Archive of Our Own

"This is Earth gravity?"

It felt odd, having actual solid ground beneath my claws outside of the ship's commissary. Thanks to a lucky accident early in our space history (unlucky for the poor sucker who almost died, to be clear, but very lucky for science as a whole) it had been discovered that gravity was necessary for the body to properly recover after eating. As such, a centrifuge had been built into the living quarters, a ring of special soundproof rooms that could lazily rotate around an axis. Those utilitarian little dens had been the only place where I could actually stand for a very long time, and now I was doing it here, in what could more or less be considered polite company.

Grace glances at his screens.

"Yes," he confirms. "This is Earth gravity."

When I have the time, I've already decided, I'm going to figure out how to retrofit my ship's optical system into something I can use by claw, get a proper read on Grace's gallery of magical information rectangles. Not to say that I distrust him, but relying on anyone other than myself for critical data about the ship and potentially the whole mission just made me feel antsy.

I press my claws against the walls of my life support dome and roll it a bit, getting a feel for our newfound bearings. The pull wasn't so weak that it was going to be a problem, I'm pretty sure, but it was certainly less than I was naturally calibrated for.

"Not much gravity," I say. "What is value?"

"9.8 meters per second per second."

Ah, that tracks. It was just reminding me of the way gravity felt around halfway up the space elevator back home, where things weren't quite "floaty" yet but you definitely started to notice things getting lighter, including your own body. Falling was slower, but a lot of vertical and lateral movements were faster. New employees causing or receiving minor injuries, often from overshooting mundane things like talking with their claws, was so common that it became a staple part of the workplace culture.

"Not much gravity," I affirm. "Erid gravity is 20.48."

Grace puffs out a little air, not quite a laugh but still a sign of levity. "That's a lot of gravity."

With how precarious they were, I had doubts that an Earthling could ever walk on Erid. Not that it would be high on their list of problems.

On that note: yeah, now that we had gravity, I'd finally had the chance to hear an Earthling walk. Grace had explained it already, even done his best to demonstrate what it sounded like, but it only did so much to prepare me for actually hearing it.

Earthlings had, as promised, evolved highly specialized arms where we had remained generalists. The two closest to the head were for interfacing with their environment, that much was clear with or without gravity, but the other two, the ones that seemed all but useless until now, were used nigh-exclusively for locomotion. The two interfacing arms were attached far too high to reach the ground, leaving them to be held in a restful pose or simply dangle when they weren't in use. That left the other two, all on their own, to either remain planted or to exchange the body's weight back and forth to get it around; suddenly the shape of the "hands" at the end made a lot more sense.

The long, multicultural affair that lead to the ship's launch ended up really coming in clutch here: I happened to know from brushing so many elbows back then that a few northern languages use different words for arms and claws depending on what they're presently being used for. So, describing the specialized arms that Earthlings walked upon - their "legs" and the "feet" they ended with - was as simple as borrowing a few of those words.

While we were in zero gravity, Grace had generally tried to keep his face toward his direction of travel with his thorax perpendicular to the ground, and now I knew why - that's the exact posture Earthlings assume when they walk. So now I needed to get used to the sound of him all reared up and imposing on me like that at basically all times.

Listening to Grace walk was like hearing a painful gymnastic trick that should only last a few seconds go on indefinitely: in one sense, disturbing, triggering that "uncanny" kind of feeling in your insect brain, but also so confounding and remarkable that you couldn't pull your attention away from it. Apparently, there was a whole section of his brain whose main commitment was keeping the body balanced like that, and I believe him - the guy was a natural klutz if I've ever met one. If it were at all possible for his brain to mess this up he'd be flopping around the ship like a fish on land, yet he went about his business like any respectable tetrapod.

As an aside, while Grace was as interested as he always was, he didn't seem at all surprised when he finally saw me walk around. Apparently, while there was nothing on Erid that moved like an Earthling, almost every land animal on Earth moved more or less the way I did, and the departure from this norm was one of the critical things that allowed Earthlings to dominate their ecosystem. Not sure how to feel about that.

"So," Grace began, directing my attention back to the present. He was letting gravity pull him back into his pilot's seat; it shaped his legs into a natural cushion so it probably felt nice. "What's the plan? Fly into the Petrova line and get some Astrophage?"

