Archive of Our Own

...and then you need to get two kilograms of stainless steel 304L, use it for welding, and make sure not to leave off the connective piece I instructed you about—

“Whoa, Rocky, slow down! I’m typing as fast as I can.”

Silly brain need human thinking machine for everything, insult.

“What does he think about the ventilator issue?” asks Stratt, swiping through her tablet.

Rocky launches into another list of instructions while I try my best to beat my 100-WPM typing speed record.

Ever since I told Stratt about my telepathic alien soul-buddy, we’ve been having periodic “girls’ nights.” Stratt doesn’t call them that, obviously, but I do, because we basically sit cross-legged on my bunk and play with a Ouija board. Except the Ouija board is my brain.

There’s a window where I can hear Rocky clearly, between when my first dose of antipsychotics wears off and when I have to take my second. It’s been weird, having another human being who knows about Rocky and isn’t, like, my therapist or my college best friend who found out when I stumbled into her room having a breakdown at 3 A.M. Stratt’s been cool about it, and she and Rocky get along… okay.

Is Stratt still scheduling you for 4 A.M. meetings? Rocky asks.

Yeah, he’s a little protective. I respond in Eridian—I can do a kind of hummy approximation that sounds stupid but is nifty when I don’t want other people to know what I’m saying. “Yes. Please stop.”

I’ll stop when she starts respecting work-life balance.

“You sound like my therapist.”

The therapist you ghosted three years ago?

“Shut up.”

Stratt interrupts our hummy bickering. “I need to ask you a favor.”

“Please.”

“I’d like to tell Ilyukhina about Rocky.”

“Ilyukhina?” I look up from my laptop to see if she’s grown a second head. “Are you crazy? She’d tell everyone!”

She seems to think about that for a moment. “She’ll tell Dimitri. I don’t think she’d tell anyone else.”

I like Dimitri, says Rocky. I hum in agreement. But I’m still not convinced.

“Why do you want to tell her, anyway?”

“She’s been pestering me. Constantly. She’s convinced that we’re hiding something.”

“We are hiding something.”

“Exactly.”

Ilyukhina is the engineer of the Hail Mary crew, correct? says Rocky. I hum an affirmative. I want to meet her.

Stratt is tilting her head at me. “What does Rocky think about it?”

I sigh. “Uh…”

Do not lie.

“He… thinks it’s a good idea.”

“Excellent.” Stratt closes the cover of her tablet and stands up. “I’ll explain everything to her tomorrow.”

I’m already regretting this. “Really? Do you have time for that tomorrow?”

She gives me a look. “It will be more efficient than having to listen to her wild conspiracy theories for another day.”

“Wait—conspiracy theories? What—”

Stratt is already closing the door behind her.

“Did I hear that right?” I mutter. “Ilyukhina’s been making conspiracy theories about my engineering experience?”

I definitely need to meet her, says Rocky.

The next day, Ilyukhina corners me at lunchtime as I’m trying to sneak out of the cafeteria.

“How can I get soulbond with alien rock spider?” she demands.

“Haha, what?” I glance around to check that no one’s listening. Then I lower my voice. “This is not public knowledge. Please keep your voice down.” I move past her. She follows.

“I want to talk to him,” she says.

“He’s not real,” I reply, hurrying down the hallway.

“I don’t care! Alien engineer is alien engineer.”

“Well, you can’t talk to him. He’s not here right now.”

“When will he be back?”

“In the evening. Late evening. When you’re asleep.”

“I will stay up!”

“There’s no way of convincing you to drop this, is there?” I grumble.

“Nope!” she says gleefully. “So you will come to my room this evening?”

I glance around again, but we’ve come to a deserted stretch of hallway. “Okay. Fine. Ten o’clock.”

“Hoorah!” She does what can only be described as a happy dance. Then she points a stern finger at me. “Do not forget, beetle boy!” She skips away down the corridor.

I look down at my soup, which has long gone cold. I ask it, “Did she just call me beetle boy?”

That night, I show up outside Ilyukhina’s quarters. I know it’s the right door because I can hear Pussy Riot playing at full volume behind it. Against my better judgement, I knock.

She opens the door immediately. She’s wearing a T-shirt with a long, floral skirt. I don’t know why this surprises me. Am I so sexist that I think engineers can’t wear skirts?

