witness today.
Grace must be sending off some sort of bio-signals that Rocky was able to pick up on, because Rocky clearly understood Grace had grown distressed. Rocky let out a gentle chord, moving closer to the xenonite wall in a show of comfort. "Humans very cruel sending Grace strange present. Bad bad bad."
Grace leaned against the warm tunnel, letting Rocky comfort him. "Yeeeeah, not really loving the creepy cult signals coming from this thing." Grace admitted. Whatever was happening here was rather disturbing. But Grace prided himself on being a man of science, and there was still the vessel itself to investigate. Grace tried to put aside his misgivings (maybe there was a reasonable explanation, like human blood was the best coating for wormhole travel? …That wasn't better) and go back to figuring out just what was sent to them.
Grace took a deep breath, getting back to work. The vacuum of the containment chamber had gained some atmosphere from the blood off-gassing, but the readings in the compartment didn’t indicate any leaks from the object itself. The lead panels were doing their job and keeping whatever atmosphere- and anything else inside- safely contained.
"Time to see what's inside this bad boy." Grace declared, performing an interlaced finger stretch as he hyped himself up for this. "Hope this thing was meant to be opened!" With no clear way of opening the submarine, it seemed the least destructive way in would be cutting it. This did mean whatever was inside would be permanently able to escape, but at least it was already trapped within the containment chamber. If there was a deadly virus, Grace could just keep it like a terrarium pet until they reached Erid. And then catapult Mary and all her contents into the sun (sorry, Mary).
Using the small airlock system Rocky had built back when Grace first contained the taumeoba, Grace passed the astrophage-powered laser into the containment chamber. Grace tilted the submarine again and tried to determine where would be the best place to make the cut. Traditionally a sub would be opened from the hatch on top, but without being able to see how deep he was cutting Grace feared slicing the contents collaterally. It would be better to chop of an end of the ship, leaving it open like a cup. But which end, the front or the rear?
…where do nuclear submarines store their reactors, again?
Making sure to keep his fingers well out of the way, Grace decided to go for the front and hope he didn't explode them all. A light purple beam shot out of the device. Grace fiddled with the settings, making sure it would be manageable as he stalled making the first cut. Finally satisfied, Grace began to slice all around the submarine, turning it in his hand and aiming for a cut about one inch deep from the very front tip.
Rocky had begun tapping furiously on the ground, a sign the anxious Eridian was trying to get a better read on what he was 'looking' at now that the thick lead muting his 'vision' was being removed. Grace paused, looking closely at Rocky for any indication that he should stop, but Rocky just kept tapping away. Well, if Rocky wasn't concerned, Grace probably wasn't about to get his hand melted or anything.
When the incision was complete, Grace turned off the laser. The front piece of the submarine fell into Grace's left hand, which placed it upon the table. Grace looked over at the chamber's atmosphere readings. The temperature had risen with the use of the laser, but was now falling steadily to match the ambient temperature of the ship. There was an increase in Nitrogen and Oxygen in the chamber as they flooded out. The readings became sparse once they filled the given space, but in a composition similar to Earth. Atmospheric pressures were indicating levels similar to Earth as well, or at least closer to Earth than Erid's.
Once he was satisfied that the compartment wasn't about to spontaneously combust, Grace tilted the ship held in his right hand. It was dark inside- of course it was, the thing was shielded in so many layers of lead- but the components lining the walls did support the hypothesis that this was a real submarine. All manner of pipes and valves lined the walls. A metal mesh flooring ran along the base of the ship, which was currently oriented parallel to Grace's chest. A light-bulb was stuck to the roof of the vessel, but it was no longer lit. Grace must have severed its wiring when he sawed the ship in half.
But all of these details were secondary observations, because Grace's full concentration was stuck on the fact that at the very back of the vessel a human the size of his finger was staring up at him in horror.
"uuuuuuuUUUUUH." Grace eyes widened to their absolute max. It took all of his willpower to not let go of the submarine, to the point where his fingers clenched so hard that he dented the metal slightly further. The tiny person, held against the back wall of the sub by gravity, yelped, tucking their head into their arms and preparing to be crushed like a soda can. "SHIT! Shoot! Sorry, sorry! Oh my gravy, holy freakazoid, oooooh please no, no you're ok, I'm so sorry." Grace was rambling now, his heart shattered into a million pieces as he saw this vulnerable little life flinch further at Grace's panicked yelling.
