Chapter Text
At least they’re not dead. I’m going to focus on that, because I can feel my throat tightening when I think about anything else. Like how I can see the bones of Yáo’s folded arms practically protruding from his skin with no fat to pad them. Or the fact that we’re in space. Or how I only know Yáo’s name because it’s flashing on a little screen at his bedside. Or how I only know my name because our ship’s built-in robot voice called me Doctor Ryland Grace.
At least they’re not dead. At least I’m not alone, though I may as well be. Yáo and Ilyukhina are unresponsive and clearly dying of something that neither I nor the computer-arm-robot thing can figure out how to fix.
There’s something else I know about myself besides my name: the ‘doctor’ in front of Ryland Grace has nothing to do with medicine. In my hurried trek through the ship in search of another alive, conscious, not-dying person to help me, I discovered that I have some innate knowledge of science—or at least scientific instruments. Unfortunately, no such knowledge comes to mind when I look at my coworkers’ (friends’?) life support systems. I can read their basic vitals but there’s no voice in the back of my head reminding me what all the tubes and wires do—or which ones are killing them.
Killing them.
I wrench myself away from Yáo’s bedside. He looks dead. I can see his heartbeat displayed with the rest of his vitals, a logical proof of life, but I can’t seem to engage the reasonable half of my brain. I’m going to end up all alone here, surrounded by corpses.
Elevated heart rate detected, the ship’s robot voice informs me unhelpfully. A breathing exercise may—
I try to take some deep breaths but wind up curled up on the floor instead, gasping into my knees between sobs.
“What’s wrong with them?” I demand for the umpteenth time.
Life support error: unknown, it says.
“Send for help. Call 911.”
Unknown command.
“Turn around.”
Unknown command.
“Return to Earth.”
Trip to Earth will take: one-hundred and—
That gets my attention. I stumble to my feet, wiping my face on my sleeve, and begin climbing the ladder out of our bedchamber once again, making a point not to look at my crewmates. With a goal in mind, I manage to hold it together long enough to make it to the Hail Mary’s navigation room and pull up a map.
I’m sitting in a classroom, legs propped up on my desk as I watch an animated Earth spin on a projector screen. The video’s “camera” pulls back and the planet is rounded by consecutively larger circles: ten to the power of eight, ten to the power of nine, ten to the power of ten—
I shake my head and begin searching for Sol. It takes quite a lot of scrolling, since it’s nearly twelve light years away. Even if I were to send a message to Earth, Yáo and Ilyukhina would be dead long before anyone received it. I’d be dead. I’m going to die here.
Suddenly, the navigation room feels very, very small. I jump to my feet, desperate to be somewhere else—anywhere else—but the corridors are even tighter and the lab is hardly any better, cluttered with equipment. The projection room is painfully, horribly fake. I try a different corridor before the screens displaying their imaginary, untouchable trees can fully turn themselves on. There’s nowhere to go. I can’t run from this, not when the only escape is the empty, endless void of space.
Eventually, I find myself pressed against the ship’s octagonal window, staring into said void. I think of stepping out the airlock, utterly deprived of oxygen, freezing cold and blasted by unfiltered radiation. My death would be nearly instant. I imagine my lungs gasping for non-existent air, the momentary bite of the cold followed by my organs boiling in the absence of atmospheric pressure. I think of Yáo and Ilyukhina, dying slowly but utterly unaware.
Maybe letting them fade away in peace is the right thing to do. Maybe a quick death is my best option. Maybe I could get the robot arm to put me to sleep again and just never wake up. If I can't get the command right, could I induce a coma myself?
I press the back of my head against the wall until my scalp stings where it’s pressed against the head of a protruding screw. I can’t do it. I know before I even try examining the airlock that I’m too much of a coward to take the easy way out.
It’s ridiculous. I know I’m a dead man walking, already locked inside my coffin beside two other near-corpses who are going to die on my watch because I’m not a real doctor and the nearest person with actual qualifications is some twelve light years away. And still!
I won’t even be buried.
I want to touch the Earth one last time. I want to go home.
Where is home?