“Come in!” she says with a grin. “You want Russian snack?”

“Uh…” I step into her room, and it’s like walking into a kaleidoscope. The walls are absolutely plastered with posters, photos, drawings, and what appear to be print-outs of memes. It’s a little larger than my quarters—as it should be, for someone who’s going to die saving the world—but only enough to have a private bathroom and a little extra floorspace.

Ilyukhina is digging through one of her desk drawers. “Aha!” She holds out a small yellow packet with a cartoonish picture of a bear on it. “Cырок?”

“What?”

She waves the packet impatiently. “Is like… cheescake dipped in chocolate. But cheap, with preservatives! And has jam inside.”

“Oh, I’m okay, thanks.”

She shrugs and rips the package open with her teeth. “More for me!” She flounces to the bed and takes a seat, criss-cross-applesauce, then pats the space in front of her. “Okay. I am ready to meet Rocky!”

Rocky is buzzing with excitement. Yes yes yes!

I’m a little more hesitant. I sit down on the bed a good meter away from her, facing away a little sideways. “Look, Ilyukhina… I don’t know why you’re so interested in this, but…” I take a deep breath. “I just want to say… this isn’t a joke, okay? I’m not like, pretending to have an imaginary friend for fun.”

“I know,” she says. She puts a hand on my shoulder. It’s the hand that’s holding the Russian chocolate-covered jam-filled preservative-ridden cheesecake snack thing, so the strong whiff of chemicals is a little nauseating, but I think I appreciate the gesture. “I am very sorry if I seem overly enthusiastic. I’m not making fun of you for having alien friend. I really think it is cool. And I like to talk about engineering things, and space things. So. That is why. If it makes you too uncomfortable, we can just hang out.”

“Wow.” I blink. “Really?”

“Yes! You are very cool, Ryland Grace. Even if you do not like Russian snacks.” She pats my shoulder, then pulls back to take another bite of cheesecake.

“I’m sure it’s delicious. I’m just lactose intolerant.” She laughs. “I guess I’m just not used to the idea that anyone would want to talk to my, um… my friend. I mean, if I went around introducing to him to people in real life, I would probably get locked up, haha.”

“This is not real life!” she says. “This is Stratt’s Vat, where the impossible is only a matter of logistics.”

Very deep, Rocky says impatiently. Can you introduce us now?

“Okay, um… Rocky says he’d like to meet you!”

“Hooray!” Ilyukhina pumps her fists. “Hi Rocky, I am Ilyukhina! What is your favorite type of screwdriver?”

Human screwdriver or Eridian screwdriver?

I relay the question.

“Both,” says Ilyukhina. “Ooh, is one better?”

Eridians don’t use screws as often as humans. We prefer to use a method that’s somewhere in between welding and weaving.

“Wait, what?” she says, after I tell her what he said. “How does that work?”

Grace, you haven’t explained xenonite to her yet?

Oh, boy. This is going to be a long night.

Forty minutes later, I’m standing at the whiteboard that Ilyukhina and I wheeled into her room, wrapping up a very, very condensed overview of Eridian materials engineering. Ilyukhina is laying upside-down with her head hanging off her bed, because, according to her, the blood pooling in her brain helps her think.

“This is coolest thing ever!” she says for the seventeenth time. “Are you sure we cannot make Hail Mary out of xenonite?”

“As I explained,” I say patiently, “The manufacture of xenonite uses certain enzymes that are only present in Eridian plants. I’ve tried, but I haven’t been able to synthesize them in the lab. And I obviously don’t have access to Erid flora.”

“Have you tried to synthesize similar substitute?”

“Of course I have. Do you know how many times I had to explain to my graduate supervisor why I was using the lab to make random molecules that did nothing? It’s a wonder I wasn’t kicked out of academia earlier.”

“Hmm. Why were you kicked out of academia?”

“Um. That’s not important.” I turn back to the board and start doodling the chemical structure of Red 40. Why do I have it memorized, you wonder? Don’t ask.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ilyukhina twist onto her side and prop her head up on her hand. “I bet I can find it if I stalk you on Google.”

I really, really like her, says Rocky.

“Shut up,” I mutter.

She sits up, grinning evilly. “What did he say?”

“He says you should respect other people’s boundaries.” 

No, I didn’t.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Oh my God,” I say. I rub my face, which only succeeds in getting red marker all over my forehead. “I should never have introduced you two.”

