Archive of Our Own

The flashing red lights hadn’t been the first red flag, ironically enough. Nor had the alien spaceship, nor had the news stories about the impending death of millions.

No. The first red flag to Grian had been the car.

It had been a normal day for him. Teaching the kids about something he had planned in the curriculum months before, smiling when they answered correctly, smiling regardless when they answered his questions wrong. Squinting at the model stars and planets that he had painstakingly hung on the ceiling, tutting and grinning and cheerfully exclaiming, “Hmm… Not quite!”

When he had stepped out of the building, and the man with the expensive suit had frowned at him from the black, armoured van— that was the first red flag.

~

“We need you,” they had told him, and Pearl couldn’t quite meet his eyes when she echoed it. “The world needs you.”

He had tried to reason with them. Explained that he couldn’t possibly know what they were talking about, although he was certainly lying through his teeth. Told them he had flunked his way through university and failed his PhD. Told them that they had gotten the wrong guy.

Unfortunately, Pearl knows him far too well. As she should. She is his sister.

She told him afterward, when the meeting had ended, and they had gifted him a lab and equipment and an impossible goal. That she had put forward his name, that she had told them about him.

She had grinned sadly at him, in that dark meeting room. “Grian,” she said, the lines in her face drawn harshly with time and premature grief, “we have no idea what this means. This could be the end of life on Earth, as we know it.”

“I’ve read the headlines,” Grian had replied. “I know! But how would I, of all people, figure that out?” He laughed, stilted.

“You, of all people, may be the only person to figure it out.” Pearl’s voice was dead serious. “Come on. Your studies, your thesis… You studied solar energy, Grian. You dedicated your life to it for four years. Surely, you’ve come out knowing enough.”

“Pearl.” Grian stares at her, at her shadowed face in the low light. “You can’t truly think. Truly. That this is going to save the world.”

“Grian,” Pearl sighs, lifting her chin to him. “I’ll think whatever I need to think. Because there is no plan B. Not with this.”

She strides off, pushing through the heavy doors of the room and letting them bang behind her. Grian stands behind her, in his rumpled shirt from work, and a cold sweat breaks out down his back.

It’s time to work.

~

Three weeks later, cramped in a tiny room with machines whirring around him, Grian finds his answer.

His lab partner for his stay, as Pearl calls it, or his imprisonment, as Grian calls it, is a tall man named Etho. He’s quiet, but smarter than anyone Grian has ever met before. Apparently, he had been working for a space agency before joining Pearl’s team, but Grian never pulls any more information from the man.

“Astrophage,” Etho announces, “is a cell.”

<“And it’s eating light. The light from our sun,” Grian adds. “Very quickly. Travelling to Venus, where it’s reproducing unchecked.”

Silence rings out over the walkie-talkie, Pearl dead silent on the other end. Scientists and world leaders alike are gathered around her, watching Grian and Etho from an observation window outside the lab.

“How long do we have?” She asks finally, voice steady. Her face, through the glass, betrays nothing.

Grian and Etho turn to each other. Etho’s face, behind his lab goggles and black mask, is grim. Grian feels that same sinking feeling in his stomach.

“At most? Up to ten years,” Grian finally says, hand white-knuckled on the ‘SPEAK’ button on the radio. “If we get lucky, that is.”

“If we don’t?” A man speaks up from Pearl’s end of the walkie-talkie.

Etho shrugs, but his trembling voice gives away his answer. “Three. Maybe less.”

Pearl stands from her chair, dropping the walkie-talkie, although Grian can hear her voice through the glass as she makes her announcement. “We,” she says determinedly to her team, “have work to do.”

~

A FEW MONTHS LATER:

~

Pearl’s sacrifices are admittedly, if nothing else, very smart.

They are, simultaneously, very stupid.

“If nothing else, I’ll die trying to save the world. That’s really heroic, you know?” Gem, a ginger, curly-haired girl with green eyes and a bright grin, pipes up from her place at a lab bench nearby. Grian frowns at her, crossing his arms as he straightens from looking at his own equipment.

“So, you’d hurtle yourself into space, trusting the equipment of a hastily made rocket with your life, just to do research on random cells that have appeared in a solar system we’ve never even dreamed of reaching before?” Grian raises an eyebrow. “With, just to remind you, fuel technology that’s only been tested on probes? Half of which have exploded upon contact with the atmosphere?”

“A million percent. And, if I reach that other Petrova line,” Gem says cheerfully, “Maybe I can name it after myself. As Pearl said at that meeting, that star might be millions of miles away, but it’s not dimming, despite having a line of Astrophage. Unlike ours, which is dying rapidly. And, you know, it's going to lead to all of our deaths very soon.”

Impulse, a lab technician that Pearl had pulled into the room only minutes before, looks up at her with a mirrored expression of concern to Grian’s. “It is slightly worrying that you’re so upbeat about flying to your death.”

“I’ll be in good company,” Gem says jokingly, and turns to the person on her left. “Etho cracks super funny jokes.”

Etho, white hair pulled back to reveal his mismatched eyes, blinks at her momentarily. “Right, yeah. I’m known for my comedy.”

Grian shakes his head and turns back to his microscope. The acid hasn’t reacted at all with the astrophage, and it’s still impossible to see through. Impenetrable. He curses under his breath. Around him, people bustle through the lab, making it seem much more full than it truly is.

It’s weird to consider that just under a year ago, Grian had only been watching the news on his lunch break.

It had been flashing the usual, tired headlines. A woman had gone missing in a park three provinces over. A car accident on a major highway.

And then, a headline, taking over the entire channel. News. News from outer space.

A red line, travelling from Venus to the sun. The Sun weakening in energy output.

It didn’t take long to plague the top headlines of the world. Rumours coursed through countries like wildfires. Rumours that soon, much sooner than it should, the sun would be dying. The sun would be dying, and the Earth would fall dark, and everyone would die.

But they were just rumours.

And confirmed by his and Etho’s research, presented in Pearl’s debrief from 4 hours ago, the rumours in the news had been true.

“Our sun is dying,” she had said, standing at the front of the room. A tall figure already, she was imposing. She cast a shadow on the projected board behind her, her face glowing with an image of the sun. “It’s being sapped of energy, light, and heat. In a matter of years, perhaps not even decades, we may all be dead.”

Muttering erupted across the leaders and scientists alike in the room, but she ploughed on.

“Temperatures are already fluctuating madly. This cannot possibly be chalked up to climate change any longer. Our world is failing, and we must come together to try and save it.”

A voice spoke up from the gathered officials— an unknown man. “How can we save the sun?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Pearl grins wryly. “And it so happens, the very question we are gathered here to request. Conveniently, we have the world’s best scientists in this room. And in these labs. And we hope to uncover just that.”

The slide switches behind her, displaying the familiar photos that were burned into every human’s eyelids at this point. “The Petrova line,” Pearl says sharply, “needs no introduction. We are all intimately familiar with it. And what it means. A line of what we now know to be Astrophage is producing infrared light and is connected in a band between Venus and the Sun. The astrophage is travelling to Venus to reproduce.

The same band has been spotted in every solar system near us. And all of the stars around us, visible with the naked eye and not— they’re all dying. We have had our best scientists in the world on this case for months now. And still we cannot find a solution.”

She turns to look at the screen, silence falling across the room. “Our night sky is fading,” she breathes. “Our universe is dying. And if we cannot save our star— all will be lost.”