Rocky was skittering frantically now, overwhelmed in his enthusiasm over what was at last an interesting discovery. "Tiny human, question? Tiny human statement! Grace never said humans come so small, pebble size, tiny tiny tiny-" The excited Eridian fell from his perch, tumbling limb over carapace down the xenonite tunnel and landing safely in the bottom basin. The loud thud made Grace twitch, every muscle tensing to keep himself painfully still.
"Rocky, rocky, I need you to calm down." Grace was panicking, and Rocky was not helping his mental state. "We don't- uh, not usually? Humans aren't this small. Humans can't be this small. Holly molly I have no idea what's happening here. But you gotta contain yourself buddy, you're scaring them."
That was not a completely accurate statement. The tiny person had not so much as twitched at Rocky's outburst, and appeared to have already reached max levels of freaked out. The little person probably didn't even catch a glimpse of Rocky with Grace's face taking up their entire view. Maybe that was for the best- a giant rock spider desperately trying to inspect you would be a rather terrifying sight. Though a massive middle school teacher carving your solid metal ship in half was probably just as monstrous to behold.
Oh how Grace wished his hands were out of the quarantine rubber gloves so he could run his fingers frantically through his hair. But at the moment, Grace was standing uncharacteristically frozen, terrified of so much as twitching and hurting the little person. Grace shuddered, remembering the carefree way he had been tumbling this submarine end over end just minutes ago. How much had Grace hurt them? At least they were still alive. For the moment.
"…Hi." Grace whispered, dropping his volume in hopes of not scaring their- what, newest roommate?- further. "Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry. I swear I didn't know anyone was in this thing. Are you hurt?"
The tiny lifted their head slowly, peering up at Grace, but there was no response to Grace's words. Then Grace remembered the thick glass of the containment chamber, and wondered if the tiny would even be able to hear him at a whisper. An Eridian would have no trouble hearing through the glass, but Grace's weaker human hearing would have a hard time picking up a reply. Maybe their visitor had the same limits.
Very, very, very slowly, Grace tilted the submarine to be upright once more, setting the submarine down to rest on the lab table. Grace pulled his hands free of the gloves, clicking through the safeguards to allow the containment chamber to be opened. "I really hope my atmosphere doesn't kill you." Grace stated, hoping that his calculations of the atmospheric contents of the submarine were correct.
With this joyful thought, Grace grabbed the handle and opened up the compartment, letting air and sound flow freely between the two spaces. Grace grabbed a flashlight from the lab drawer, crouching slightly to peer directly into the submarine opening. Grace turned on the light, taking care to not aim the beam directly into the tiny person's face. The tiny squinted anyways, a hand coming up to shield his vision as he continued to peer out at Grace cautiously.
'He', because this was a tiny man by the looks of it, with long black hair down to his shoulders and a wrap of fabric around his forehead. The stranger had what looked to either be facial hair or dirt (it was hard to tell at such a scale from a distance) and was dressed in some sort of modest green uniform. Teeny tiny boots were kept tucked near his body as the man kept his knees up, his second hand clenched around them.
"Hello." Grace spoke softly, giving a little wave with his empty hand. The tiny eyed the movement warily, clearly tracking Grace's fingers until Grace sheepishly lowered it out of sight. "My name's Grace. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
The man did not respond, continuing to stare. Grace might feel uncomfortable if he wasn't equally guilty of staring right back. After all, Grace was just as eager as Rocky to learn just what the fudge was going on here. But unlike Rocky, Grace had the patience of a teacher, and was used to waiting for children to work up the nerve to answer him.
"Tiny human speak other human language, question?" Rocky proposed, gesturing to the laptops. "Need translator, question?"
"Maybe," Grace admitted. "But let's just give him a moment, Rocky. We don't want to overwhelm him."
"New word needed."
"Overwhelm. Feeling too much stimulus, lots of stress especially." Grace looked to Rocky. The Eridian clearly didn't know what to do with himself, his leg still tapping away whilst his other two hands had started fiddling again. "I'm not sure exactly what our new friend will want, but the Hail Mary isn't exactly built for his stature. How about you start crafting some human furniture for his size?"
The high-pitched noise that came out of Rocky could only be categorized as an excited squeal. It had been several weeks since Rocky was able to put his Engineering skills to good use. "Yes yes yes! Rocky make great compartment for keeping tiny human."
"Great!" Grace breathed a sigh of relief, watching Rocky hunker down to craft with his xenonite equipment. With Rocky occupied on a mechanical project, Grace could give his entire focus to welcoming their newest unwitting crew member aboard the Hail Mary. No pressure.