“I bet Rocky would tell me how you got kicked out.”

“Unfortunately for both of you, you can only speak through me,” I say, going back to my doodle. A hydroxyl group here, a napthalene there…

Ilyukhina flops back down onto the bed. “You’re no fun. Hey, Rocky, what it is like sharing a head with Grace?”

Leaky. Memories always falling out. Have to remind it eat, much disgust.

I put up a finger. “First of all, Rocky doesn’t share a head with me. He has his own head. It’s just that he’s always butting into mine.”

Only because I love you.

“Love you too, buddy.”

“Aww, you guys are so cute.” Ilyukhina rolls onto her stomach. “Hey Rocky, did you know that Grace once accidentally called Stratt ‘mom’?”

I drop the whiteboard marker. “Hey! I did not—”

“Yes, yes, you stopped yourself, but I saw! You started to say it! You were like, ‘Maw—I mean, Director Stratt!’”

I can barely hear her, Rocky’s laughing so hard. I cover my face with both hands.

This was such a mistake.

Unfortunately for my sanity, and for my sleep schedule, Rocky insists on visiting Ilyukhina again next week. I make it very clear to her that this is optional, but before the words have even finished leaving my mouth, she’s already said yes.

This time, she asks Rocky if he has any questions for her. He’s curious about her accent, so she starts talking about Russia, which turns into a discussion of the space race and the Cold War, which turns into a discussion of the Manhattan Project, which… yeah.

“Rocky says humans are crazy,” I relay to Ilyukhina.

She laughs. “Yes, we are! But Eridians are too, no? Otherwise they would not have gone to space when they had only seen stars, how many years before?”

“A hundred Earth years.”

“Incredible! And there had been no manned voyages, yes?”

“That’s right.”

It didn’t exactly go as planned, Rocky says lowly.

I decide to change the subject. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask Ilyukhina, Rocky?”

Yes yes yes. Why does she sound like so much fabric?

“‘Why does she sound like so much fabric…’ Huh? I don’t follow.”

“Oh!” She claps her hands. “He means the skirt, perhaps?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Ilyukhina’s wearing a skirt. It’s a looser type of clothing, with more fabric, so it makes a swishing sound when she paces around.”

Why have I never heard you wearing a skirt?

“Men don’t wear skirts.”

“Some do!” says Ilyukhina.

I want to hear what a skirt sounds like.

“He says he wants to hear what a skirt sounds like.”

“He can’t hear what I look like?” she asks.

“No… He can hear some of what goes on around me, but I’m the only thing that he can ‘see.’ Like, use his echolocation on.”

“Ah! So if I give you some of my skirts to wear, he can hear them properly?”

“Well… technically, yes…” My cheeks are probably blushing.

Yes yes yes! Wear Ilyukhina skirts, request!

“Awesomesauce!” Ilyukhina says, which is a sign that she has definitely been spending too much time around me. She jumps off the bed and starts rifling through her wardrobe. “Makeover time!”

“It’s really fine, you don’t have to—”

“I do have to! I cannot let this poor uncultured alien go another second without discover beauty of feminine clothing!” She already has a skirt in each hand. “He can’t see patterns or colors, yes?”

“Just surfaces,” I say.

“Как жаль. I guess make-up will not have effect, then.”

“Make-up? No, that’s—”

“Good, I brought very little on ship. But nail polish yes! Will smooth texture of fingernails, very beautiful!”

What on Earth have I gotten myself into? “Can we just do the skirts, please?”

“What about pretty blouse?” She holds one up and pouts her lips.

“...Fine.”

“Good.” She throws it to me, along with a skirt I’ve never seen her wear, and opens the bathroom door with a showman’s flourish. “Catwalk in five minutes!”

No going back now. I go into the bathroom and change. My fingers are shaking as I do up the buttons on the blouse. I’ve always wondered what makes a shirt a ‘woman’s’ shirt or a ‘man’s’ shirt. This one is light blue, with white flowers embroidered along the chest, and a slight puff to the sleeves. The skirt is yellow with orange flowers. I can see why Ilyukhina chose it; it’s even swishier than the dark one she usually wears.

Wowwww! whistles Rocky as I pull it on. Amaze amaze amaze!