Grian holds his breath, as does everyone else. The silence is thick, stretching over the dim audience as they wait for her to speak again.

“This is where we come in,” Pearl declares finally. Her face has hardened into something determined. Something solid. “We are going to save the sun.”

At that, Grian half expects the room to erupt. To murmur, to laugh maybe. At that absurd statement, the idea that humans could save something as big— as inconceivable— as the sun that sustained all life on Earth.

Instead, there is silence.

“Most of you know the plan,” Pearl says, then her eyes flick to Grian. “I will introduce it once more.”

The projector flicks on once more.

“We have some very brave scientists. Be they engineers, biologists, or other specialties that support their intelligence. And they have agreed to help save our sun.” The slide switches, showing faces now. Gem’s bright green eyes. Etho’s shock of white hair. A man with a mustache and dark eyes, grinning awkwardly at the camera. And a man with large, blue eyes and golden-blonde hair. “Astronauts, who will board a spacecraft powered by Astrophage. As a material that carries large amounts of energy, amounts that we thought impossible prior to this— astrophage will allow us to make an impossible trek into outer space. Four astronauts are going— a pilot,” She nods at Gem across the room. “Two engineers. One who specializes in long-term life sustainment and health equipment. And one who’s well trained in spacecraft repair and operations.” She smiles briefly at Etho and the black-haired man. “And a scientist. To examine their findings and report back.” The blonde-haired man lifts a hand, grinning sheepishly as people turn to stare at him.

“The star Tau Ceti is our brave heroes’ destination. They will travel there, find out why the star is not dimming, and send the information back to Earth as soon as they can. Meanwhile, we here who remain on Earth will have… tasks. To slow the death of our planet.”

Silence falls briefly across the room before Pearl claps her hands. “So thank you. Takeoff will occur in less than a week, and we have much to prepare before it. You all have your responsibilities. Please, speak to my personal team or me should you have any concerns.”

And just like that, the meeting is adjourned.

~

“So,” Etho leans against the cold metal railing, blowing out a puff of air through his mask. It curls, steaming, into the frigid night air. No stars are visible, not with the overcast sky, and the bright lights of the facility mean that true darkness is impossible. Even here, on this isolated rooftop of the laboratories, there is no peace. “Not jumping at the chance to launch yourself into space?”

“Nah,” Grian shrugs. “I’m surprised you went for it. And I’m more surprised that you’d known for so long and didn’t bother telling me, when we were locked inside a laboratory together for months.”

“Well, uh,” Etho grimaces. “I didn't find it worth mentioning, honestly. And I was distracted with figuring out the whole… astrophage fuel source thing.”

“Not worth mentioning? Etho, you’re sending yourself to your death!” Grian whips his head to look at the man, reeling at how unbothered he seemed.

“I mean, it’s for the greater good, you know?”

“I mean, yeah. If it works. If you even make it there. And that’ll be in years!”

Etho shrugs, bracing his hands on the railing and staring blankly out at the stretches of empty fields. “It’s worth it to try. I’m not leaving much behind here. And I figure it’ll be a little fun to hang out on the ship, do the research. It’ll be… well, hopefully life-changing. For all of Earth.” He turned to Grian, tilting his head. “You have too much here to leave?”

“Well, I guess,” Grian shrugged. “My cats. My kids at the school. My… entire life. I mean, even if it’s nothing extravagant, it’s what I’ve always wanted, you know? I can’t imagine just… ending it all. Upending everything. I like what I do. I change lives; I help kids grow to love science. And I adore every single one of them.”

“That’s really noble,” Etho says quietly. “It really is.”

“What you’re doing is noble,” Grian retorts. “Are you really finding it so easy to just… leave behind your life?”

“My life is here, already. Has been for the last three years.” Etho sighs. “My best friends work here. I basically sleep here. Leave at three in the morning, come back at seven. I built my life into these labs. It only makes sense I follow the outcome, right?” He tilts his head up, closing his eyes and breathing in the fresh, sharp air. “If Pearl trusts me to try and save the world, I trust her as well. And I’ll try everything in my power to not let her down.”

“I can’t believe that she’d send people up to die,” Grian breathes, and Etho cracks a wry smile.

“Have you ever heard of the trolley problem? That scenario where you have the choice to sacrifice one person to save three others?” Grian shrugs, and he continues. “Pearl is the strongest, bravest person I know. Because she’s living with that problem. And I have no issues with her flipping that switch to save the entire world. Even if I’m the one lying on the track.”

“You seem to have already come to terms with this whole thing,” Grian cracks, throat dry. Etho grins again, shrugs simply. “Gem and I talk a lot. With Mumbo, too, and Jimmy. We’ve kinda figured it out, at least for ourselves.”

“Mumbo and Jimmy. The other two astronauts?”

Nodding, Etho glances back at the bright door. “Yeah. Nice guys. Solid team. Hey, I’m going to call it for the night. But there’s a party tomorrow, kind of a… going-away party for us. I hope you stop by.”

“Yeah,” Grian says lamely. “I’ll try.”

And as Etho disappears into the stairwell, Grian glances up to the sky one last time.

Through a break in the clouds, stars twinkle down at him.

He descends back into the laboratories.

~

“I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me,” Pearl frowns, and Grian slams his hands on the table.

“I just— who gave you all of this power, Pearl? I haven't talked to you at all for like, six years. And suddenly, you’re the head of the world, and Superman, and you’re trying to save our solar system. What happened?”

Pearl shrugs. “I’m not really the only one making the orders, you know. Everything goes through around 20 people before it comes out of my mouth. They just need someone to say it finally, for the last time, so they can all clap their hands and applaud their own ideas.”

“Your cynicism is noted,” Grian grumbles, “but not quite the answer I was looking for. How did you get here?”

“I think the more pertinent answer is how I get out of here, if we ever resolve this. But that is a problem for another day. You will find, Grian,” and Pearl levels him with a serious look,” that people are very quick to throw each other into positions of power. And I say power very loosely in this scenario. They all know the consequences of my actions, as do I. And they would rather avoid what I am doing at all costs and stay the puppeteers behind the scenes.”

Grian wrinkles his forehead, smoothing his hands down his red jumper. “So why do you agree to do them? Why throw yourself under the bus?”

Pearl smiles, but it’s a sad, wry little smile that twitches at the corners of her lips. “Because it’s better than the alternative, which is nobody under the bus. And the bus drives itself off a cliff with all the children in the world on it, because nobody was brave enough to jam the tires.”

“That makes… no sense,” Grian frowns. “I thought you were meant to have majored in English.”

Pearl smiles now, a real smile. “History, actually. And, uh, I’ll work on my analogies for next time. For now, I think it is time that my office closes for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Grian. There’s a party, I’ve heard.”

~

The party is much more… lively than Grian had expected.

He doesn’t know what he had expected, walking into a ‘going-away’ party (a premature funeral party, he considered it, but he wasn’t going to say that aloud). But it wasn’t the booming music, open bar, and dance floor that he stumbled into.

Gem smiles and waves him over from across the room, Pearl standing at her side. They seem to be sharing a bottle of… something, and as Grian makes his way over to stand at their table, he realizes who the other people standing nearby are.

Etho’s there, back to him, talking to a shorter man that Grian recognizes from the biology labs— Bdubs. Beside them, holding another smaller conversation, a group of men he also vaguely recognizes— a shock of bright yellow hair and red-tinted glasses, and Impulse.

