Chapter Text
“Grace? Question.” Rocky’s voice called out through the lab.
Ryland had recently set up a PA system throughout the ship for Rocky’s translator, allowing him to hear the Eridian with at least something similar to his freakishly good hearing. It was useful, handy really but nostalgia always sat heavy in his heart as the sound of Rocky’s synthesized voice carried through the ship. It sounded so much like the PA system from the middle school he had taught at whenever it crackled to life.
“What’s up, buddy?” Ryland called back, not really needing to raise his voice to be heard but unable to shake the habit.
“Do humans find injury fun?” Rocky asked. Ryland could hear him scuttling into the lab through his xenonite tunnel. He didn’t need a translator to pick up the chiding tone in his chirps and hums.
He tossed Rocky a look over his shoulder from where he was sitting at his table analyzing the genetic makeup of taumoeba. Analyzing was a bit of an overstatement. Rather, he was staring off into space and thinking about analyzing the taumoeba. If Ryland had any hope of surviving the trip to Erid, he would have to figure out how to synthesize any nutrients from the taumoeba and he was honestly at a loss at where to start.
“What do you mean?” Ryland asked curiously, pulling his glasses off of his nose and letting them hang haphazardly off his ear.
Rocky said nothing, only vaguely gestured a claw at the way Ryland was currently sitting in his chair. For a space spider with no face, Rocky sure was expressive, and right now Grace could tell he thought he was an idiot. Ryland had his chair leaned back about as far as he could possibly manage, precariously balancing all of his weight on the two back legs. One wrong move and he would surely crack his head against the metal floors of Mary.
“No, I don’t enjoy hurting myself.” Ryland rolled his eyes, refusing to dignify Rocky’s taunts by returning all four feet of his chair to the ground. “This helps me concentrate.”
“Human choices stupid but Grace even more stupid.” Rocky declared with a finality, scuttling over to his many storage containers on his side of the xenonite corridors and rooting around the raw materials he had scavenged from the Blip A.
“Rude.” Ryland pouted, leaning further despite his friend's protest, trying to catch a peek at what Rocky was doing. That was the wrong move. For one heart stopping moment, his chair wobbled unsteadily before returning to its previous balance. leaving him with a near heart attack.
This had become the everyday routine for the two now that they were a few months into their trip to Erid. A solution to the astrophage problem had been discovered and now that they were en route to Erid, they were free to fill their time with whatever menial task they desired. A day in Ryland’s life now consisted of waking up, exercising, checking Mary’s systems, chatting with Rocky, eating tasteless slurry, then sleeping again. The tasks around the ship were endless for both of them. The Hail Mary was not made for constant space travel and was always in need of improvements. It kept them both busy for the most part and they had both settled into a regular daily rhythm. Now the days seemed to blur together
Ryland had gone back to staring at the lab's ceiling. He needed to figure out how to make himself some sort of food for the three year trip to Erid. There wasn't nearly enough slurry to sustain him to the very end and if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t want it to be. He was at a loss.
“Grace.” Rocky called out again but Ryland didn’t look over to him.
“I know, I know. I am endangering myself-” He started but was quickly interrupted.
“No. Grace… hear that?” Rocky asked, the translator as loud as it always was but his native chirps and hums hit a lower register, unsure. His entire body had gone rigid in concentration.
That got Ryland’s attention, finally returning his chair to the floor. He went as still as he could, straining his ears to hear what Rocky was talking about. A few anxious, but altogether silent moments passed before Ryland released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Rock, I don’t-”
“No. Grace listen. Rocky hear tap, tap, tap.” Rocky piped up again, stomping his front legs to emphasize the urgency in his demands.
So Ryland stopped again, leaning forward as if that would make his hearing better. There was silence, the continuous hum of Mary’s engines filling the dead air but Ryland couldn’t really make anything out. He was about to say as much until he heard it. A gentle tap, tap, tap from somewhere on the ship. The tapping was almost imperceptible to his human ears, but he definitely heard it that time. He whipped his gaze to Rocky, confused but mostly concerned.
“Grace hear it too! Tap, tap, tap.” Rocky exclaimed, mimicking the speed of the taps with his claw against the xenonite.
“Where is that coming from?” Ryland asked quickly, jumping out of his chair to stand near Rocky.
“Rocky think…” Rocky paused, concentrating on where he had heard the tapping. Then Ryland heard it again, as faint as the last time but consistent in its rhythm and speed. Tap, tap, tap. “Airlock!”
There was a flurry of movement as Ryland took off towards the airlock, Rocky scurrying to get into his xenonite ball to follow after him. He pressed up against the airlock door, peering through the small window. His eyes strained as he searched the airlock, eyes roving over what he could see from the window and cataloguing each corner of the small room that connected the main chambers of Mary to the vacuum of space.
“What Grace see, question?” Ryland could feel the warmth of Rocky’s atmosphere where he had parked his ball beside him, xenonite pressed against the door.
“I should be asking you that. You’re the one who can see through walls.” Ryland huffs, unable to really make out anything from the small window, the lighting too dim to really thoroughly check.
“Grace not answer.” Rocky insisted, “What Grace see?”
“I don’t see anything, but it's hard to get a proper look.” Ryland was squinting now, pulling his glasses to rest on his nose to properly look. “C’mon Rock, what do you see?”
They wait and then the tapping starts up again. Tap, tap, tap. Ryland could definitely hear it clearer now and he turned to Rocky expectantly.
“Rocky see… nothing.” Well that wasn’t unsettling. How could there be something tapping in the airlock that Rocky couldn’t detect? Ryland couldn’t help the dread that crawled up his spine at the thought of some invisible alien trying to get into the ship.