I slide the rest of the way to the floor, curling up on my side so I can see the stars. No human, to my knowledge, has ever been this close to them. I don’t understand why I’m the first. I toss my glasses aside and bury my face in the crook of my elbow, which quickly dampens with tears.
Eventually, my eyes run out of water for crying, at which point I remove my face from my sleeve and return to looking out the window, pretending that I’m looking up at Earth’s night sky.
I must fall asleep like that, because I wake up on the floor, neck and back aching. The ship’s robotic voice chimes out a flat greeting, which I ignore. After working up my courage for a few minutes, I ask for a status update on my crewmates, shame burning in my chest. How much time did I waste wallowing in terror?
Olesya Ilyukhina: Alive. Yáo Li-Jie: Alive, the ship recites. I exhale in relief and make my way back to the crew corridors, forcing myself down the ladder before I can change my mind.
Yáo and Ilyukhina are right where I left them, still clinging to life, though Yáo’s heart rate has dropped slightly. I take a few deep breaths before I manage to waste yet more hours panicking, stuffing the sting of guilt deep down in my chest to be dealt with later. Or never.
“Do we have a manual?” I ask the robot arm.
Digital copies of Hail Mary manuals can be found on all ship computers. Physical copies are available in compartment 30D.
“How about a manual on the coma support systems?”
Coma life support systems manuals are available digitally. Physical copies can be found in compartment 30D.
I decide a paper book is probably a better choice than taking a gamble on how much I remember about using the ship’s computer systems. It also allows for dog-earring, which is going to come in handy, since the manual turns out to be a brick of a book. I piece together a step-by-step plan in my head before I can have another meltdown: read the manual cover-to-cover, dog-earring any possible leads; test leads either in order of likelihood or by their position in the book; run any necessary tests to prove whatever hypotheses arise; and then figure out how to fix things.
With Yáo and Ilyukhina breathing through their respirators beside me, I begin reading each section of the manual diligently. It takes a few hours to get through the whole thing, rereading the passages that are above my level of medical knowledge and asking Mary—that’s what the manual calls the ship’s computerized voice—to space-Google any terms I don’t recognize. When I finish reading, I feel like I should probably reread it a few more times before I try experimenting on my crewmates, but I’m not sure they have that kind of time. The hours I wasted yesterday are weighing heavily on me now.
Steeling my nerves one last time, I tell Yáo, who definitely cannot hear me, that I’m going to try to help him now. I hold off on preemptively apologizing for my lack of expertise, since I’m sure he already knows—or would, if he were awake. Manual in hand, I start checking everything I’ve marked out as a potential cause for his condition. The IV line in his arm is flowing just fine, so I can probably rule that out. The stickers that monitor his vitals are all correctly placed and apparently functional, so at least the readings are accurate.
Next, I flip to the first page of the nutrition section. It takes almost no comparison between the photos in the manual and the tube in front of me to recognize that something is wrong. The top of Yáo’s feeding tube, closest to the nutrition pouch, seems to be blocked, and now that I’m looking closely, I spot a few specks of mold growing lower in the tube. Ilyukhina’s is blocked as well, maybe more recently, since the rest of the tube appears to be clean. I take a few more deep breaths, reread the nutrition section three times, and ask Mary to remove my crewmates’ feeding tubes.
Removal of feeding tubes is inadvisable. Would you like to override feeding tube safety precautions?
“Yes. Override,” I order, stomach flipping. Outright ignoring the advice of the ship’s medical robot borders on being physically painful, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than leaving my coworkers to eat nothing but mold spores. I turn around to give them some privacy during the procedure (or maybe just to spare myself from having to watch). Once the tubes are removed, I go about figuring out how to clean them. Mary informs me that the ship can provide me with a supply of sterilization supplies and, more surprisingly, a bag of pipe cleaners. They’re my first long-shot idea after examining the tubes up close. I don’t expect Mary to pull through on that request, but apparently, someone thought that space plumbing (or arts and crafts) might be necessary, so we’ve got a packet of long, yellow pipe cleaners on board.