Mumbo, who Grian now knows by name, is standing beside Gem and Pearl, awkwardly nodding along as the two speak. The last astronaut is nowhere to be seen, but he’s likely somewhere buried in the crowds of scientists, politicians, and representatives alike.

“Grian!” Gem cheers, throwing an arm around him as he finally reaches her side. “It’s good to have you here! Welcome to our death party!”

Grian chokes on his own response as he registers the latter part of her sentence, forcing a grin and a nod. “Glad to be invited!”

“It’s not a death party,” Pearl says, but her eyes are lowered with guilt. Gem doesn’t seem to notice, reaching over to ruffle her hair with a giggle.

“It’s close enough. Hey, Grian. There’s a table over there with a bunch of drinks on it. Can you grab a random bottle for me? Surprise me!”

Grian shrugs, wading through the crowd to find the foldout table she spoke of. He grabs a beer for himself, trying to act more natural, before randomly selecting a green bottle of… soju? Maybe? Before making his way back. As he hands it to Gem, she claps him thankfully on the back before snatching it from his hand and disappearing from the table.

“I don’t know where she’s going,” Pearl says into his ear, loud enough to be heard over the music. “Don’t bother asking.” She stares down at the bottle left in her hands, eyes determinedly raking over the label. She’s guilty, he can tell. Side effect of spending over fifteen years in the same house as her.

Mumbo grins uncomfortably at Grian, raising his eyebrows. The man is tall, with more than 6 inches on Grian. “Uh, it’s nice to meet you!” He has to raise his voice to be heard over the music, which is thankfully quieting a little. Grian glances up to see that people have begun to trickle out of the party. Huh. Perhaps he had arrived a little bit late.

“You too,” Grian responds, a little late. “I’m Grian. I’m, uh, a scientist—”

“I know,” Mumbo interrupts, blushing a little afterward. “Sorry. I just mean, I’ve seen you around a bunch. And Pearl’s always talking about your research.”

“Oh. Right,” Grian, caught off guard, takes a drink of his beer and immediately regrets it. It’s horrible, way too hoppy. He swallows it and sets down the bottle hard. “Yeah. I’ve heard your name around too. Astronaut, right?”

“A recent development, actually, but yeah! And an Engineer, although to be honest, I haven’t been doing much engineering for this whole thing— yet. I suppose that part comes in more when I’m actually up in space.”

There’s a small commotion by the door, and all three of them jerk their heads around to see. It’s just Jimmy and another guy, Scott, laughing hysterically as Gem… shotguns a can of beer, from what Grian can see. Mumbo heaves a sigh, but when Grian looks back at him, he’s grinning. “Can’t wait to have a sleepover in space with those guys.”

“If that’s how you look at it,” Grian shrugs. “I think it’s pretty brave of you to do this whole thing.”

“Well, what else can I do? If Pearl trusts me to do this… well, I just hope I can do it.”

Grian glances sideways at Pearl, who is staring determinedly at the table. She looks up belatedly, blue eyes darting between the two of them before nodding. “Yeah, of course I trust you, Mumbo. I don’t just pick anyone to go up to space, you know.”

Mumbo grins sheepishly and opens his mouth to continue, but they’re interrupted by Gem, who darts up to grab Pearl by the shoulders. “Pearl! They’re doing karaoke. Come on!”

Pearl only has time to stare at them with wide, desperate eyes as she’s dragged off, which sends both Grian and Mumbo into a laughing fit as they fight for air. The party is pretty cleared out by now, just the astronauts and a few other people, and they walk over to where Gem is shoving a microphone at Pearl. Opening notes play, and the lyrics fade onto the screen.

It’s an older song, one Grian only faintly recognizes.

And as they sing, and Pearl and Gem’s voices mix together, Gem’s out of tune and loud, Pearl’s soft and hesitant, Grian’s thoughts drift upward.

As the party fades, it feels an awful lot like the end of the world.

~

Grian is wrong. The world truly ends two days later, and two days before the launch of the spaceship, affectionately dubbed the “Hail Mary.”

He’s in the lab, talking idly to Gem and Etho, when they hear it. And feel it. The wave of it crashes over them, sending test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks tumbling to the ground, and Grian grabs the lab bench tightly as the noise shakes the world, rattling through his eardrums with a resounding BOOM!.

Later, after sprinting outside, staring at the dust cloud of smoke and dust lingering in the distance, they will find out what happened. They will learn that a stupid, fatal measurement error sent millions of tonnes of energy off from the chemistry labs in the southernmost building. They will learn that a milligram of astrophage, instead of a nanogram, was handed to Jimmy Solidarity, the fourth astronaut on the Hail Mary space mission.

They will find that he, along with all others in the building, was vaporized almost immediately. And that he was dead, along with the other astronauts who were prepared to substitute for Jimmy and the others.

And that, most of all, the Hail Mary needed another astronaut. Another scientist.

Soon.

~

“Pearl,” Grian begins, and the woman in question glares up at him, eyes red-rimmed.

“What.”

Grian sighs. “You need to sleep. I don’t think I’ve seen you even sit down once in the last 36 hours.”

“I’ll sleep when the Hail Mary is launched, Grian,” Pearl snaps. “I’ll sleep when it has been launched, and the astronauts on board have safely woken up. I’ll sleep when Earth receives a package of deus ex machina, and it has been implemented, and the Earth is no longer entering a global ice age.”

“Pearl…”

“I’ll sleep when I have successfully signed another person’s death warrant, Grian. Because I already did so for more than forty people, and we have no bodies for them to bury. And I still have three more living bodies to send up to the endless space above us, and I need to decide on one more person to join them.” Pearl’s head whips up, her hair tangled, blazer wrinkled. Her blue eyes are bloodshot, and she’s pale. “I’ll rest when I’m dead, with them, or when the world has been saved.”

Grian just shakes his head, lost. “Who are your options?”

Pearl purses her lips, shaking her head slightly as if to recentre herself. “Actually,” she takes a breath, voice cracking minutely. “That’s why I called you down here. We need to have a little chat.”

Grian slowly pulls out the chair in front of her desk, sinking into it. Pearl glances down at her own unused office chair before mirroring him. “Yes?”

Pearl closes her eyes, sighing before looking back to him. Curiously, she won’t make eye contact. “The astronauts aboard the Project Hail Mary have certain biological indicators that we selected from our pool of people. I mean, you’d be very surprised how many people volunteered to go onto that ship. But we needed people with a very specific gene. A gene that would allow them to survive the coma we must induce on them to get them that far into space.”

“Right. Uh, I think it was Scott—” Grian’s voice cracked, thinking of the teal-haired man who Jimmy had been talking to. Both him and Jimmy had vanished into vapour just a day prior. “Yeah. Uh, someone told me about that.”

“Right,” Pearl sighed. “Well, uh, we don’t have any people on hand with those bio-markers. Not anymore.” She shifts in her seat, looking down at her desk before making intense eye contact with Grian. He shifts too, now, uncomfortably. “That’s wrong, actually. We know two people with those markers.”

Grian stares up at her. “That’s… good. Are they willing to go?”

Pearl presses her lips together. “Well, one is. But that is unhelpful. More specifically, there are two humans with those bio-markers in this building, and one is a scientist who can help aboard the Hail Mary. Turns out these genes… run in the family.”