"Yes!" I answer. "But first, I make xenonite room for me."

It was presumptuous, I know, but I'm going to need to do business with my rations eventually. I point at the hatch that lead to the rest of the ship.

"Mostly in sleep room. But tunnels in lab and... small area in control room. Is okay?"

Proud to say, I'm getting a little better at reading the nuances of Earthling facial expressions. My request seems to puzzle him, but then he relaxes and dips his face down for just a moment - that's a "nod," a sign of understanding - likely reaching the same conclusion I did.

"Yes, that's fine. Where is the xenonite?"

"Xenonite parts in bags in dormitory. Liquids, mix, become xenonite."

There's a particularly mobile bundle of tiny muscles over his eyes, and they raise up at that. It's harder with my sonar, but to Earthling vision there's apparently very obvious markings there that evolved entirely for the purpose of conveying emotion.

"Interesting!" he says. "Someday I want to know all about xenonite."

A job for the science team, I'm afraid. Shit, if they were still here, we'd probably be wrapping up the whole Astrophage affair with a nice bow, and the new, equally-indominable threat to both our worlds would be getting the three of them to shut up.

"I not understand science," I admit, breaking my train of thought before I get gloomy. "I just use. Apology."

He smiles. I don't think this is a straightforward "happy" smile but it isn't bad either, its something more subtle.

"That's okay. I can't explain how to make a thinking machine, I just use it."

I make an attempt to return a tilt with the same energy. "Good, you understand."

"How long will your xenonite construction take?"

I drum a few fingers. "Four days, could be five days. Why you ask?"

"I want to work fast."

That's rather unlike him. He'd been more than patient with all my questions and just as eager to spend hours asking his own, sometimes for whole Erid days without a break. I know those conversations weren't frivolous, they were ultimately very useful for learning each other's languages, but still.

"Why so fast?" I ask. "Slower is safer, less mistakes."

It's only the safeguards keeping us from fucking dying and taking both our planets down with us, after all, maybe worth an extra measurement or three.

But I think he's giving me a dark look. He shuffles in his chair and glances away, trying to find the right words.

"Earth is in a bad state," he finally says. "It's getting worse all the time. I have to hurry."

I mean, yeah, fair. But that's "let's not dawdle" levels of urgency, not "worth risking the integrity of our life support with a rush job", right? Especially for his planet, it's already beyond frigid.

"No understand. Why Earth bad so fast? Erid go bad slower. Have at least seventy-two years before big problems."

The face he makes as soon as he checks the number gives me a bad feeling. He turns from the screen and looks at me, eyes wide, then he looks away again. He reaches up and digs his fingers into the side of his forehead, his whole face crumpled with careful thought.

"... Erid is much hotter than Earth," he finally says. "And Erid is much larger, with a much thicker atmosphere. So Erid has a whole lot more heat stored in its air."

I think I caught the emphatic word there. My gut tightens.

"Earth is getting bad fast. Very fast. In fourteen years, most Earthlings will be dead."

... What?

I repeat the words to myself, trying to imagine any other possible way I could interpret them, but I come up empty.

Fourteen years. It's hard to even think.

It took us almost that long just to figure out what the problem even was, and that's how long it would be until at least half of the people of Earth would be dead.

Fourteen. Fourteen Earth years. Twenty-two.

I hadn't even been old enough to... oh God, no, I don't even need to go there - an Earthling lifespan is a sufficient point of reference here. Just the other day I had been astounded when Grace explained his species' life cycle to me. I'd struggled to take in the implications, said a few not-entirely-tolerant things about how purposelessly fast it all seemed, and yet-

My arms almost buckle as I make the connection. There were babies being born on Earth, right now, today, who would immediately start growing at a rate I could scarcely comprehend, and in the time it would take for their world to grow half empty, they still wouldn't be adults.

I don't know the whole timeline here. I don't know what the numbers were when they first discovered Sol was infected. But if things on Erid had ever gotten to the point where we had only fourteen years to work with? We'd have all died. Simple. Nothing else to consider - we'd be fucked. Our ecosystem would have vanished from the universe with barely a cosmic second's worth of warning, lucky to have even figured out what was about to hit us. Our final days would be spent starving and eating each other until the very last Eridian wasted away in a ditch somewhere, and that would be that.