Grace took a deep breath, turning back to the lil guy with what he hoped was a gentle, encouraging smile. The man had stood up sometime whilst Grace had been turned to address Rocky, but now froze like a deer in headlight's under Grace's gaze. "So, can you understand English?"
Grace sat patiently, his eyes squinting a tad as he focused hard on detecting any movement from the man. Grace began a mental countdown in his head, wondering how long he should wait before pulling out the translation software. Just as Grace reached the second minute mark, the tiny gave a short, terse nod.
"Good!" Grace was relieved- he really hadn't wanted to go down the line of 7,000+ human languages to find one this stranger recognized. And there had always been the possibility this person didn't speak a known language at all, if he was raised by aliens, or from an alternate dimension.
It was killing Grace inside to be back to square one, reminding him of those first few days with Rocky when Grace often had to resort to rather elementary explanations and a lot of games of charades. All Grace wanted to do was get answers, but the answers he wanted were currently too complicated for their traumatized guest.
"Do you- can you speak English?" Grace continued. "Or can you read and write? I could get a pen and paper. Er, sorry, don't have any your size." Grace tried to imagine how difficult it would be to use a writing utensil effectively taller than yourself. The idea of a pen that large was comical, but for this person that would just be a regular pen. It was too bad the space program had phased out the use of pencils, or else Grace could have broken off a pencil tip and offered that instead.
"I-" The man's mouth opened, and on instinct Grace leaned forward to better hear the quiet voice. The movement made the man pause again, but when Grace stayed still, the man cleared his throat and spoke louder. "Where…am I?" The man's eyes strayed at last from Grace, peering beyond the scientist into the white and brightly lit laboratory beyond.
Grace kept his voice soft. "You're aboard our ship, called the Project Hail Mary. We left the Tau Ceti system and are currently headed for the planet Erid in the 40 Eridani system, if that means anything to you.” Grace observed the minuscule stranger, cowering inside a lead-lined submarine in the middle of nowhere. Grace asked the question he was most curious to know. “Where did you come from?”
But the man did not answer his question. "Who are you?" The man asked instead.
Grace winced; maybe all his ship-shaking had given the stranger a concussion after all. "My name's Grace." Grace re-introduced himself. "What's your name?"
"Uh, I'm Simon." The stranger mumbled, so quietly that Grace had to ask him to repeat himself. Simon steadied himself by putting out his right hand against the sub's interior, his little knees trembling. Simon was still looking around in complete disbelief, his big wide eyes reminding Grace of a frightened lamb. "Am I…dead?"
"Ah, no, not dead," Grace confirmed. "You are very much still alive. As am I. And you're not going to die anytime soon!" Grace hurried to explain, his voice raising in his anxious fervor. "Sorry, should have clarified earlier- we come in peace." Grace threw up a peace sign as evidence.
Simon didn't seem to believe him, still staring around as though viewing everything through a hazy fog for the first time.
Grace coughed, lowering his peace sign. "So, not to rush you or anything, we do have plenty of time until we reach Erid after all, but the question of the day is, admittedly, where are you from? Because, not to alarm you, but we did find you hurling several thousand miles a second. Or kilometers, depending on your preference. Sorry, I'm American."
Simon frowned, clearly not understanding all of Grace's ramblings. "I'm from Eden." Simon finally answered. The little guy inspected the side of his hull for a moment. "But I was just in the blood ocean on AT-5."
Well, that meant very little to Grace. The blood ocean part checked out, considering how absolutely drenched the submarine had been in the stuff (and Grace tried very hard not to picture an entire ocean of human blood), but Grace had no idea what Eden or AT-5 were, and Simon seemed to expect Grace to know both.
There was also the concerning bit about Simon last remembering being inside an ocean, as oceans are famously not found in space.
"Yeah, I don't know where that is." Grace admitted. "Do you know the star system?"
Simon froze, his eyes snapping back to Grace. "The what?"
"The star system." Grace reiterated. "What star is at the center of your planet's orbit?"
Simon's gaze hardened, all innocent wonder gone from his eyes as he frowned at Grace. "So this is a trick?" Simon huffed, his shoulders deflating beneath an invisible heavy weight. Simon gestured towards Grace, towards the Hail Mary. "All of this, is just another ploy to play with me?"
The weight of Simon's words sat heavy in the air, but Grace had no idea what could possibly have triggered the little guy so much. When Grace shook his head in confusion, Simon's frown only grew. The submariner pounded his fist against the lead hull, creating a ringing so loud Grace heard it bounce back against the opposite wall.