Grian’s not sure when his heart had begun to beat loudly, but it’s pounding in his chest now, stampeding rapidly on his ribcage. Something in him has shifted. A truth is about to be revealed.

Wiping his palms on his sweater as he began to sweat coldly, he determinedly returned her gaze. “That’s… good. Are they willing to go?”

“That’s what I’m here to ask,” Pearl breathes, and the blood stops rushing altogether in Grian’s ears. “Grian. I want— I can’t— I need you. The world needs you.”

Grian stares at her, frozen. He thinks the world has begun to crash down around him. Perhaps it’s just his mind, decaying at the very idea of what she’s asking of him. “Pearl. What are you saying?”

“You know that I would send myself,” Pearl says, and she’s crying now, pearly tears streaking down her pale cheeks as she continues to force words out. “I would, in a heartbeat. Before I even thought about sending any of these people. Any of—” her voice cracks, but she presses on. Pearl has always been persistent. “But I can’t. I was a history major in university. I was never— but you—” she breaks off, finally falling silent.

Grian just stares at her. He’s vaguely aware that his breath has become ragged, that he’s feeling slightly dizzy, but all he can do is stare.

“Grian,” she finally breathes, “please say something to me.”

“You want me to die,” Grian says, his own voice alien to himself. “You want to send me up in that death trap, and to sacrifice myself for humanity.”

“I don’t want any of this,” Pearl begs, her brown hair plastered to her face with tears. “I never wanted any of this to happen. But if we don’t— if you don’t— we all die.”

“I can’t change that!” Grian shoots to his feet, and the words tear violently from his throat. “I can’t change any of that! Maybe dying with our Earth is just what humanity is destined for! I don’t see how sending a bunch of random people up in a metal can is going to—”

“You don’t mean that,” Pearl says quietly, “because you’re not religious. I know you. You don’t believe in destiny, or fate, and you certainly don’t believe that humanity deserves any of that. And you don’t mean the second part, either, because you’re the one who discovered this whole thing to begin with. You know that if you went up— you, especially, of all people— you could find something. You could save us all.”

“I don’t know that,” Grian argues back, and now he’s crying, water streaming from his eyes and mixing with his sweat as he grips the back of the chair as if it’s a lifeline. “We don’t know anything! Maybe it’s best if we just stay here. The Earth will survive for another ten years; we have time! We don’t need to figure out everything this week, let alone tonight!”

“You know we don’t have time,” Pearl rasps. “We all know that. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the Earth holds on for another decade, maybe more. But what happens in those years? Natural disasters that kill thousands? Hunger, famine that ripples across the globe, starving people with slow, painful deaths? War between countries for resources?” She reaches over, gripping his pale hand with her own white knuckles.

She continues, her voice terrible and ringing and so, so wrong. “The rich will gorge themselves on luxury and die in private bunkers, while the poor will starve and eat each other just to survive longer and more miserable days. And the whole time, they all will lament, why did nobody try to stop this? And we will be at fault!”

Grian shakes his head hollowly. “Pearl, how did you end up in this position? How did you end up the one to make this decision?”

“Someone has to,” she retorts, nails digging into his skin. “Someone has to send people into space to die, and someone has to stand before the firing squad when they realize that people were sent to die. And you know what? I’ll take those bullets if it means that we buy the Earth and her people more time.

“You were a historian,” Grian says desperately. “And a gardener! You were a gardener, Pearl.”

“I still am,” Pearl says, releasing him and stepping back. “I still am.”

“I won’t go,” he tells her, and her face crumples, tears flooding her eyes once again.

“Grian.”

“I can’t!” He says defensively, scrambling. His head is spinning at the wrongness of this all. How quickly things have changed. One night, twelve years ago, he was arguing with his sister over clearing the dishwasher, of all things. Now he’s arguing with her over his life. “I have work! I have children to teach! I have my cats— They’re with our grandparents, and I can’t just leave them!”

“Grian,” she croaks, “please.”

“I’m sorry, Pearl.” He backed up from the desk, raising his hands. “I’m so sorry. I can’t.”

Pearl turns to look at the large window in her office. Face illuminated by the dim light of the sun outside, she looks… resigned. “Then I’m sorry, too.”

Bootsteps echo outside of the office, thundering down the hallway. Grian stares at her, heart thundering. “Pearl. What is this?”

“I’m sorry, Grian.” Pearl ducks her head, looking down at the floor. Resolutely not looking at him. “I really am. And I’ll take my punishment; I will.”

“Punishment?” Grian stumbles back, wrong-footed, as armed people enter the room. Men with thick vests, black outfits and guns. “Pearl, there’s no punishment for this kind of thing. You’re— you’re— you’re killing me.”

“I am,” she says, and her voice is shaking so hard that he can hardly understand her. Once, he would have rushed to comfort her. Now, he stands frozen. “I am killing you.”

“Pearl, I’ll never forgive you for this,” Grian forces out, looking desperately for an escape. “Never. Nobody will. Our parents will hate you. The world will hate you. You’ll have nothing after this!”

“I know,” Pearl tells him, tears staining the white blouse beneath her blazer. Her nose is running, and she’s nearly coughing with the force of her tears. “I know.”

“Pearl, please don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry, Grian.”

Pearl watches, tears dripping freely down her face, as Grian turns on his heels. He dives between two of the men, ripping his way through the doorway of the office and sprinting madly down the halls.

He doesn’t know where he’s running to. In this maze of corporate gray carpet and LED ceiling lights, he’s not sure if there’s any escape for him. He has to try anyway.

He bursts through an exit door, blinking in the sunlight as he dashes madly away from the building. The world around him is just pavement, empty grass, and buildings stretched far across the empty plains.

He’s barely made it eight steps before they tackle him, slamming him to the ground. As his glasses bounce off his face, he knows he’s still sobbing. “Pearl—” he screams, voice ragged as he frantically tries to throw off the grips of the security guards. “Pearl, you can’t do this!”

She’s not there, but her voice still echoes in his head as he feels a pinprick on his neck. “I’m sorry, Grian,” she says, over and over again, her tears glistening as they run. “I’m sorry.”

And everything— the world— fades to black around him.