And yet, here Grace was, and here was his ship. A monumental show of collective effort and manhours, technology and resources I can scarcely understand, all flung trillions of kilometers into the void. Fourteen years, and still just as determined to get the damn thing done.

I try to process the implications of that, and... I can't. I don't have any other points of reference to work with. This is the most alien Grace has felt to me since the first time we met, it almost frightens me.

But I don't need to do all of that comprehending right now. I just need to trust that he's telling the truth.

I'm going to need to use my time a lot more intentionally from now on. I take a deep breath, steadying my voice to the maximum extent possible: "I understand. Stress. Concern."

Could be my imagination, but I think I hear tension leave Grace's body. "Yes."

I get a good click as I bring two claws together.

"Then we work, we work now!" I'm already listening to the living space throughout the ship, mentally doing measurements. Getting this done in a few days will be a challenge, and all of a sudden, I'm in the mood for one. "Learn how to kill Astrophage. You return to Earth, you explain. Save Earth!"

I make a good trundle for the exit, expecting Grace to meet my enthusiasm. Once again, I'm surprised.

He sounds uncomfortable, I think. He breathes in quietly, then lets it out a little louder, enough that I think it's deliberate. It's not quite a self-soothing sort of breath, I know that's common to both our species and this is different. And before I can ask what's eating him, he answers me.

"I'm not going back. I'm going to die here."

My arms buckle properly. I should be embarrassed, but I barely even notice.

"W..."

Now I can't think. I want to review what he just said, figure out whatever he actually meant and why I misunderstood them, but, my mind won't cooperate: the only memories it wants to present all sound like my airlock depressurizing. When I finally force myself to speak, it's robotic.

"Why?"

"My ship only had enough fuel for the trip here. I don't have enough to go home," he explains. The sad but gentle way that he speaks scares me far more than the words, I may barely know the language but I know that tone. "I have tiny little probes that will return to Earth with my findings, but I will stay here."

I know it's wrong, but the first thing that breaks through the numbness is anger. Ugly, primordial anger, the kind nobody should be proud of because it leads to something worse.

"...Why is mission like this?"

His hands rise up a little, along with the connecting points of his arms. I actually feel sick; I know he's trying to communicate something to me, the only person he has left to confide in about being put to death, and I understand nothing.

"This is all the fuel my planet could make in time."

... oh.

The anger doesn't leave, exactly. But, as I realize the gravity of his words and my rational brain steps in, it... fails. Like a potent chemical reaction without a catalyst.

Of course. What else could they do?

I have enough information. I could have come to that conclusion myself. I didn't have to force him to make this conversation longer than it needed to be.

Astrophage is a particular little bastard. It insists, politely but utterly without compromise, on remaining 96.415 degrees Celsius at all times - never more, never less. Introduce any more energy than that, and its mass will soak that energy right up until it can soak no more, and then simply ignore it.

That's exactly why they've been such a pain in the ass for both our planets - they eat themselves fat on the best sources of energy in the universe, the ones we just happen to depend on to live, and then use it to fuck right off. That evolutionary quirk is what we exploited when we made all our nautical breeder tanks. The oceans of Erid may not be as abundant as the sun, but they're still more than warm enough to satisfy the Astrophage appetite.

Earth, meanwhile? Grace told me, its average temperature sits at a cataclysmic 15 degrees Celsius, with barely an atmosphere to speak of. Under those conditions, Astrophage would be hot, piping hot, nearly hot enough to boil water. And anything hot is constantly losing energy.

They had the miracle of interstellar travel at their fingertips, just in time to save themselves, only to find that accumulating the power needed to do it wouldn't just be an uphill battle - it would be a bucket with trillions of tiny holes. A bucket that they had no choice but to fill, under a time crunch so extreme I still didn't know how to imagine it, or else everything they ever knew and loved would die. It was like some kind of cruel joke.

Grace is still looking at me. It's hard to say, but I think he knew this would be difficult for me. Me, the one who gets to go home and enjoy the rest of his own stupid life at the end of this mess - that's who he's thinking about right now. And they sent him here to die. Him and two other Earthlings I'll never get the pleasure of meeting.