I take the tubes up to the Hail Mary’s tiny bathroom and try to use as little water as possible as I scrub them out, since I haven’t started reading the general ship manual yet and have no idea if we have a water recycling system. Ilyukhina’s is easy to clean. I dilute some bleach and let it soak anyway, but the blockage is easy to remove. Yáo’s is much more difficult. The nutritional slurry has hardened at the top of the tube to such an extent that, even after a long soak, I can’t get it clean. It’s time to start weighing my options. According to Mary’s clock, set to Moscow time for some reason, I’ve already spent hours trying to clean the tubes. If I spend too much longer scrubbing the things, my efforts might wind up doing more harm than good.
Ultimately, I decide to leave Yáo’s tube to soak for a while longer and set him up with Ilyukhina’s in the meantime since he looks worse for wear and her vitals have held stable since I woke up. While I’m monitoring Mary as it replaces Yáo’s feeding tube, I remember that my tube is probably sitting on the bed right below us. It seems obvious in retrospect. I give it a good wash before handing it over to Mary.
By the end of the “day,” both Yáo and Ilyukhina are getting proper nutrition again. I check every other monitoring device and life support aid mentioned in the manual twice just to be sure that nothing else is wrong with their support systems and have Mary run a few basic tests—a nutrition panel, most pertinently—to make sure nothing else is wrong with them. Besides the expected malnutrition, they seem to be okay.
Unfortunately, as before, logically understanding that nothing is noticeably wrong does very little to convince me to stop worrying that something could be, so I tie up my bedsheets as a makeshift hammock so I can keep an eye on my crewmates.
Mary’s robot arm serves dinner, but I only take the pouch of water it offers, taking slow sips to quell the nausea that has been creeping up my throat all day. I came dangerously, terrifyingly close to letting the only humans I’ll probably ever see again die. If I’d woken up a few days later or overslept after my little episode…
I distract myself by watching Ilyukhina’s vitals display on the small screen beside her bed. If it weren’t for the breathing tube down her throat and the painful gauntness in her cheeks, she’d almost look peaceful. I imagine that she’s just asleep, maybe dreaming about Earth. I wonder if I knew her before all this. Did we go out for drinks? Did we have each other’s phone numbers? Did I know their coffee orders—or whether they prefer tea?
I must fall asleep watching them because I wake up in my poorly designed hammock and nearly tumble to the floor, saving myself on a hand hold before I wind up breaking an arm in the most idiotic way possible. After that scare, I manage to properly escape from the world’s (second, only to the floor I slept on the other night) worst bed and take breakfast from Mary’s robo-arm.
Then, I get to work. First order of business: figure out who I am beyond my name and my lack of medical expertise. The ship has a whiteboard, which I use to that purpose, writing down all the facts I know and everything I suspect:
-DR(!!) Ryland Grace
-PhD in? ← biology? chemistry?
-Astronaut (NASA?)
-Classroom (likes kids— teacher?) (why in space?)
-Always muscles? (teacher?!)
The process of thinking about my memories, supplemented with some Google searches of my name on one of the ship’s laptops (not password protected, thank goodness) helps jog my memory further. I wrote a paper—papers—about astrophage, the tiny organism that is currently eating the sun. I think I may have been the person who named it! I was, as suspected, a teacher, apparently at Grover Cleveland Middle School in San Francisco, which I assume was home before the whole Petrova taskforce/sun dying/save-the-world thing. That also explains why I’m in space. Or rather, it explains why we’re in space, though it doesn’t make picking a middle school science teacher to be an astronaut make much more sense. My work with astrophage is cool, but it doesn’t seem like enough to qualify me for this mission. And seeing as my first reaction to finding myself the sole conscious member of the crew of a spaceship was to have an hours-long panic attack until I passed out on the floor, I’m guessing I wasn’t sent here because I’m extraordinarily brave. So I’m a cowardly, untrained astronaut slash overqualified schoolteacher who wrote a couple papers on a topic relevant to this mission… maybe Earth was really desperate?
I add these details to the board:
-Petrova Line/astrophage
-Not brave
-Not trained astronaut?
-Save the world!
No pressure.