And then, there’s silence.

~~~~~

So. Back to where we began.

Grian’s current red flags, in order, are as follows:

1. The flashing red lights that are glittering on his display, the sirens that accompanied them (thankfully) muted.

1. The rotting bodies in the medbay. Now that is less of an imminent problem, but still— well. A rather disturbing one.

There are other red flags that he’s electing to ignore at the moment, which mainly include his blurry memories and lack of knowledge as to how he landed himself in this situation, but that is something he’s not focusing on. No, right now, he has to worry about problem number one.

The red lights seem to indicate that he’s closing in on the ship’s destination, which is… possibly optimal? From scanning the various files and books in the laboratory, he knows— remembers, even— the goal of this mission. To find the reason that Tau Ceti wasn’t dying from the astrophage.

He has also figured out that he is far from home. Very, very, very far from his small apartment with his retro fridge and his cat-hair-covered sofa. He’s trying to ignore that, as well.

‘Well,’ Grian thinks, staring out the wide glass windows as stars blur past. ‘There’s nothing to do but wait, I guess.’

~

There is much more to do than wait.

Grian approaches the coffins of his crewmates, nervously making his way through the spaceship. He’s creeping slowly towards them as if they’re going to attack him, however impossible that is. Maybe he’s seen too many zombie movies, or maybe he’s just (rightfully) scared of the dead— just purely out of human instinct.

He rolls out the first cot.

It’s identical to the one he had woken up in— covered in wires and tubes, and various blinking lights. The machinery on this one, like the rest, has shut off completely. He found out a couple of days into being awake that the systems on the ship had gone through an unexpected temporary reset— a glitch in the system, triggered by the ship contacting floating debris. That was what had woken him up. The rest of the crew members of the Hail Mary had been less lucky.

The body that rests before him is male. It’s clothed in the same medical clothing he had woken in, although this person is significantly taller than Grian and much lankier.

As his gaze drifts up to the person’s face, something clears in Grian’s mind. The fog in his memories parts, and as it does, it makes way for a wave of grief, because Grian knows this person.

It’s Etho.

His white hair has grown longer, curling over his face and shoulders. The roots have grown in a dark brunette, and his scarred eye is shut peacefully. His skin is paler than Grian remembers.

He’s dead.

He’s dead, and Grian knows him. He had spent months in a laboratory with Etho, sharing jokes and lab equipment and making life-changing discoveries. Had discovered (and named) astrophage with the man, laughing and joking and praying that they could invent a future that included humanity.

And now he was lying there, dead. Pale, cold, and dead. And humanity would take years to learn of his passing.

But he can’t stay on the ship.

Grian sends him out through the airlock, gripping his keepsakes tightly in his sweating palms. Each of the astronauts seemed to have taken a few belongings with them on the journey— Grian had opened his days ago, uncovering nothing but a spare pair of glasses, a star taken from the hanging display in his classroom, and… two charms. A sun and a moon.

He didn’t need to ask who the charms were from. Pearl’s voice still rang bitter in his head.

He had left those charms somewhere in the cockpit, and he refused to touch them again.

The keepsakes he grips now, however, are not his. It’s a confusing mismatch of trinkets and letters, nestled neatly in a small cardboard box. A golden pocket watch, hands unmoving, is the first that he pulls from the pile. The metal is a shocking cold against his fingertips, and as he turns it over carefully, he finds a carefully carved design on the back— A tangled mix of flowers that Grian can’t identify. Wreathed by the flowers are two initials, E & B.

Grian frowns at it before placing it carefully into Etho’s limp hand and wrapping the chain around his wrist. He had (painstakingly) carried the man into the airlock, cursing the artificial gravity as his muscles strained, and now he lay unceremoniously on the floor, in all of his (dead) glory.

The rest of the items in the box are less straightforward— there are some spare wires braided together into a band, a small lightbulb with.. A smile drawn on in Sharpie? And a few other keychains and mementos that Etho’s friends must have sent up with him. The remaining contents are all papers, connected together with a paperclip— a collage of envelopes addressed to Etho, pictures of him smiling with friends Grian doesn’t recognize, and a few drawings that Grian tries not to look at.

It feels wrong, after all, to go through a dead man’s belongings when he was lying right in front of him. So, packing back up the items carefully back into the box, Grian steps back from the airlock, allowing the countdown sequence to initiate after the lock has hissed shut behind him.

He inhales sharply, stepping to the window beside the lock. The box is still white-knuckled in his fingers, and he forcibly unclenches his hands so that the box doesn’t crumple in his grip.

“Etho,” he begins, voice raspy with disuse. “I’m sorry you didn’t wake up.”

It sounds stupid, and his voice rings pointlessly through the empty ship, but he continues anyway.

“Meeting you in that lab was one of the biggest things that’s ever happened in my life, and I’m glad you were there to be my lab partner. We basically helped save the world together, you know? Or at least, put that into motion.” He coughs, voice cracking slightly as he continues. “I’m sorry you can’t see the ending of whatever this is. I feel like I don’t truly know you enough to be giving this speech, and I guess I’ll never get the chance to know you better, which—”

He inhales sharply, tears stinging the back of his eyes. Outside the window, Etho’s body has begun to drift away rapidly. Grian had slowed the ship momentarily (following the instruction guide very closely) for his makeshift funeral.

“Which sucks. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I’ll try my best to carry on what you were working towards. Rest in peace, man. You’re a hero. I’ll… I’ll miss you.”

Grian turns away sharply from the window, refusing to watch Etho float aimlessly in the vast space. He places the box down beside the window, nestled into the corner of the room, and turns back to the hallway he had come from, squaring his shoulders.

This funeral has not concluded. Not yet.

The next pod he pulls open has the tears returning quickly, because he’s not prepared for the ginger curls that spill out. Gem.

She had been so lively in life— rosy cheeks, a grin that lit the entirety of her face. Her green eyes would always sparkle while she spoke, and she was chronically chirpy, always tossing around jokes and jabs like they were candy.

Now, she’s anything but lively. Her curls are limp, her face pale. The freckles that scatter across her cheeks and nose seem faint, her smile now resting in a permanent frown. She’s so small, too, and Grian winces at how easy it is to pick her up, pulling off the various cords and tubes that rest on her as he does so.

He places her down in the airlock too, resting her carefully on the metal floor and adjusting her hair so that it doesn’t cover her face before he steps back. Her keepsakes were kept in a small carpet bag, and it’s absolutely filled to the brim with papers— stacked full of postcards from different places, letters from friends and family alike, and printed photos of Gem, beaming with her arms wrapped around people.

There is one thing that catches Grian’s eye, however— an envelope, of perfect cream paper, with familiar handwriting on it. It’s a letter, addressed to Gem, from Pearl.

On the back, Gem’s name in Pearl’s familiar, rushed script. But there’s a little note in the top corner, where a stamp would normally rest.

It reads, in blurred, shaky writing— “Good luck. Please keep the necklace. And forgive me.”

Grian blinks, his mind flashing to the necklace that had been buried in Gem’s hair as he carried her. A silver chain, with a stone hanging from the end. Jade, Grian guessed.

He tucks the letter back into the bag and turns to the airlock, hearing the final beeps of the system before it begins to hiss, and the room opens to empty space.