"... You knew this when you left Earth?"

He nods softly. "Yes."

I should be furious. Their own people, they sent them all to die. The relentless living Hell that was this mission was always going to have one survivor, and it was always going to be me. Why am I so calm?

Part of it, hard as it is to admit, is that some part of me saw this coming. The size of the ship, the capacity of the tanks relative to the amount of usable fuel, the skeletal crew size - I'd avoided thinking about it, tried to brush it off as a bunch of "Earthling stuff" I didn't understand, but now it all made sense.

But mostly... he said so himself, barely a minute ago: fourteen years. Those hideous, half-formed mental images, they're still fresh in my mind. In as much as I can, I try to imagine the desperation of his people.

Would we have done the same thing?

... Of course we would. What a stupid question.

Not everybody would like it, I'm sure. A lot of bleeding-heart types would want us to just roll over and get ready to accept extinction with dignity, eat our last meals and let half a million years of recorded history come to an otherwise-avoidable end. But other people would find sense. Enough people.

Hell, we'd all been hopeful to return home but entirely ready to die if that's what it came to. What difference would a guarantee have made, really?

They didn't do this because they wanted to. They were just overwhelmingly unlucky, and they didn't even realize it. It's completely irrational, and I know it isn't helpful, but a part of me feels guilty over ever being so afraid for Erid. They had a little more technology, sure, but so what? It's technology, it's not miracle work.

They sent my friend out here to die, and I did not hate them. I felt shame just at the thought. But that didn't make it any less unfair, or me any less miserable.

Focus.

Right. I need to keep all that to myself. However much better he deserves, the bare minimum I can do is keep this from being any harder for him.

For whatever its worth, I steady my voice again: "You are good Earthling."

"Thanks."

I don't know how much longer he has, but I hope it's enough for me to learn the words to say something better.

"... So," Grace turns his chair toward his screens, obviously wanting to change the subject. "Let's collect Astrophage. I have a few ideas for how we can get some samples."

... hang on.

"My equipment is very good at detecting trace amounts-"

I hold up a claw, "Wait."

Returning to an objective state of mind made me remember something, something so obvious it made me feel like an idiot. Could it really be that simple...?

"How much Astrophage you ship need to return to Earth?"

The chair turns again. Grace sounds very taken aback, even I can tell. "Uh..."

But my brain doesn't even wait for an answer. It's already frantically taking measurements of the fuel bays, making a lot of educated guesses, doing math-

"... just over two million kilograms?"

Oh my God, I don't even need to do math! It wasn't just simple, it was trivial!

I pipe up, only for it to be far too high for his range of hearing. I force myself to take a breath and speak clearly: "I can give."

Grace jolts up from his seat. "What?!"

"I can give, I have extra," I explain. I know this is going to raise a lot of questions, but I just can't wait. "Can give that much and still have plenty for my return to Erid."

I hadn't recognized it at the time, but I've only heard his body this riddled with shock once before: the very first time he saw me.

"Seriously?! It's a lot of fuel!" Earthling voices don't vary in pitch to show emotion nearly as much as ours, but they still do, and I'd never heard it more pronounced than this. "Let me repeat it: two million kilograms. Two times ten to the sixth power!"

His heart is thrashing so loudly I can't even tune it out, but his breathing has all but stopped. I think this is fear - his brain is so afraid of further disappointment it instinctively fights any good fortune that could set it up. And really, who could blame it?

"Yes," I step closer to him, as much as I could manage in the space we had. "I have much Astrophage. My ship was more efficient than planned on trip here. You can have two million kilograms."

He stares at me. When he finally blinks again, his eyes unfocus and he stares out into... the wall? Nothing? I thought I spoke as clearly as I could, but his body isn't calming down at all. If anything, it's getting worse.

His extremities shake. Within seconds, he's breathing so hard it distorts his entire outline and I need to focus my hearing to correct for it. It's like his body has suddenly gotten desperately hot - or, I guess in his case, like it desperately needs oxygen for a matter of life or death. He reaches up and braces his hands against his head, tipping back until the chair catches him. His heart is now hammering at a volume I hadn't even thought was possible, making his whole circulation cycle alarmingly clear.