“Maybe something on the outside of Mary is broken, tapping against the outer airlock door.” He supplies, immediately trying to rationalize the noise as something less horrifying than an undetectable lifeform in the airlock.
Rocky is silent in consideration before turning his carapace up to Ryland, a very human habit he had picked up. “Most likely possibility” He says finally.
Ryland hurried over to the control console, fingers flying over keys to run diagnostics on Mary. Hull integrity: nominal, pressure seals: intact, and no motion detected in the airlock. Even more horrifying, he couldn’t see anything on the external cameras. He couldn’t find any damage or any floating debris that could be rocking against the hull.
“That can’t be possible.” Ryland murmurs mostly to himself, Rocky rolling up behind him with his screen reader. “There is nothing. Mary isn’t picking up any anomalies.”
Rocky clicked uneasily. “Rocky does not like.”
“Me neither buddy.” Ryland sighed, increasingly unsettled as the more plausible explanations of the sound were becoming less and less likely.
Three more taps sounded from the airlock, and maybe Ryland was mistaken, but it sounded like the taps were getting louder. For one crazy moment, his exhausted mind conjured up the image of the ghosts of Yao and Ilyukhina trapped in the airlock, haunting him by tapping politely on the door and waiting to be let back in. He physically shook the image from his head, looking down at Rocky.
“What is noise, question?” Rocky asked, pressing a claw to his ball as if he could reach out and hold Ryland’s pant leg.
“I’m not sure.” He murmured hesitantly, knowing exactly what he had to do. “But there is only one way to know for sure.”
That was how Ryland ended up in his EVA suit floating towards the airlock doors, Mary’s engines fully shut down in preparation for a space walk to investigate the noise. Rocky had been apprehensive, forever a worry wart when it came to Ryland doing anything in the open expanse of space. There was some back and forth between them before he managed to convince Rocky that they needed to know what the sound was. If something on the hull of Mary was breaking off that the ship itself wasn’t detecting, they needed to fix it. The inner airlock door hissed as Ryland pulled it open.
“Tether attached?” Rocky asked and Ryland could practically hear him twisting his claws together anxiously.
“Yes, Rock.” He sighed, holding the tether up to show him.
“Oxygen levels?” Rocky muttered.
“Good.” Ryland nodded, a fond smile creeping onto his face.
“Helmet sealed?”
“Rocky.”
“Friend Grace.”
Ryland paused, turning to face his Eridian friend who was basically vibrating with anxiety. Rocky seemed genuinely distressed and considering everything he had been through, Ryland supposed he could hardly blame him. Rocky lowered his carapace slightly, his chirps lower in register behind the translator.
“Be careful.” Rocky said finally, tapping one of his claws against the floor to get a better look at Ryland’s face.
“I will.” Ryland said softly, trying to force some confidence into his tone for Rocky’s sake.
Ryland stepped into the airlock, shutting the inner door behind him.
No matter how many times he experienced it, space walks were always a bit of a trip. The feeling of weightlessness with the universe stretched infinitely in every direction. It always had a way of making him feel small. He pushed out of the outer doors of the airlock, grasping onto the hull of Mary to keep himself from floating too far into space.
“Grace okay, question?” Rocky’s translator crackled into his ear through the comms in his helmet.
“I’m still alive, Rock.” Ryland responded, floating further down the hull to get a more fulsome look of the area around the airlock.
“Amaze, amaze.” Rocky responded and Ryland snorted.
He had thoroughly inspected the airlock before heading out into space. The sound had been so close, Ryland initially assumed it had been coming from in between the doors but he found nothing. He inspected the outer entrance to the airlock for anything out of the order. Loose panels, damage to the exterior, or maybe some tiny debris wedged in the hull. Anything that would explain the tapping.
“Grace see anything? Any damage?” Rocky checks in.
“Nothing.” Grace sighs, gloved hand coming up to scratch at his helmet, a bit stumped.
“Odd. Maybe ghost.” Rocky guessed, sounding entirely serious.
“You believe in ghosts now Rock?” Ryland huffed out a laugh. He recalled the time they had watched Ghostbusters and how ridiculous Rocky had found the whole concept of ghosts to be.
Ryland's brain once again provided him with the image of Yao and Ilukyhina haunting Mary, their souls unable to rest. His chest was tight with grief and he tried to shake the thought from his mind as he did a second pass over Mary’s hull.
Unbeknownst to either of them, something unbelievably small had slipped into Mary as soon as Ryland had opened the inner airlock door. You, tiny and nearly invisible, made your way through the air on the ship. A practically microscopic organism, you utilized the lack of gravity to propel yourself from surface to surface through the main chamber and into the air vents. Your movements were seamless, so well acquainted with the weightless atmosphere of space. It was where you were born of course, impossibly tiny amongst the glittering stars of the void you called home. And, it was where you had discovered alien life, or rather it had forced itself upon you. A ship moving unbelievably fast through the vacuum, barrelling through your particular neck of the cosmos and catching your microscopic form in its path. Soon you too were hurtling through space towards an unknown destination, wedged into a crack in the metal panelling.
It would be easy enough for you to throw yourself off and return to your endless wandering of space but the occupants of the ship caught your attention. You could hardly be blamed for snooping, cataloging every movement and quirk of the life forms inside. This ship was home to two different species that your endless floating had not discovered. Unlike any life you had known before. You observed for a significant amount of time, soaking up everything you could about these peculiar creatures. The way they moved, spoke, lived. They were intriguing, the bigger, ganglier one even more so. You were endlessly curious, perhaps one of your lesser traits as it seemed to always get you into trouble. As it turns out, you were curious enough to sneak onto the very ship that housed these peculiar aliens. All it took was luring the big one out with some noise for you to slip in. Now, you could really observe.