“Gem,” Grian takes a breath. “I didn’t know you quite as well. I suppose Pearl did.”

He thinks back to their conversations in the labs at basecamp, to Gem’s laughter in that party, before the launch. Before the explosion. Before everything.

“You were bright,” he says quietly, before lifting his eyes to where Gem drifts peacefully among the sea of stars. “Brighter than the sun. And so, so kind. Despite everything. You made us all truly believe things were going to work out, you know? And the way you made Pearl smile at that party, singing that dumb song— I haven’t seen her that happy in years.”

Grian leans down to rest her keepsake bag next to Etho’s box, straightening to watch her one more time. Etho has vanished into the darkness, and Gem is soon to follow. “Thank you for everything, Gem. You— you were one of the best of us.”

He turns back to the pod bay. Two bodies remain on the ship. Soon, it will be one.

He knows who’s in the last pod before he opens it— Mumbo Jumbo, the engineer with the dark hair and the mustache. Who, oddly enough, was always wearing a suit beneath his lab coat and was always fidgeting with something during meetings.

He’s expecting the quiet machinery, the pale skin, as he pulls it open.

What he’s not expecting is for the man to open his eyes.

Grian yelps, falling back and hitting his back hard on Gem’s still-open pod behind him as fear strikes through him. The searing pain of hitting his back comes a moment later, and he crumples, groaning, to the floor as he stares, terrified, at the pod above him.

There’s a shuffle of movement, and a pale hand shifts to move a tube to the side.

Grian whimpers in fear. His heart is pounding so loudly he thinks he’s going to throw up on the spot. Mumbo was dead. They were all dead. He had pressed his fingers to Gem and Etho’s pulse points at least fifteen times. They were cold.

“Mate,” and Grian’s head whips up, banging loudly on the pod once again. “Oh— don’t do that.”

Blinking through the daze in his eyes, Grian realizes that Mumbo has propped himself up on an elbow, staring down at Grian from where his pod is rolled out of the wall of machinery.

“You’re dead,” Grian manages accusingly, and Mumbo blinks at him.

“I don’t feel dead?”

Lifting a head to feel the back of his head, Grian’s relieved that it doesn’t come away with– blood, or bumps, or whatever, as he stumbles to his feet. “You’ve been unconscious without life-sustaining machinery for days. You should be dead.”

“Um… well, my mother’s always said I was a freak of nature,” Mumbo comments, jokingly. He sits up all the way as Grian rises to his own feet, and they stare at each other for a half second. “Uh, how did you make it on the ship, exactly? I thought you were Pearl’s brother? The scientist one.”

“Uh— It’s a long story,” Grian mumbles before his head snaps up again and he points an accusatory finger. “You should not be alive.”

“That sounds like an insult, mate. I’m pretty sure I’m alive. My head hurts. I’ve never had a headache during a dream. Do people have headaches in heaven? Or, like, the afterlife?”

“You haven’t had an oxygen tube.”

“There’s oxygen in the ship, I guess.” Mumbo frowns. “Hey, I’m not the expert on life-sustaining technology. That was Etho’s job. I’m just here for the ship itself.”

The man pulls himself up, swinging his legs over so that they dangle over the edge of the pod. He’s pretty tall, and his feet meet the floor. As Grian watches, he blinks rapidly, bringing a hand to his head as the various tubes fall off him.

“Dizzy?” Grian asks awkwardly, and Mumbo nods. “It’ll pass. I was out of it when I woke up, too. Hey, I’m going to go grab you some food, it’ll probably help you feel better after all that gross tube stuff.”

“I’m starved,” Mumbo agrees, before frowning. “Wait, Grian?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you check my pulse to see if I was alive?”

Grian hesitates, hands clenching on the doorframe. “Uh— I was about to.”

“Oh.” Mumbo shakes his head slightly, and Grian flees the room.

~

So Grian has a minor dilemma. Mumbo was prepared to travel to space with Jimmy, Etho, and Gem. Grian is none of those people, and Mumbo is only aware of one of their deaths.

He’s mulling over how to solve this problem when the man himself stumbles into the room, looking vaguely nauseous. “Grian? Did you find food?”

“Yeah, uh,” Grian holds up the powdered applesauce pouch in his hand guiltily. “Sorry. Just waiting for the water to boil.”

They both look over at the hot water heater, which is blinking green.

“Uh. I think that it’s boiled.”

“Yeah.”

Mumbo takes it, eating it ravenously, and Grian realizes that he’s been without real food for ages. The IV system was non-electronic, so he had been hydrated, but the food system must have reset. And considering the electrical failure was days ago, and based on Grian’s estimation, they’d been in space for at least a year and a half—

Okay, that was giving Grian a headache, just thinking of how long he’d been unconscious.

Speaking of headaches— Mumbo has finished his food and is now looking up at him, face worried.

“Grian?”

“Yes?” Grian’s dreading his next words.

“Where are the others?”

‘Floating in the endless void of space,’ Grian does not say. ‘We left them at home. They chickened out.’

He takes a breath, sinking into a chair that’s bolted down to the floor, and grips the table hard. “There was an issue with the induced unconsciousness.”

“What do you mean, an issue? Pearl said we all had the gene. I mean, I know it was risky, but—”

“Pearl,” Grian spits out, before pausing to let the venom seep from his tone, “knew it was very risky. And the risk didn’t quite pay off. Etho and Gem died.”

Mumbo pauses, mouth open, before shutting it. After a minute of silence, he speaks again, voice low. “That’s why you thought I was dead.”

“Right.”

“So why did you open my pod? And where are—”

“Well, Mumbo,” Grian says drily, “you interrupted a funeral, a little bit.”

~

Three months later, the Hail Mary reaches Tau Ceti.

Grian and Mumbo have achieved a sort of messed-up domesticity at this point. They spend their time in the kitchen area or the lab, chatting idly about the things they miss from Earth and what they suspect they’ll find at their destination. When needed, Mumbo disappears to various parts of the ship, making repairs or doing the maintenance he’s well-versed in. (He had tried, on one occasion, to teach Grian how to refill the water tank. The resulting flood had made them mutually decide that Grian would do the basic cleaning, and Mumbo the technical jobs).

The other saving grace is the manual that’s stored safely in the cockpit, and the preset course that the ship is on. Without a pilot, the two of them are virtually useless at operating the ship, and decide to trust the autosteering and veer clear of manual mode.

Their conversations waver, but always carefully dance around two things— their dead crewmembers and Pearl. They talk about basically everything else, however.

Grian learns, as Mumbo’s head is stuck underneath the control panel in the exercise room, that he had left behind his campervan and his cat in the custody of his brother. Before the Hail Mary had called him from his sabbatical, he had been touring the Alps in Europe on a hiking trip. He worked for NASA, despite being from England.

Grian, in turn, shares his stories from teaching— and of his life. His cats, his school, and his apartment are all coloured in with nostalgia as he speaks. He recalls a ski trip to Austria as the two labour on exercise bikes, which Mumbo enjoys immensely.

All this to say, by the time they reach Tau Ceti, Grian knows Mumbo quite well, and vice versa. This is why it’s less surprising to Grian when Mumbo shrieks randomly, jumping nearly a foot in the air and smacking his head on the ceiling.

“Mumbo, I swear for the last time, there are no spiders on the ship,” Grian sighs, and Mumbo shakes his head frantically.

“No, that’s not— this time it’s— look!” He waves a hand frantically at the large window in the kitchen, and Grian glances over.

The stars are gone.

There’s a shadow blocking out the stars.

They stare at each other for a split second, and then, silently, bolt for the cockpit.

~

It’s large, and if Grian were crazy, he would say that it’s a spaceship.

But he’s not, so he’s going to stay silent and let Mumbo sound crazy.

The paneled, curved window in the cockpit is showing them the same thing— a metal structure, blocking out the stars in the background. It’s lit by Tau Ceti, which is now nearby enough to cast light through the windows. In the corner of Grian’s mind, he notices that there’s a beeping sound— a radar, furiously signalling an object near the spacecraft. Proof that neither him or Mumbo are completely insane.