I take a break for lunch, check on Yáo and Ilyukhina, and then return to my whiteboard to write out a plan for the day. My step-by-step breakdown of the process of fixing the life support systems got me through that whole nightmare yesterday, so I figure I’m the kind of person who likes a good list to keep me on track (lest I have a panic attack, apparently. Again, I was the best choice for this mission?)
The plan is simple: check crew’s vitals and life support systems, read Mary manuals, make sure the ship is not falling apart, eat, check on crew, read astrophage papers/save the world somehow, eat something, final ship check, final crew check, sleep.
This becomes a running routine. I read Mary’s general operations manual cover to cover as soon as I can and use it as a reference for my twice-daily ‘make sure nothing is going to explode’ rounds. Having some actual knowledge of the ship is somewhat more reassuring than having to base my entire prognosis on whether or not there are any alarms blaring.
For a little while, I get to bask in my almost-comfortable routine. Ilyukhina and Yáo remain stable, their features softening as their bodies slowly recover. I start them on less than their allotted rations after reading up on the dangers of refeeding after severe malnutrition and slowly work them back up to a normal amount of coma slurry, feeling a bit sorry that it’s all they can eat while I get to enjoy solid food. The Hail Mary herself shows no signs that she’s going to fail, and I’m making slow progress on the astrophage problem—or at least on my astrophage problem, which is that I only mostly remember what I apparently knew about the little aliens back on Earth.
Of course, it doesn’t last. I’m only on the first of today’s ‘ensure the Hail Mary isn’t falling apart’ rounds when things start falling apart.
Blip-A detected! Blip-A detected! Mary’s robotic voice recites. It’s better, at least, than suddenly being in zero G—a problem I had to navigate earlier when Mary suddenly announced our deceleration as we approached Tau Ceti. Still, this alert is new and therefore more than a little concerning.
Initially, I assume that “Blip-A” is some kind of space junk. Maybe a small asteroid that had drifted close enough to the ship to be picked up on radar? Surely that’s it. I’m not sure why Mary sounds so worried about it. Or maybe that’s just—
Then I spot it out the window hatch and oh, it is so not an asteroid. At first, it’s distant, obscuring a portion of Tau Ceti’s Petrova Line. Then, it’s right on top of us. It’s a ship. It’s so, totally, definitely not natural, and this is so, totally, definitely not my problem to deal with while my crew, captain included, is unconscious.
“Pilot detected!” I yelp at Mary, leaping into the pilot’s seat. Do I know how to fly this thing? Absolutely not! But it can’t be worse than dealing with whatever-that-is on the other side of the window, so, remembering the manual that I’ve read more times than I can count, I take a crack at flying a spaceship.
The ride is rough, but I’ve left that thing far behind us, and Yáo and Ilyukhina will never know about the brief, uh, turbulence we encountered, so it’s fine. And then it pulls up under us again. Now I’m properly panicking. What do they want? I accelerate away again, but they follow, like a dog after a stick. I wish Yáo would wake up and tell me what to do.
Blip-B detected! Mary chimes, before I can move us away again.
“Mary, what—” I pause, gathering myself. “What is Blip-B?”
Mary does not answer. Probably, examining an object floating through space from this distance isn’t possible with our ship’s capabilities.
Blip-B flashes again on the radar screen. It looks closer than Blip-A.
Blip-B detected!
It flashes again, much closer now. I should rocket away again, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to move in time—
Blip-B detected!
Oh, it is totally going to hit us! I scramble out of my seat, as if that’s going to do any good. Surely the Hail Mary can handle being tapped by a bit of… whatever it is.
Blip-B detected!
The radar flashes. Blip-B is right on top of us, a little green dot twirling through space. Maybe it’s a message. Maybe it’s a bomb and we’re all going to get sucked into space and die! I find myself cowering on the ground before the logical bit of my brain that survived my coma and the ridiculously stressful past two weeks catches up and works out that it’s probably not a bomb. I hear it clink against the metal surface of the Hail Mary. Nothing happens.
Blip-C detected!
