Chapter Text
“So. What’s been up with you, Rock?”
The chilly waves just barely lap at Grace’s shoes as he sits at the water’s edge, absentmindedly rolling a pebble from the sand between his fingers. 40 Eridani A has poked its head over the horizon and dawned on another brisk, foggy day in the biodome. Just the way he likes it.
Rocky gives a thoughtful little trill from beside him, shifting his weight as he settles further into the sand. It’s nice, the peace that they get out here. It’s calm, quiet, the only sound coming from from the gentle crashing of the waves on the shore.
The times that they’re able to talk, just the two of them, have become fewer and farther between since Grace has settled onto Erid— between his teaching job, Rocky being practically attached at the carapace to Adrian since they’d returned (rightfully so), and the fact that he has a biodome-mate in Anya, being alone together has gone from an everyday routine to a rare occurrence. Grace loves all his students and Adrian and Anya to bits, don’t get him wrong, but it’s nice to spend some time with his best friend without anybody else sometimes. And today, Anya is spending the day helping Adrian with something-or-other over at the greenhouse, so he and Rocky have the place to themselves.
“Have been wanting to talk to you,” he replies, which instantly puts Grace a little on edge. No matter what planet you’re on, someone saying I’ve been wanting to talk to you is an instant uh-oh. He can’t tell quite yet if this talk is going to be good or bad. He can’t think of anything bad that it might be, at least not off the top of his head.
“Was talking to [Galileo], astronomer, you remember?” Rocky continues.
Grace nods slowly. He remembers Galileo— an old friend of Adrian’s that they’d introduced him and Anya to not long after they’d arrived, who also happened to be one of the lead astronomers on Erid. Hence the name that Grace had given them. A nice guy, really, if a little stodgy, but Grace is nothing if not used to stuffy old academics. It’s nostalgic in a weird way. Brings him back to the good old days of grad school.
“...Yeah, I remember them. How’re they doing?” he asks, definitely not stalling the rest of this conversation.
“Good good good.” Rocky happily wiggles his two front claws. “Doing very well. But that not the point. [Galileo] visit [Rocky] and [Adrian] home yesterday, tell something interesting.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“[Galileo] team astronomers detected a new object in Erid orbit.”
Grace’s brows furrow. Huh. He still can’t decide if this is good or bad.
“What is it?”
“Unsure. No way to tell definitively from here.” Rocky shuffles a little where he sits. “Likely a passing asteroid, got caught in Erid orbit.”
“That makes sense.”
“But-“
“Ooh. I don’t like buts.”
“-inconclusive imaging,” he finishes. “Cannot tell from telescope observations.”
Grace cocks his head. “I mean. An asteroid’s an asteroid. Does it look like a big rock in the sky or no?”
Rocky shifts his weight side-to-side, seeming almost nervous, and Grace is getting more and more worried by the second. Rocky is being cagey. Rocky is never cagey.
“Rock. What are you not telling me?” “Nothing! Is fine. No reason for Grace to worry. Not the point,” he says, far too quickly for Grace’s comfort, but he continues on before he has any time to interject and ask more questions. “[Galileo] and team decided to send ship up to investigate. Small small small mission.”
Grace would be lying if he said the idea of anybody going to space again after— well— everything didn’t put a knot in his stomach and a sour taste in his mouth. He’s sure Rocky probably feels the same, even if he doesn’t admit it.
“Is okay!” Rocky assures him. Apparently that feeling in his gut had carried over to his face. “Short mission, small crew, will not leave Erid orbit. Safe safe safe.”
“Why’re you sending a crew up to investigate an asteroid anyway?” He asks. That, honestly, sounded really boring. And probably like a waste of funds.
“Grace ask too many questions.”
Okay. There is absolutely something that Rocky isn’t telling him. Unfortunately for Grace, he’s also stubborn. Really stubborn. If Rocky doesn’t want him to know, he’s probably not going to find out anytime soon, even if it drives Grace up the wall.
“Are you sure we don’t have anything to worry about?” he asks. He figures that if he can’t get answers, he can at least get a little peace of mind.
“Yes yes yes. Grace no worry, nothing will happen.”
He sighs, turning away from Rocky to stare out over the water and let his eyes follow along with the ebb and flow of the waves.
“If you say so, bud.”
…
“Does that not seem— I dunno. Weird? To you? It seems weird to me.”
Three or so times every week, Adrian sends Grace and Anya into the greenhouse for what is, he assumes, the equivalent of a nature walk. Neither of them ever complain about it. The greenhouse is a wide, domed xenonite building, not unlike a mini version of their biodome. Concentric rings of dirt pathways start at the door and spiral through the vegetation, towards the circular clearing in the center where he and Anya now sit. Per her request, the Eridians had set up a few benches and tables and whatnot there, giving the pair of them a perfect place to soak in the fresh air and sunlight that streams in through the paneling. Sure, they have oxygen recyclers always working overtime in the biodome, but nothing can really compare to the stuff straight from the source, Grace thinks. It’s rejuvenating to have a little slice of real, Earth-adjacent nature up here. Even if Adrian didn’t make them do it, he’s sure that they would still both go themselves.