The structure itself is almost double the size of the Hail Mary, but it’s so unfamiliar in every other way. There are no windows to be seen, and the metal that it’s constructed of is so different to any Grian had ever seen— it’s a shining, glistening blue. Come to think of it, Grian’s not even sure it’s a metal. He can’t possibly imagine what it’s made of.

“That’s a spaceship,” Mumbo says, voice lit with confusion. “In the middle of.. Space.”

Grian has two impossible ideas floating, and he’s scared to vocalize each. The first is that Earth had grown impatient and sent another spacecraft that somehow had beaten them to Tau Ceti. That there are humans in that spaceship, and that they’re not alone— but it's not made of a material that exists on Earth. He’s so sure.

That leaves option B, which is considerably less sane and considerably scarier. That it’s not a spacecraft sent from Earth, and that whatever’s on that thing isn’t— human.

“It’s not from Earth,” Mumbo says, and what?

“How do you know that? There’s no way to tell,” Grian snaps back, because he’s stressed and there’s another spaceship, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Look at the design. Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

Grian squints, adjusting the wire frame of his glasses, and, oh. The questionable metal that he had been focusing on wasn’t the only interesting part of the craft. As they near it, drifting slowly towards the immobile structure, he sees what Mumbo was referring to— the fact that, unlike being built from sheets of metal, like their own ship, this new ship is— crystallized, almost.

The material that makes up its exterior is spiralling, sharp, and made up of triangles and shapes of webbed material that stretch across its frame. Instead of being smooth, it’s sharp and crystalline, shining madly as it reflects the light of Tau Ceti.

It’s unmistakably alien. Grian wants to cry.

“Okay. So. What now?”

Mumbo stares at him, eyes as round as marbles. “You’re asking me? Mate, I’ve never met an alien before! I don’t know what to do.”

“What if it’s aggressive?” Grian’s heart drops. “And it attacks us? Oh my god, Mumbo, the ship is moving.”

“I know it’s moving! We’ve been moving this entire time!”

“No, I mean the other ship is moving! Towards us!”

There are a few seconds of chaos as they both scramble for seemingly nonexistent solutions, before they freeze again and stare at the ship that’s racing towards them. Because it’s racing. It’s easily faster than the Hail Mary, and as it grows closer, they realize just how intricate it is.

“So what are we going to do? What if it rams into us, and we go spinning, and the ship breaks down, and we can’t get any research done, and—”

“Mumbo,” Grian hisses, “stop panicking. You’re going to freak me out.”

“I’m so freaked out right now!”

“I know! Stop dragging me down with you!”

They watch in silence as the other ship steams toward them, burning through the empty space at a vaguely impossible speed.

Grian sighs, oddly resigned. Something guilty is settling in his chest, dark and heavy. “It’s going to hit us.”

Mumbo blinks at him with massive eyes. “I don’t know how to steer this ship.”

“Me neither. We’re dead.”

The ship looms closer. Grian says his prayers. He’s never been religious, but he’s just hoping anything works at this point.

It gets closer, closer, and Mumbo is muttering under his breath, and it’s less than four hundred meters away, and it’s going to hit them—-

And then it stops.

A hairsbreadth away from the cockpit window.

Impossibly, it stops. Grian has no idea how fast it was moving, but it was going far too fast for it to be able to be immobile so quickly. But it is.

However, the Hail Mary isn’t. Their ship bumps gently on the alien ship, and Mumbo stumbles, smashing headfirst into the cockpit glass. He yelps as he does so, Grian gripping the back of the pilot chair in the centre of the room to avoid the same fate.

A silence for a few minutes, as they stare into the twisting mass of crystal in front of them. It’s not transparent, like a real crystal— but the formation matches that of one. However, the texture is entirely metallic, shining blue.

And then there’s a knock.

~

Sounds are loud, in an empty spaceship. It was a lesson Grian and Mumbo had learned the hard way, just weeks prior, when they had both jolted wide awake to the sound of clattering from the kitchen.

Mumbo had been banned from placing things on counters after that, and had resolved to set all of his cups on the floor to prevent other accidents.

That, in turn, had resulted in his coffee cup being kicked halfway across the kitchen by Grian. Mumbo had returned to the counters, keeping items far from the edges.

So, when a knock sounds on the outside of the airlock, despite all of the ambient buzzing and beeping in the Hail Mary— they both hear it.

“I’m not going in there.”

“Well, one of us has to, and I’m not.”

Grian and Mumbo stare at each other, panic lacing through both of their expressions.

There have been two other knocks since they had raced to stand outside the airlocks, staring blankly at the spacesuits that hang outside of it— two short, rhythmic knock sequences that had both Grian and Mumbo jumping out of their skin.

“Rock, paper, scissors,” Grian finally forces out, and Mumbo goes impossibly paler.

“Mate, I’m not dying because I lost a game of rock, paper, scissors.”

“I don’t want to die either! Listen, there’s no guarantee that whoever goes in there dies. The knock sounds… friendly?” He makes it sound like a question, voice tilting up, and Mumbo fidgets with his fingers. “Listen, Mumbo, I don’t want to die either, and I’m not giving in to peer pressure that easily. So, either we play rock, paper, scissors, or you go out there.”

“How does that make sense?” Mumbo blusters, but he still raises his hands. “Fine. On shoot? Or on—”

“On shoot.”

“Okay,” Grian’s heart stumbles and pounds in his chest, adrenaline making his fingers shake. “Rock.”

On ‘shoot’, Grian goes with his gut. Rock.

Mumbo’s hand flattens. Paper.

Shoot indeed.

Mumbo tries not to look relieved, but Grian doesn’t blame him. He marches over, roughly pulling on the space suit (which is much, much heavier than he’d thought it would be). “This isn’t fair, you know,” he says petulantly. “You’re trained in space walks. You’ve done them on this ship already!”

“It’s your turn, then,” Mumbo says quietly, before fixing a shaky smile on his face. “Just, uh, be diplomatic, yeah?”

“If it has sharp teeth,” Grian retorts, trying to force himself to step forward. His helmet muffles his voice, and Mumbo holds up something from his pocket. A radio. He flicks a switch, and when Grian says his next words, they echo through the speaker. “I’m sending it after you.”

“Amazing, mate. I’ll be keeping a kitchen knife on me.”

Grian steps into the airlock, fastening his harness.

Mumbo pauses before shutting the door behind him, eyes filled with— fear, maybe? “Listen, Grian, if I don’t see you again—”

“Please don’t, Mumbo,” Grian sighs. The frantic twisting in his ribs has turned into something prickly, fearful, and it burns painfully. Mumbo nods jerkily.

“Yeah. Good luck?”

“Thanks.”

The airlock hisses shut, and Grian is left alone with his thoughts.

That, and another patient knock on the door. The empty sound echoes through the small airlock as it begins to depressurize with a deafening hissing sound, cutting through the static that has begun to build in Grian’s mind.

Yet again, it’s a rhythmic knock. A tapping little pattern.

Perhaps Mumbo and Grian had been wrong. Perhaps, it’s just a human, and there’s nothing deadly waiting for Grian on the other side of the door. Perhaps, Grian will be fine.

He squares his shoulders. A countdown sequence initiates. The exterior door will open soon. Grian is harnessed in, sealed carefully in his suit, and so, so afraid.

The metal door hisses open, and that is not a human floating in front of Grian. Humans don’t have that many teeth.

Grian screams.

~

The blackness in his vision fades out to two unfamiliar sensations— first, a frantic mumbling in his ear, slightly robotic and buzzy with a tinge of static. It’s Mumbo’s voice, he realizes, over the radio connected to his suit— filled with fear and asking a blur of questions about Grian’s well-being.