"Oh my Ωæd..."

"No understand," I say, nervous. I know I shouldn't be making assumptions, but I expected this to make him happy, and everything about this screams "terrible distress".

Then instead of answering me, he starts... bleeding?! It's coming out of his face, his hands come up like he's trying to stop it - whatever it is, it definitely shouldn't be there.

"You are okay?!"

"Yes! Yes, I'm okay..." His voice is so strained I can barely understand him. "Thank you... thank you, thank you-!"

"I am happy, you no die!" I don't have a plan, I'm just frantically trying to get him back to the motivated state he was in before. "Let's save planets!"

But I only make it worse - or at least, it was always going to get worse, and I failed to stop it. His voice degrades into something I don't remotely recognize as words, I don't think they're meant to be. It sounds awful, like he suddenly can't empty his lungs and will suffocate unless he uses his speech apparatus, loudly and painfully, to force the air to keep moving. The bleeding, or whatever this is, gets much worse; he stoops over and tries to staunch it with both hands but it makes no difference.

Oh Dear God, I've killed him-

"Grace?" I clamber up against the nearest face of my ball, trying not to panic. "What is wrong-?!"

No reaction. He either can't hear me, or he's completely incapacitated.

"Grace?!"

Nothing.

Is this how the mission ends? Are two civilizations going to die because I had no idea you could make Earthlings spontaneously bleed out by talking to them at just the wrong angle?

Breathe. Don't be stupid. What can you do?

Very little, actually! I'm stuck in this damn ball!

I'm tempted to bump into him, anything to get his attention at this point, but I have no idea how much momentum would be too much for his spongy body. I may have already killed the poor bastard with my words, I'm not going to press my luck with physical force.

Utterly at a loss, I rattle my claws against the wall and shout: "Grace!"

It could just be the state I'm in, but I think I finally got him to flinch. One of his hands pulls away from his face, shaking violently all the way, and he weakly holds it up. He's only barely holding the gesture together, but I still recognize it: "Wait."

Uh...

Am I being stupid? Is this just another "thing" Earthlings do?

He's not dead yet... as overclocked as his vitals are, they're anything but unlively. An Eridian losing this much fluid would have been a serious medical emergency pretty much immediately. He'd be dead many times over by now if that was the standard we were working with.

So is this just another "Earthling thing," one that seems horribly fucked up to me but is ultimately normal? It'd be far from the first.

The hand he was gesturing with drops, falling against the surface of my ball. He doesn't move it back.

Uh...

Am I supposed to be doing something?!

I pivot in place, feeling like an idiot and surely sounding like one too. Very nervously, I reach for where he's touching.

"You are okay...?" I ask again. He still can't speak but he finally answers with a jerky nod. There's a lot more force behind it than he usually uses.

But I only feel reassured for a moment. With a series of awkward movements his body slinks down from the chair, situating itself right next to me. I really don't want to be any closer to whatever is going on here but I feel obligated to stay in place. He slumps in a heap against my life support ball, both hands now gripping their neighboring arm and tucking everything in tight. There's nothing stopping him from just hemorrhaging into the open air now, just as hard as before and even louder without anything to muffle it. I can't hope to read his expressions, not even a little, but he must be making a lot of them - all those tiny muscles are just as worked up as everything else.

I have no idea what... state this is, for want of a better word, but it does not seem voluntary at all. Doing anything seems like it takes him a lot of effort, so I resist the urge to ask any more questions.

A part of me wonders if I should politely excuse myself, maybe this is a thing that's supposed to be private, but then I remember that the only way out of this room is through a hatch only he can open. Either he wants me to stay, or he's too incapacitated for it to make a difference. So, I do as he asks and simply wait.

It probably isn't actually that long, a few minutes at most, but after what feels like an excruciating length of time, Grace starts trying to speak again. He has to gulp down a lot of air for every syllable, and even then I can't make most of them out. I catch his word for my name a few times. I think he's still trying to thank me, profusely.

"No understand..." I say, still nervous to set him off again.

He nods again and tries taking a deep breath, only to crumble back into those terrible throaty noises. His head falls and (shudder) presses up against my wall, making the sloshing, squelching inner workings as obvious as they possibly could be. It's unpleasant up close at the best of times and it's simply revolting right now, God, no wonder they never evolved decent hearing.