Perfect. Now he knows what a skirt sounds like. I’ll just change back into my jeans, go back out, and thank Ilyukhina.

“Catwalk time!” she calls through the door. “Let’s see it!”

Nevermind.

My heart beats fast as I turn the door handle. Gosh, why am I so nervous? It’s not like Ilyukhina is going to make fun of me for wearing the clothes that she made me try on. I step out and spread my arms. “Ta-da!”

“Oh. My. God. You are beautiful!” she squeals. “Do catwalk!”

“How do I—how do I do a catwalk?

“Like Vogue,” she says, and does a silly, hip-jutting strut. I do my best to copy it, and she claps. “Okay, now do twirl!”

I start to spin, and the skirt flares out around me like a many-petaled flower. Rocky’s voice is high and gleeful. Amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze—! It is amaze, I think, watching the folds undulate and twist from air resistance. I could probably do this for hours.

Then I trip over my feet and come to a stop, and the dizziness almost makes me fall over.

“Whoa!” Ilyukhina holds me by the shoulders, laughing hysterically. I start to laugh too. The room keeps spinning around me, as if I’m at the center of a centrifuge. Ilyukhina guides me to sit on the floor, and takes out her phone. “Look, I took pictures!”

It takes a few more seconds for me to focus on the picture. It’s of me, mid-twirl. I look ridiculous, I think. Then, more quietly, I look pretty.

Something twists painfully in my chest, and I ask, more sharply than I mean to, “Why did you take a picture?”

“Because you look beautiful! I won’t show it to anyone if you don’t want, no worry!”

“I don’t care. Please delete it.” My voice is shaking slightly. I stumble to my feet. “I’m going to get changed now.”

What you doing? Want to hear more!

“Did Rocky get to hear skirt?” she asks.

“Yes, he loves it. Thank you.” I hurry into the bathroom and change as quickly as I can. The skirt loses its swishy aliveness when I take it off, reduced to an unwieldy bundle of fabric. When I step out, clad once more in a simple jeans and hoodie, Ilyukhina is standing in the middle of the room, waiting.

“Sorry I took picture,” she says, and holds it up to show her photo album. “It’s gone now.”

I feel an unexpected pang of loss. “It’s okay,” I say. “I, uh, I really appreciate you lending me the outfit. You have good taste.” I hold the clothes out to her.

She shakes her head. “You keep it.”

“What? No. These are yours.”

She tilts her chin, considering. “Fine. I will take the blouse. But you keep the skirt. It looks better on you than on me.”

“I—I can’t wear it.”

“Why not?”

I stare at her.

She shrugs. “I won’t take it back. I will never be able to wear it after I saw you slay so hard. The comparison will break me.”

“Um. Okay. Thank you.” I bend down to push the skirt into my shoulder bag. “I need to go now. Sorry, early meeting tomorrow.”

“Tell me about it. Same time next week?”

“I should come here?”

“Yes, unless you prefer I come to your room.”

“Aren’t you busy?”

Grace, shut up! Rocky says.

“Okay,” I concede. “I mean, yes, that would be nice.”

“Awesomesauce.” She leans in and hugs me, then pushes me out the door. As I’m walking away, she calls, “Next time, I give you mani-pedi!”

Before I can respond, she shuts the door, her laughter echoing behind it.

It’s close to one in the morning by the time I get back to my quarters. I stuff the skirt into a chest under my bed. Then I brush my teeth, because Rocky nags me if I don’t. And I take my pills, because I know what will happen otherwise.

I really, really, really like her, he tells me, as I settle into bed and wait for the antipsychotics to scrub his sing-song voice to silence.

“Me too, bud,” I whisper.

Can we keep her?

“You know we can’t.”

It really is ironic that the first time I find someone who wants to be friends with both me and my maybe-not-a-hallucination, it happens to be someone who’s going to depart on a suicide mission in the next year. On the bright side, it’s enough to counteract my instinct against social plans. Every time I think of cancelling a hang-out with Ilyukhina, I remember that soon, we won’t be able to hang out at all! Who knew introversion was so easily cured?

Is Ilyukhina really her name? Rocky asks one night. I’m in my room, typing numbers into a spreadsheet. It’s the kind of boring, mindless task that I reserve for the few hours before bed, when Rocky can distract me from the monotony. It’s very long.

“Eridian names are a lot longer.”

Human names are not.

“Some are.”