Today, however, he’s not really able to enjoy Greenhouse Time as much as he usually can. Unfortunately for him, no amount of sweet sweet fresh green air can get his brain un-stuck from whatever the heck is going on up in Erid’s orbit right now. According to Rocky, the mission is scheduled to launch today— since it’s such a small-scale operation, he had said, preparation was pretty fast and easy— and no matter how much he tells Grace not to worry about it, the whole situation absolutely refuses to leave the forefront of his mind. Which is kinda Rocky’s fault for acting so cagey about the whole thing. You don’t act like that unless you’ve got something to hide.
Anya shrugs from her spot on the bench, which Grace has now been pacing circles in front of for at least the last ten minutes. One of her arms is thrown over the backrest, reaching behind her to absentmindedly run her fingers over the leaves of… something. Grace still isn’t totally sure about all the kinds of plant life that they’re engineering in here. “What else could it even be?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know and that’s what’s freaking me out!”
He’d spent the days since his and Rocky’s conversation making an itemized list of possibilities in his mind, which ranged from really just an asteroid to atomic death ray sent to blow up the planet. Which is… probably not helping his anxiety much, but he can at least rest assured that one of those things is much less likely than the other. What’s the worst thing it could be, realistically? Not an atomic death ray. An atomic death ray isn’t realistic.
…At least, he really hopes it isn’t.
“So— what, do you think Rocky’s lying to you?” she asks. Her eyes follow him, around and around, as his feet continue to wear an elliptical path into the dusty ground. “I think that if there was really something to worry about, he would have told you.”
“Then why was he—” Grace gestures out vaguely with his arms, “-like that?”
“Maybe he really was just trying not to worry you.”
“I wouldn’t even be worried if he didn’t talk about it like that!”
She raises an eyebrow at him, bringing her arm back around to rest in her lap so she can face him fully. “Grace.”
“Anya.”
“You’re overthinking,” she says, emphatically but kindly. This is a phrase that she has to say to him more often than he would like to admit, because it’s something that he does more often than he would like to admit. “If it is anything to worry about— which, it’s probably not— the crew will find it. And then they’ll figure something out.”
He sighs, finally stopping his incessant circling and pushing his crooked glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t want something to be wrong. He doesn’t want another thing to figure out. Not now. The last time someone had found something weird in space, it had landed him— well. It had landed him where he is now. Which is nice at the end of the day, but the circumstances of his arrival could have stood to be a little kinder. “Okay. Okay, yes, you– you’re right,” he finally relents, his tensed shoulders slumping a little. “You’re right, I mean– what’s the worst thing that it could be?”
…
“Grace! Grace! Friend Grace!”
Rocky’s muffled chirps are almost inaudible from behind his incessant knocking on the door. The concept of knock once and then wait for me to answer still didn’t seem to quite be clicking for him, no matter how often he’s reminded (which is very often). Grace always tells him that he’s impatient, to which he always responds no no no, Grace too slow, and he won’t take any argument against it. Oh well.
Grace— who is still not quite fully awake— startles, almost spitting his mouthful of coffee right back into the mug. Jesus, Rocky. “Coming- coming!” He calls around a cough, stumbling to his feet from his spot on the couch and hurrying over to the door.
Now, Rocky may not have a face, but Grace has known the guy long enough to know that he looks stressed. Grace’s brows immediately furrow in worry. This can’t be good.
“...what’s up, bud?”
“[Galileo] team receive transmission from crew.”
Shoot. Grace’s stomach drops. If Rocky was showing up looking like this, he’s sure that the crew’s news is far from anything joyous. His mind helpfully provides him with an extensive list of worst-case scenarios (he hasn’t yet forgotten the atomic death laser), which he very quickly tries to shoot down. He can’t think about that. He’s happy here. Anya’s happy here. He doesn’t want to think about the possibility of some terrible, world-ending scenario rearing its head to knock away their newfound and well-deserved peace. The last thing that Grace needs is another impending apocalypse to worry about.
“...and?” he asks, ignoring the bit of bile that rises in his throat alongside the word.
“Is not an asteroid as we previously thought.”
He knew it. Okay. Okay. That’s fine, there’s still other, benign, not-world-ending stuff it could be.
“Well- what, then?” he asks, his words almost snappish in his haste to get them out. “Comet? Rogue moon? Space junk?”
Rocky does a little shimmy side-to-side in an imitation of a shake of the head— something he’d picked up from Grace.
“No. Is a ship.”
Crap.
“Like… abandoned? An old Eridian ship?”
Rocky shakes his head (?) again.
“Not abandoned. Not Eridian.”
Oh. Oh!
Despite the fact that Grace now knows that aliens are, in fact, very much real and very much out there, the idea of intelligent species beyond humans and Eridians had, for some reason, not really crossed his mind yet. It was absolutely crossing his mind now, though, and he can’t help the sudden giddy feeling that rises up in his chest at the idea. A new species! A new species intelligent enough to build spacecraft, no less! And not abandoned— they were here!
“That’s— Rocky, that’s amazing!” he replies, his tone doing nothing to contain his excitement. “You— what did the crew tell you? What are they like? I don’t know why I never thought about the possibility of coming into contact with more species of—”
“Is not new species.”
Grace’s heart goes from fluttering in his chest to dropping straight down onto the floor in half a second flat. If it’s not Eridian, and not something new—
“...what?”
“Is not new species,” Rocky repeats. “Is human.”
Oh.
Oh no.