Eventually, I work out that the ship is trying to send us a message. That is how, after checking Yáo and Ilyukhina’s feeding tubes, oxygen supply, and vitals one last time, I wind up outside the spaceship that I probably should not be leaving with no memory of having ever completed any training on how to do a spacewalk. It's a bad idea, obviously, but my curiosity gets the best of me. Assuming Blip-A isn't human-made—and it sure looks alien—this could be first contact. That's too big an opportunity to just ignore! I justify this decision by telling myself that they're not going to leave us alone unless I do something, and it may as well be a spacewalk.
The airlock depressurizes, and I peer out into the open space between me and the other ship. I try to scramble back inside, but trip over my tether and— oh, fudge, I'm in space. I take some deep breaths and try not to think about how thin my tether is as I watch Blip-E meander its way towards me.
Blips B, C, and D went sailing past into the void beyond the Hail Mary while I was busy checking on my crewmates and suiting up. Finally, the capsule, which is moving at a snail's pace, is close enough to reach. I snatch it and quickly wave it at our new neighbors before returning inside. Waiting for the darn thing to crawl its way to me meant I’d spent more time outside than I would’ve liked. Of course, that had been my own fault for missing the first four items launched my way. Whoever is sending these things probably thinks I’m a complete idiot.
(They might be right. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to open the thing. Righty-loosey.)
From there, what little routine I’ve managed to establish completely disintegrates. Check on Yáo and Ilyukhina, make first contact with intelligent life, ensure the tube said intelligent life has connected to our ship isn’t going to kill us all… just your average Tuesday aboard the Hail Mary.
Sometimes, I pinch myself just to make sure I’m not having some kind of crazy dream. Once, I check intently to be sure that there’s not a gas leak that’s left me with wild hallucinations. Nope. I’m actually in space, suffering from retrograde amnesia, and quickly befriending an alien—Rocky—who speaks in music notes.
We establish basic communication using numbers—the universal language—and I get a crash course in Rocky’s cultural practices. He wants to watch me sleep. The reason I’m so against the idea is, ironically, because I want to “watch” Yáo and Ilyukhina sleep, or at least share a room with them in case of disaster while I’m asleep. Rocky’s oxygenated tunnel is an incredible feat of engineering, but I can’t afford to drag them in here, not unconscious and unable to agree to trust an alien they’ve never met with keeping them alive. Hesitantly but with a surprising amount of compassion, Rocky lets me go. I watch Yáo and Ilyukhina’s chests rise and fall until I can’t keep my eyes open.
The sleep-watching problem proves not to be a problem for very long, because not two weeks into our collaboration, Rocky climbs aboard my ship. To my credit, I manage not to panic when my new alien friend in an impossible ball made from a noble gas (keyword: gas) starts his rampage through the Hail Mary.
“Rocky! My hand is up,” I say, practically begging him to listen.
He turns around in his ball to “look” at me.
“Okay,” I take a breath. “Okay, I’m excited about… this,” I gesture to Rocky’s ball, “But I need… look—”
Rocky wiggles, displeased. Right. He can’t look.
“No, okay— figure of speech. I need to talk to Ilyukhina and Yáo. I need—”
“How talk, question?” Rocky’s translator cuts me off.
“Uh,” I say, stupidly.
“Crew asleep, statement. No talk.”
“I mean…”
“Can human hear when sleep, question?”
“No, but— Rocky, I just…” I feel myself deflate. It’s not as if I’ve forgotten my crew. I still watch them sleep every night—Rocky demands that from me. It’s just… all the excitement of first (second, if you count astrophage) contact, getting the translator working, smoothing over cultural blunders… I’ve been distracted. Selfishly, I’m upset that reality is now crashing back down. Ilyukhina and Yáo are still unconscious, slowly recovering after spending who-knows-how-long without any nutrition. I still don’t know if they’re going to wake up. I don’t know how I’m going to explain Rocky when they do.
“Grace okay, question?”
I realize that I’m crying.
“Grace?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just—” I sniffle rather pathetically. Perhaps now would be a good time to introduce Rocky to the Don’t Go Crazy room.
I wipe my nose on my sleeve, feeling guilty about ruining Rocky’s good mood. “Want a tour?” I ask.