So Ilyukhina is her first name?

“No, it’s her last name.”

I thought last names were for people you weren’t friends with.

“Well, we are colleagues. She calls me Grace.”

That’s because the one time she tried to call you Ryland you said you always hated that name and you’d rather she call you Grace, please and thank you.

“Well, yeah, but—”

Why you not admit you scared, question?

My hands tighten to fists above the keyboard. “What do you mean?”

You scared you get close to her, and then she leave.

“Well, yeah,” I say, trying to force my voice casual. “That seems like a pretty rational fear, no?”

It’s still worth knowing someone, even if you won’t know them for very long.

“Are you sure about that?” I ask quietly.

He pauses for a long few seconds. Yes.

“You don’t sound sure.”

I am.

The weeks pass. Ilyukhina starts to drop by my lab between training sessions. The next time Stratt comes to my quarters with questions for Rocky, I immediately launch into a rant.

“You got her to stop pestering you, but now she won’t leave me alone! She’ll say she has a ‘science question’ and then she asks me about World of Warcraft!”

“Hmm,” says Stratt. She looks down at my toenails, which happen to be painted a shiny, glittery turquoise. “Nice nails.”

I shove my feet into my slippers, my face burning. “Don’t change the subject!”

But I stop complaining to her about Ilyukhina after that.

There’s a saying that three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Ilyukhina barely lasts a month before she starts begging to tell other people about Rocky.

“You can tell Dimitri,” I say. “No one else.”

“But Dimitri doesn’t know enough about organic chemistry! How will he help us find way of manufacture xenonite?”

Right. Ever since she learned about xenonite, Ilyukhina has been obsessed with it. And look, I get it. I spent way too many of my college years staying up late in the lab, fooling around with chemicals that I shouldn’t have, in the hopes of proving that xenon could form a solid. Eventually, I learned to let go.

Ilyukhina has not.

“Pleeeeeeease,” she whines. She’s lying upside-down on her bed again, solving a six-by-six Rubix cube. I’m at the whiteboard, where I’ve just detailed my various attempts and failures at synthesizing the xenonite enzyme. “Just let me tell DuBois. And maybe Shapiro.”

I groan. “Alright, alright. We can tell them about the xenonite idea. But we can’t say it came from Rocky.”

Stealing my ideas without crediting me, huh?

“Buddy, you did not invent xenonite. And don’t feel bad about not meeting DuBois and Shapiro. They’d probably tell you way too many details about their sex lives.”

Really? Rocky sounds excited. I want to hear about human sex!

Meanwhile, Ilyukhina has dropped the Rubix cube and is staring at me, slack-jawed. “They told you about their sex life? I have been trying to get them to spill the tea for months!”

“‘Spill the tea?’ Have you been talking to my middle schoolers?”

She scrambles into a sitting position and jabs an accusatory finger at me, swaying slightly as the blood rushes from her head. “Don’t try to distract me, beetle boy! What have Annie and Martin told you about sex life?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, I didn’t write it down! DuBois just told me out of nowhere that they’d started hooking up. He even told me that they weren’t using condoms. And that it was… pleasurable? Ugh.” I shake my head as though it will jostle the memories from my mind.

Realization is dawning on Ilyukhina’s face. Oh no.

“What?” I ask, horror rising in my chest.

“They wanted to have sex with you.”

“What?”

“They wanted threesome.” She shakes her head. “I am so upset. Why didn’t they ask me to be their unicorn? It wouldn’t affect my professional relationship with DuBois—I would only be there for Shapiro anyway! I am most insulted!”

“Whoa, okay, I—” I spread my hands in front of my chest, as though to ward off the flood of novel and now-unforgettable information that is streaming from Ilyukhina’s mouth. “I don’t want to hear any of this.”

“Sorry, sorry.” She cocks her head. “You really didn’t realize that they were asking you to join them?”

“I think maybe you’re not getting the full picture. He was just letting me know as a professional courtesy—”

“What fuller picture there is? Martin told you he wasn’t using condoms. There is no professional reason to tell you that.”

I slump my forehead against the whiteboard. “Can we stop talking about this? Please?”

“Fine. But I will never forgive Annie Shapiro.”

For better or for worse, Ilyukhina is able to put her feelings of rejection aside long enough to meet with DuBois and Shapiro next week. We find an empty meeting room, and I draw the principal xenonite enzyme on the board.