"STOP IT!" Simon demanded, pointing his finger accusingly in Grace's direction. The tiny man's lips curled back into a true snarl, which would be a rather impressive intimidation tactic if he wasn't the size of Grace's index finger. "Don't torment me, this isn't real! You're not real! Everyone knows the stars are gone!"
Of all the things Grace expected Simon to declare, that was certainly not one of them. It was almost ludicrous, but Simon was still panting with such adamant fury that it was clear this was no time for laughing. Grace frowned, wondering just how hard Simon had hit his head.
But then, Grace considered the wormhole theory once more. Grace rubbed his mouth thoughtfully. Wormholes could travel space and time, theoretically, so maybe Simon was from the future- a future where astrophage had consumed all light from every known star. The thought sent a chill down Grace's spine, crushed by the weight of an inevitable defeat far in advance. Was it true? Was all of this for nothing? Were the stars predestined to die?
No, it couldn't be. The taumeoba would work, they were already successfully containing the population at Tau Ceti. Even if astrophage evolved, taumeoba would evolve right alongside with it. Life finds a way, after all.
But perhaps in Simon's future, the taumeoba didn't survive in the other star systems. All stars but Tau Ceti went extinct, and somehow humans survived, and they ended up having to do insane things like explore blood oceans just to stay alive. Grace knew nothing about how a wormhole could disrupt the time-space continuum, but he could only pray that the beetles made it home and Earth wasn't headed for Simon's future.
"The stars are here," Grace said, holding up his hand to still Simon's anger. "We think that you traveled through a wormhole. I didn't know it was possible, honestly, but if you did, it's possible you and your ship have traveled through space and time and ended up here. If that's true, my guess is you're either from some alternate future, or an alternate universe, but here and now we have stars."
Simon's eyes skirted around Grace's face, analyzing him. "You're lying." Simon huffed.
"I'm not." Grace raised his eyebrows challengingly. "Would you like to see them?"
Simon paused, clearly not having expected the offer. It was evident the little guy remained utterly convinced Grace was deceiving him. But, for the sake of the stars, Simon gave a terse nod. It seemed the surprisingly hotheaded tiny was willing to trust Grace after all- even if it was only to try and call Grace out on a bluff.
Grace smiled, turning off his flashlight at last and tucking it into his pocket. "Ok, great, I'll just veeeery carefully lift your ship again-" But as Grace reached for the submarine, Simon frantically shook his head no, and Grace's grin faltered. "-or not. We do have to get to the other room though, the window's in there. Not a lot of windows on a spaceship."
"I'm not staying in this damn thing for another fucking minute." Simon balled up his fists, straightening his back like a man with a list of demands. "I want out of this ship."
A fair request, with a rather obvious solution. Grace looked at Simon still standing in the shadows, then pointedly looked at the gaping hole where the front of the submarine used to be.
"The door's wide open." Grace gestured for Simon to go ahead, rolling his chair slightly away to give Simon a little more breathing room without Grace looming over the entrance. "Though, fair warning, you are on top of a lab table, so don't go sprinting off the edge please. Actually, not to be rude or anything, but that does bring up the other major question I have- are you human?"
Simon scoffed, stalking forward towards the opening warily. "Of course I'm human."
"Yeah, sure, but- so am I." Grace put a hand above his head, brushing the hairs as if measuring his height. "And there's a little bit of a height discrepancy here, soooo that's a bit of a mind-boggler." (Or rather, a physics question Grace was eager to pick apart for weeks once he had any semblance of evidence as to what might have even happened to Simon to make him shrink. Because Grace had to be the normal sized one here, right?)
Simon had paused at the very edge of the melted seam, squinting once again as he emerged from the makeshift cave. The little guy hesitated, carefully stepping down off the ledge, and looking pleasantly shocked that his foot made contact with anything at all. Then Simon began inspecting his surroundings further, his face tightening as he got a better view at a space which must look gigantic and foreign to him at this scale.
"Are all humans your size, or did you shrink?" Grace asked abruptly, needing answers.
Simon jumped slightly, glancing at Grace out of the corner of his eye. It reminded Grace of an animal keeping a wary eye on a nearby predator. "I'm normal-sized." Simon said stiffly. Then he looked around again, at all of the lab equipment towering over him, and lost some of his confidence. "Or… I was normal. What the hell is going on here?"
"Yeah, that's what I'd like to know." Grace leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "It's a real head-scratcher. Why would a wormhole make you experience a shrinking episode? If that much space-time was compressing you, I'd expect it to squash you like a grape, not lessen the space between your molecules." Simon did not seem to appreciate this imagery, turning rather pale at the prospect of being squished, so Grace was quick to change the topic. "Sorry. We can investigate that later. For now you wanted to see the stars."