After still more waiting he tries again, failing in the same way, but then finally succeeds on the third try. His breathing is raspy, it shudders horribly in both directions and the leaking hasn't even slowed down, but he finally seems to have a little more control.

"Grace, you are healthy?" I ask, interrupting before he can dissolve into more platitudes.

"Y... yes," he nods a third time. He makes a wet noise with his nose that I really don't appreciate. "Yes, healthy."

He makes another weird noise, and then, I think, tries to smile. He lifts himself from the wall, barely, and scrubs his sleeve around his face.

"'M sorry, th- this is... probably really weird to you."

"Yes", I answer. I want to say "Holy shit, man, you fucking think?" but at least we're finally getting somewhere. "Hurt?"

"Mmm-mm," he mumbles, shaking his head. He's gesturing a lot, probably to make up for the fact that he can barely talk. "E-Earthling thing, g... good for us."

I'm fed up. I'm doing my best to be patient, but at this point, I can't keep an indignant shrill out of my voice: "How is leaking good for Earthlings?! Gross!"

His reaction is nothing I could possibly have expected: he laughs. It's not much at first, he has to really fight to get it going, but in no time at all it's completely taken over. He turns and leans back against the ball, howling with joy so loudly that it sharpens the whole ship. He's still leaking everywhere, just as hard if not harder, but something about my outburst has made him pivot from being overcome with those awful sounds to overcome with laughter.

I'm stumped. I have no choice but to wait until he can speak again and explain himself.

Remember when he was urging us to go downstairs and start working on my hab as fast as possible, under threat of death to half his species? That was nice.

"E-earthlings... 'leak' when we feel... when we feel very strong emotions," he finally says, mopping his face again. "Uh... u-usually when we're sad, but... it can also be when we're very, very, very happy."

Okay, that... explains nothing. But it begs the obvious.

"... You are happy?"

He laughs again and raps a hand against the ball. I think it was meant to be friendly but it's so loud it makes me jolt. I know it was a stupid question, but come on, man, I'm trying to be considerate!

"Of course! Of course I'm happy! R-Rocky, I... all this time, I thought- I..."

He needs a moment - the leaking sounds are back.

God Almighty, I never could have guessed "I'm mostly water" meant "My body is down to unceremoniously dump several times the amount of water in your entire body just to talk about its feelings." Like a deluged version of that gross noise he makes instead of laughing.

Actually... it really is like that. I make the connection now that I've heard him go from one to the other in both directions. These new leaky sounds and the sounds Earthlings make in order to laugh, they're not the same but they are strikingly similar, like they stem from the same biological chain reaction. It should have been obvious - I freaked out pretty bad the first few times I heard him laugh, but since then I've just gotten used to it. And I know what laughing is for...

But before I can jump to conclusions, Grace finally gets a hold of himself and speaks again.

"Rocky, you saved me. I'm... I'm going to live, of course I'm happy!"

"Good, happy," I repeat. "But why leak? What function?"

As I hoped, he takes a few moments to steady himself. Nudging the subject towards biology always seems to do that.

"It's for- it's a communication thing. Sometimes we, uh... sometimes we're bad at talking, so we 'leak' to let each other know how we feel. Other Earthlings see it and know you need help."

So, I was right, it is like laughing? Except... oh.

Oh my God I'm a complete piece of shit.

Okay, no, I need to be fair. I'm doing a lot of things for the first time here.

In one respect, I couldn't have possibly known that's what it meant, and it was disgusting. Horrible. Oriented for a much weaker range of hearing, where that amount of noise could conceivably be tolerable. Objectively, realistically, I couldn't have been expected to react any other way.

But in another respect... someone I know and care about (and even if I didn't, so what?) had spent all this time so wracked with the need for consolation that his body plunged itself into this stressful, incapacitating state in order to beg for it as loudly as possible, to any soul that could hear. And I've just been standing here, the only company for trillions of kilometers, doing nothing but bitch and moan and wait for him to stop.