“Remind me why we want to make this thing?” Shapiro says, after she and DuBois have stared at it for a while.

“Ilyukhina and I think it could be useful for making, um… solid xenon.”

“Solid xenon,” DuBois repeats.

“It’s just an idea.”

“Crazy. I like it!” Shapiro points at one bond, then another. “These are very unusual. How did you come up with it?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Am I correct in guessing that the structure is thermophilic?” Dubois asks.

“Yes, exactly!” Most organic molecules start to break down at high enough temperatures, but thermophilic proteins actually get stabler as they get hotter. Which is convenient, if you’re an enzyme in a plant on a planet whose average temperature is well above the boiling point of water.

DuBois and Shapiro ask more questions. It’s surprisingly helpful to go over my research with two world-renowned experts in chemistry and biology, plus Ilyukhina, a materials specialist, chiming in every now and then. I’ve never been able to talk about xenonite with anyone else, and science isn’t something you’re supposed to do on your own. Between the four of us, we manage to come up with some ideas that… could actually work.

To my relief, DuBois and Shapiro are very professional, and don’t share a single unsolicited fact about their relationship. If anything, they act like two good friends who think on the same wavelength, bouncing ideas off each other and nodding in agreement before I can even decipher what they’re talking about. It’s beautiful to watch.

I wonder if they’re going to miss each other.

Then I feel stupid. Of course they are.

Eventually, they have to leave for a late-evening training session, but they thank me for the intellectual exercise and ask me to share my results once I’ve gotten a chance to test some of our ideas in the lab. I use a rag to wipe our notes from the board. Behind me, Ilyukhina, who’s been working on some kind of model for the engineering team while she listens to us talk, starts gathering up the pieces and setting them carefully in her bag.

“Can I ask you personal question?” she says.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you not volunteer for mission?”

I whip around. She’s fiddling with a spare screw and gazing right at me, a small crease between her brows. “Oh, I—I’m not an astronaut.”

“You could be easily trained,” she dismisses. “And you are very smart.”

“DuBois and Shapiro are a lot smarter. Didn't you hear the way they talked?” I gesture at the board. “They might have just cracked a code that I’ve been struggling with for years.”

She raises an eyebrow. “It sounded like you did it together.”

I shake my head. “Believe me. Stratt wouldn’t want me anywhere near that ship.”

“What about Rocky?”

“What about him?”

She twirls the screw between her fingers. A few times, she seems to almost say something, but finally she puts it back in her bag and stands up. “I will see you next girls’ night. Good luck with xenonite.”

I watch her leave. A cold, slimy feeling snakes its way around my ribcage. I can’t seem to get enough oxygen.

I climb to the top deck. Night has fallen, and no one is in sight. I stagger to the railing and take in great lungfuls of sea-salted air.

Rocky’s voice comes on, like a radio tuning in. I hear wind. Where are you?

“On the deck,” I say.

Why?

“Needed to think.”

That sounds bad.

“It’s just…” I grasp the cold metal railing. “I keep trying not to think about how they’re all going to die. Ilyukhina and DuBois and Yao.”

Rocky trills a minor chord. Eridians don’t naturally use minor keys to indicate sadness. It’s one of those things he learned from me. Understand.

“I keep wondering if we could change it somehow.”

He hums a low note. Tell me again why human spaceship can’t return.

“Not enough fuel,” I sigh heavily. Out of habit, I drop into the simplified grammar that Rocky used when I was a kid. It makes things feel less scary, and I’m a coward at heart. “Take much energy to breed astrophage. Our planet cold cold cold. Take much time to make fuel for return trip. In that time, half of humans die.”

Rocky is silent for a few minutes. Then he asks, Spaceship will eject empty fuel bays during journey, question?

“Empty fuel bays… no, why?”

Might make it more efficient.

“No, it was decided it would overcomplicate things and introduce too much potential for error.”

I see. Rocky makes a clicking noise. Remember I told you my journey was very short?

“Yes. After I explained relativity to you.”

Yes. Because of this, I have extra fuel.

My heart flutters in my chest. “How much?”

How much do you need?

“Two million kilograms.”

I can give.

“Oh my God.” I lean over the railing, staring into the roiling waves beneath. The wind howls in my ears.