It was now that Grace truly compared Simon's scale to that of his own hand. How marvelous, that Grace could easily fit an entire sentient being in his palm. Slowly, Grace placed his hand palm up in front of Simon on the table, staying absolutely still. "Hop on, I can carry you to the window." Grace offered.
Simon looked dubiously at the gigantic fleshy platform set before him. When Simon tentatively stepped a first foot on, Grace's whole arm convulsed in a shiver, and Simon scrambled back hastily. "Sorry! That tickled." Grace admitted, shaking out his shoulders to try and rid himself of the feathery sensation. Simon was even more hesitant to try again, but Grace gave his best encouraging smile. "Just try and do it a little faster, a bit more weight should make it less ticklish."
Simon frowned at him. "If you fling me off, I'm going to haunt you."
Grace considered these terms fair. Luckily, this time Grace was braced for the sensation, and he was able to avoid flinching when Simon clambered aboard his hand. It was an unbearably strange sensation. Simon was scrambling up using both hands and knees for stability, and the little spots of pressure felt similar to holding a hamster. It occurred to Grace that this was his very first human contact in years. In fact, with their trajectory towards a planet full of Eridians, Simon would likely be the last human Grace ever got to touch. Subconsciously, Grace's fingers curled slightly around Simon, protectively. Grace slowly raised Simon to cradle against his chest to prevent slippage, standing up at a snail's pace.
"Oh, wow." Grace breathed, chin tilted down to look at the life cradled in his palms. This was an entirely reverent experience, reminding Grace of his time floating in the petrova line. Grace felt as though he was on the brink of something bigger than himself, triggered by a life tinier than himself.
Simon had craned his neck as well, inspecting Grace right back. Grace wondered what he must look like in Simon's eyes. Was he monstrous? It must be frightening, to wake up and find yourself facing a 'giant'. And yet here Simon sat, not even a full hour later, cradled in the palm of Grace's hand. Simon must be a very brave man indeed.
Grace heard a whooshing sound and looked to see Rocky transferring back through the airlock to his xenonite ball. Rocky rolled towards them, evidently deeming the human un-traumatized enough to come and introduce himself. Simon followed Grace's gaze, freezing as the large boulder creature came scuttling up to them both.
"Hello tiny human ♫♫♫♪." Rocky said, assigning an Eridian name as Simon's moniker. "It is very nice to meet you, you will not be afraid."
Simon had tensed, his fingernails clenching around Grace's index finger like the lap bar on a rollercoaster. "What the hell is that?" Simon asked warily.
"This is Rocky." Grace explained, bumping the ball with his elbow to gesture with his hands full. "He's an Eridian. They kind of look like rock spiders and communicate by music. He's cool though, Rocky's my best friend."
"Yes, I am scary space monster." Rocky teased, except his translator voice didn't pick up on sarcasm, so it didn't do much to help calm the wary Simon. "Is joke. I only look like scary space monster. Grace and Rocky best friends, Grace and Rocky save stars!"
"Yes, stars, Simon wants to see them." Grace explained, stepping around Rocky to head towards the window. "He says he comes from a future with no stars."
Rocky's tone lowered, his carapace sinking. "Yes, Rocky heard. Bad bad bad. Will not be us, will not be our stars. Taumeoba save stars, yes yes. Planets saved, Rocky Grace heroes. Stars ok."
"Sometimes for humans, believing is seeing." Grace explained, crouching down into the little enclave where he had sat and stared for hours during the darker parts of his voyage. "Mary, dim the lights?"
The interior lights faded down to just the emergency footpath lighting, making it easier to observe the outside. Grace held Simon up against the window, giving the now silent human a perfect view of the universe ever extending outwards. Simon pressed his palm up against the glass, in awe as he took in the vast expanse. It was rather dark in this particular quadrant, no nearby stars to illuminate them as they passed on the outer edges of solar systems. All of the stars were distant pinpricks of light; bits of glitter sprinkled across the horizon. The closest star was approximately the size of Grace's pinky tip from this distance, a happy yellow polka dot punched out of the otherwise blackened sky.
Simon was crying now, but Grace was polite enough not to say anything about it. "It's so bright." Simon breathed, soaking desperately in even these most minuscule light waves. Grace looked out at space with new eyes, trying to imagine how it might feel to look out and see…nothing.
"Yeah." Grace agreed, as though seeing it for the first time. "It is."