Of course it was disgusting and loud: it evolved for the purpose of drawing in attention, invoking an urgent response. I'm sure Earthlings, in turn, evolved to understand what it means, and, assuming they were raised to give a damn, drop everything to act accordingly. I could have intuited that, I have pattern recognition. It was crude and biologically-taxing for no reason but, fundamentally, no different from any of our own emotional signals.

And fuck, what had caused all this in the first place? All-too-casual alleviation from the one primal fear every living thing should be on the same level about. Every living thing except me, apparently!

Yeah, no, I'm a piece of shit. They really, truly could not have sent a worse person to do this. Literally anyone else on the crew-

Normally, this would be when a commanding voice would dutifully lance itself into my brain, but this time, it was something much gentler:

It wouldn't kill you to be a little kinder to yourself, you know.

Fine, fine. I'm not a piece of shit. I'm just stupid. And I've been out here alone for too long. And that's a bad combination if you don't want to act like a piece of shit.

Thinking back, was there anything I could have done, really? Earthlings don't thrum, and even if they did, I can't imagine the gooey blob Grace calls a brain would be compatible with the cinder block sitting where mine should be.

But there's an obvious thing to do instead of agonizing over hindsight. "How Earthlings help?"

He's quiet for a moment, then he turns to look at me. I keep trying to read his face, but its gotten so inflamed and soggy that all the nuance is still lost on me. He pats his hand against the wall again - much softer, thankfully.

"Rocky, I don't need... you saved my life, w-why would-"

Another break, more noises. I think the leaking has finally started to peter out but little things are still setting it back off. He does seem to be making the effort to steady himself, though, taking a few deep breaths before he speaks again. It's still rough and shaky, but no longer takes a concentrated effort to understand.

"You already helped me, Rocky. You've given me the chance to go home. Why would you need to do anything else?"

Why indeed. It's a vice, I admit it.

"Need to work fast, save Earth. Can't start yet. How help?"

Grace laughs again, quietly. He pulls in another deep breath and manages not to shudder, though its still shaky on the way out.

"Right, yeah, you're right. Uh... just stay here. I'll be okay."

Well I can't exactly not stay here, but I don't think that's what he meant.

"Understand."

He settles a little and covers his eyes, breathing easier still. Calming down from a leaking episode seems to be a gradual process but it's working, bit by bit.

He fumbles around in the pockets of his jumpsuit but doesn't seem to find what he's looking for, so, he unzips it slightly, tucks his mouth and nose into the fabric, and mumbles an apology. Then he makes maybe the most offensive Earthling noise I've heard yet - it reminds me of that loud, involuntary lung-related thing he does now and then that I don't have a word for, only longer, and a lot wetter.

"Gross..."

He laughs again, wiping a hand on his front.

"Yeah," he agrees. "Gross."

He makes an assortment of other tube-clearing noises, each marginally less gross than the last. Then, finally, he starts getting to his feet. He wobbles and I brace my claw down in case he needs to lean on the ball for support. I know it's already steady enough given our weight difference, but I might as well. Once he's up properly he takes one more deep breath, blowing it out with a soft nod. Everything is still shaky and watery, probably going to be for a while, but the worst of it seems to finally be out of his system.

"Okay..." he says, probably to himself. "Yeah... yeah, okay-!"

He makes a move to undo the hatch, moving very fast all of a sudden. As it slides aside he looks up at me, smiling.

I'm taken aback. I've heard him smile before, a lot, it was the first Earthling expression I learned and I learned it very early, and I'm still taken aback. His entire face has to either stretch or compress to accommodate the size of this one, I swear its actually tugging on his ears. It's... creepy to listen to, honestly. But I have a feeling that's not how an Earthling would see it.

"After you, ϐ°r," he says, gesturing and using a very odd tone of voice I don't follow. "I °ɲϐiϐıt."

"No understand."

He laughs once again, already stooping down to help me with my ball. I had assumed he wouldn't be able pick the thing up now that we were working with gravity - I'm over twice his weight now. Maybe he thinks he can help me steer?"

"What? Getting cold feet about those r˘ɲæᵛӘı°æɲϐ all of a sudden?"

"What?!"

Two hands land on the ball. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was about to pick it up and toss it.

"Let's go build your room!"

"Ah! Yes, build, yes yes yes!"

I scramble to get moving before he hurts himself.