The Hail Mary comes to Tau Ceti. We combine human science with Eridian science. Together, we find a solution. Then I give them fuel and we can go home. Ilyukhina will live! His voice is high. There was a reason for me to be here after all! This way, we can save the crew!

“I have to tell Stratt,” I gasp. I stumble to the staircase and race down to Stratt’s office. A guard is standing outside.

“Where’s Stratt?” I demand.

“Algeria,” he says.

“When is she going to be back?”

He shrugs. I reach for the door to her office. He steps in front of me.

“Sorry, sorry.” I take a step back and raise my hands. “I’m being rude. It’s just—I really, really need to tell her about something. It’s urgent. Can I please use the satellite phone?”

Reluctantly, he opens the door for me. “Five minutes.” He stands menacingly in the doorway as I make a beeline for the phone on Stratt’s desk.

I dial her number and bounce on the balls of my feet as I listen to it ring. She picks up on the third beep. Her voice is curt as always. “Stratt.”

“I need to talk to you in private,” I say in a rush.

“Grace?” She huffs. “I’m in the middle of a very important diplomatic negotiation concerning the solar panels we’re building in the Algerian desert. You have five seconds before I hang up.”

“Please, it’s important. When are you going to be back?”

“In two days.”

“Two days?”

“I’m hanging up now—”

“Fine! Fine. We can talk in two days.”

“Good.” She hangs up.

“Done?” asks the guard.

“Apparently,” I grumble, slamming the phone back onto the desk. I stalk out of the room and wander blindly down the halls, my mind spinning. The people around me take one look at me and get out of my way. “It’s not a big deal,” I reassure Rocky. “We’ll convince her. We just have to wait. Two days won’t make a difference.”

Will the change of plans require many changes?

“No, no. Wait. No. Yes.” I stop in my tracks, my hands flying to my head. A woman in a lab coat almost runs into me from behind. “Sorry, sorry. Oh, fudge. The food.”

What what what?

I pull on my hair. “There won’t be enough food. We’ll have to double it and—gosh, the weight! It’ll slow everything down, and mess up the centrifuge, and—”

Food is very heavy?

“It is when you’re packing for three people for four years!” I’m shouting and getting a lot of odd looks from passerby, but I don’t care. This is so much more important than pretending I’m not crazy.

Rocky lets out a mournful melody. If only humans had xenonite… It’s so much lighter and stronger than human materials…

I freeze. “Xenonite… That could work!” In an instant, I’m back in motion, speed-walking my way to the nearest lab, already making a list of the things I need. Pipettes, centrifuge, spectrophotometer, industrial-grade acids… I barge in, put on my goggles, and get to work.

The next two days pass in a blur. I don’t sleep except in snatches on the lab floor. I can’t allow myself to go back to my quarters, because then it will feel like giving up. The ideas I generated with DuBois and Shapiro are bringing me closer to a breakthrough than I have ever been before. I can feel it. And if I can just stay up a little longer, if I just run one more test, I’ll find the answer. If I can make xenonite, there won’t be a weight issue. There won’t be a single reason for Stratt not to turn this mission into a round-trip.

If I can make xenonite, Ilyukhina, and the rest of the crew, will live.

It’s the least busy of the Vat’s labs, and everyone has learned by now to work around me. After they seem to realize I’ve settled into what used to be their lab, the research team packs their stuff and moves somewhere else. I appreciate it. Now I can speak freely with Rocky. I haven’t had time to take my meds, so he’s taken up 24/7 residence by my side, cheering me on and helping me brainstorm ideas. It’s exhilarating. It’s exhausting. I can’t allow myself to stop.

On the second morning, I wake up from the lab floor and check one of the tubs.

Inside is xenonite.

I let out the loudest, highest, unholiest dinosaur screech ever known to man, and it’s still not enough to express the feeling rising in my chest. “Rocky! Rocky! We did it!” With shaking hands, I lift the piece of xenonite and tap against it so Rocky can hear the way it sounds.

That is xenonite! It sounds perfect! Rocky lets out a dinosaur screech of his own.

I spend the next eight hours doing test after test on my little piece of home-grown xenonite. It passes every single one.

“Wow,” I breathe, turning the sample between my fingers and watching how it catches the light. I’m lying on my back on the cold, hard steel lab counter. It feels like I’m lying on a cloud.

The door creaks open and I jump to my feet. It’s Stratt.

“You wanted to see me?” she says, her words clipped.

“Uh… yes! Yes!” I rush toward her, waving the piece of xenonite. “I’ve created a material that, if we use it to replace parts of the Hail Mary, will significantly decrease its mass while increasing the structural stability! It’s made of xenon, and I know, I know, the atomic mass of xenon is much greater than that of aluminum, titanium or iron, but because of the way the the molecules are bonded together, its strength-to-mass ratio is astronomical! This could change everything!

She blinks. “That’s what you wanted to speak with me about?”

“No, actually—I wanted to tell you that we need to put twice as much food on the Hail Mary.”

“For what purpose?”

“So the astronauts can come back.”

There’s a brief silence. Stratt looks around the lab: the sinks full of discarded pipettes, the bins of dirty gloves, the jacket I tossed onto the floor two days ago. Then she says, “I think you should start from the beginning.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in her office.

“Let me get this straight,” she says. “You want me to double the amount of food we’re putting on board. And on top of this, you want to use a completely new, untested material. All under the assumption that in fourteen years, Rocky will be able to help the Hail Mary refuel.”

“...yes?”

“That’s a lot of trust you’re asking me to put in your information.”

I nod. “I understand. We’ll run tons of tests to verify that the xenonite works and that the change in weight distribution won’t throw anything off.”

“When you change things this late in the game, and especially if you’re working with a completely new material, there’s no number of tests that will be enough. You know that.”

I put up a hand. “I know to you, this is a new material, but Eridians have been using it for hundreds of years. They know it interacts with materials like titanium, steel, copper… even oxygen, an element that doesn’t occur naturally in their atmosphere! That’s how extensive their experience with it is!”

Stratt’s expression is unreadable. “Right. The Eridians.”

That’s when I realize that Stratt doesn’t believe me.

This whole time, I’ve been operating under the assumption that, for the first time in my life, I finally found someone who trusts me. I was wrong. Stratt has always thought that I was lying, crazy, or both. She’s played along so far because all the information I gave her was accurate. She didn’t care where it came from. But now that I’m asking her to rely on information that can’t be tested, well… that’s another thing entirely. 

“I have a question,” she says.

I nod for her to go on. I can’t quite bring myself to speak.

“How would you feel about replacing Dr DuBois as the primary scientist aboard the Hail Mary?”

My mouth falls open. DuBois’ voice rings in my head. “I hear you have the coma-resistance markers, just like me and the rest of the crew.”

She continues. “It sounds like Rocky could help a lot with our mission. And you’re the only one who can communicate with him. He doesn’t speak English, does he?”

“No, uh.” I clear my throat. “He speaks Eridian.”

“Right. So it would be helpful to have you on board to communicate with him.”

“I—I don’t have anywhere near as much academic experience as DuBois, and—”

She shakes her head, dismissive. “You are at least as competent as DuBois. Your discoveries with astrophage, your collaboration with Leclerc on climate planning, your insights into ship design—”

“That was Rocky.”

She waves a hand. “Whatever the case, I don't doubt for a minute that you have the technical expertise to be the primary scientist. I wouldn’t have asked you before, because you were clearly uncomfortable with the idea of a suicide mission—”

I almost laugh. “Wouldn’t anyone be?”

“—but since you seem to have un-suicided it, well, that changes things.”

I don’t know what to say. My head is filled with static, underlayed with Rocky’s distant voice shouting, don’t do it, don’t do it, it’s not safe!

She softens her voice. “Wouldn’t you like to meet Rocky in person? Haven’t you ever wondered what color he is?”

That’s not cool. “It’s not about what I want.”

Her voice hardens again. “No, you’re right. It isn’t.” She leans over and makes a note on her tablet. “You don’t have to decide right now. We’ll have to do some initial tests on the xenonite, and simulations to see how the weight distribution would change things. But I will ask you again in a week, and I hope you will have an answer ready.”

I swallow. “Will my answer change whether or not you send extra food on the Hail Mary?"

“No.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. She looks straight into my eyes, and she has no tells that I can see. But something in my gut tells me that she’s lying. It makes sense, really. If I truly believe that everything I’m telling her is true, then there’s little reason not to go on the mission. If not… she has no reason to listen.

She’s testing me to see if I really trust Rocky.

And the answer is, I don’t know.