The second, and considerably more terrifying sensation, is that his suit is moving. He’s harnessed in, but he should be floating aimlessly, considering he’s in the amazing vacuum of space. Instead, he’s firmly anchored in place by something clamping onto his bicep. That, and his helmet is jolting back every once in a while.

He turns his head slightly, and, oh. There’s someone— something— gripping onto him, knocking what appears to be a moderately humanoid hand against his helmet. The haze of his own panic has made him somewhat disoriented, and he grapples with the ringing question of why before he settles on two options. Lovely. It’s always two options with him.

Option A: This alien is trying to check if Grian is alive after passing out. A nice option, that one is. A hopeful one.

Option B: This alien is trying to kill Grian via permanent brain damage. A less pleasant option.

Grian has now been pushed off into the corner of the airlock, and the alien is fiddling aimlessly with the various random wires at the side of it, where the bright colours stand out against the plain gray metal that covers most of the Hail Mary’s interior. This alien can see colours, then. Amazing.

The new space between him and the alien also allows him to scan this new figure a little more thoroughly as well. It seems to be wearing a spacesuit, although it’s not of the same thick material that Grian’s is— it’s wrinkled, and a faint orange colour.

It’s fairly humanoid, but taller than Grian— probably close to Mumbo’s height. And it has three sets of arms, all along the side of its supposed torso. Otherwise, it’s almost— normal.

It has a helmet as well, a thick bubble over what might be its head. But unlike Grian’s, which is thick plastic with only a faint gold coating for sun protection, this alien helmet is completely dark. He can’t make out any image of what’s inside it.

“Grian!” A voice tears desperately through his brain, and Grian shakes his head slightly. Mumbo. Right.

“I’m alive, Mumbo,” he manages, wincing at the rasp of his voice. He knows that the alien can’t hear him, but he still worriedly looks over at its form on the other end of the airlock. Beyond them both, empty space stretches out, with a field of stars only half-blocked by the imposing shape of the alien spaceship. “Uh, it’s poking around in the airlock.”

“What’s it?” Mumbo’s voice crackles frantically, peaking the microphone a little, and Grian flinches. The Alien seems to notice and looks over, its blank helmet turning to face him. One set of its arms is waving frantically.

“Uh, the Alien. It has… three sets of arms. It hasn’t tried to tear me open yet, though. I think that’s a good sign.”

“Maybe,” Mumbo mumbles. “Mate, there are aliens. In the world. They exist. Have you— did you ever think—”

“Yeah, I recognize there are aliens. I’m two meters from one, Mumbo.”

“Right. Um. What’s the next move?”

Grian squints at the Alien, which is frantically gesturing with two pairs of its arms. It’s pointing wildly at the closed door that leads to the inside of the Hail Mary, then back to its own ship. It then makes some sort of… twisting motion. “I think it wants to seal the airlock?”

“Of course. Right. It wants to seal the airlock so you’re trapped with it.”

“No, just… I think it’s used to gravity. It’s swinging its legs a little. And like, one of its hand-things is gripping really hard onto a pipe. It doesn’t have a harness.”

“Do you… think it’s safe to seal the airlock?” Mumbo’s voice is apprehensive, shaking slightly over the electronic radio, but Grian’s too tired of being terrified to care.

“Yeah, go for it. You can grab a kitchen knife if it makes you feel better.”

Mumbo sighs. “Mate, I’ve had a kitchen knife.”

The exterior hatch to the airlock swings shut.

~

When the room has finished hissing and buzzing, and both Grian and the Alien are now on their feet (albeit a little shakily), Mumbo hesitantly swings open the hatch. He’s got one hand behind his back (probably clutching a chef’s knife), and his face is as pale as it had been when Grian had woken him up.

Grian probably doesn’t look much better. He hesitates, looking at the Alien, who’s frozen standing in the airlock. It’s still clutching a pipe tightly in one hand.

Grian tilts his head, taking a breath and pulling off his helmet. The Alien moves as if to follow suit, then freezes, raising a hand and pressing something along the side of its neck.

The visor on its helmet begins to fade, and then— it’s transparent, and Grian is looking into very bright green eyes. Huge green eyes that seem to have slitted pupils, with rough skin covered in bumps and what appear to be scars. Its head shape isn’t all that different from a human’s, just with a crooked nose and a slightly wider smile than normal.

It seems to have hair, similar to a human's as well— brown and curly over the sides of its face, but thicker and coarser than human hair. Grian almost takes a step forward to get a closer look out of curiosity, but thinks better of it and keeps his feet firmly planted. Mumbo shies back a little, smiling nervously, and so does the alien, taking a stumbling step back as its eyes dart up to meet Mumbo’s face.

Its mouth, with thin lips pressed tightly together, is twisted into a huge frown, corners pointed downwards. It raises two hands, palms up, and that strikes Grian as so human, a signal of surrender or peace.

“Mumbo,” Grian says slowly, and the alien’s gaze darts frantically to him. He ignores it and continues to speak quietly. “Maybe don’t show your teeth. I don’t think that’s— universally a good thing.”

Mumbo snaps his mouth shut so quickly that Grian almost laughs, but the alien only seems to relax a minuscule amount, lowering the pair of its arms to join the others at its side.

Grian lifts his free hand, still clad in the thick material of his spacesuit, and carefully waves at it. After a second, the alien copies him with a single arm— waving slowly. Mirroring him.

He lowers his hand. The alien lowers its hand.

“Huh,” Mumbo says, and the alien looks over to him before raising its hand carefully. Then it waves. “Interesting.”

~

A week later, they successfully attached the ships together.

‘Scar,’ as Grian and Mumbo have affectionately named the alien, sits on one side of the airlock, nestled on what appears to be some sort of cushion, as Grian and Mumbo sit on the other side. They’re separated by a wall of… transparent xenonite, according to Mumbo’s hypothesis. Whatever it is, Scar has machines that can craft it very quickly, and it conveniently separates the oxygen atmosphere of the Hail Mary from the atmosphere of very hot, nearly pure ammonia that Scar needs to survive.

They’ve also set up a translator. Kind of.

“Easy to kill,” Scar says casually, gesturing to them with a clawed hand. Without his suit on, Grian has found out that his skin is a pale, blue tinted colour. Each of his six hands has six fingers, with wickedly sharp black claws at the tips, and, best of all, nestled in his hair are two antennae, similar to a moth’s.

He’s also wearing a shirt that says “I dropped my wrench to be here,” courtesy of Etho’s clothing stash. This was for no other reason than Grian thinking it was funny to give him human clothes instead of the draped clothes he apparently wore on his home planet— and Scar only agreed because apparently the airlock was colder than he’d normally prefer.

“Uh, I think that’s a mistranslation,” Grian commented idly. “Unless you meant to say that we’re easy to kill. Which sounds like a threat.”

Scar tilts his head, staring blankly at Grian for a second before nodding. “That is not quite right,” the computer sounds out a second after his mouth opens behind the wall, an automated voice translating the chirping noises he releases. “I wanted to say that you are… delicate species.”

“Right,” Mumbo mutters, fiddling with the keys on the computer. He’s hunched almost completely over the desk, and Grian winces in sympathy for his back. “I’d only input kill. Not… die, I guess.”

Scar shrugs stiffly, and Grian’s dragged back into contemplation of their situation. Scar is much, much smarter than Grian had thought possible of any creature. He’s picking up English at a frightening pace, much faster than Grian and Mumbo are working to translate his own language. And he’s so fast to pick up context clues, too— their first breakthrough was a clock, which Scar recognized and identified stunningly quickly.

Ever since, he’s been copying and relating items and concepts that the two humans show him remarkably quickly. The newest proof of that is his shrug, which— “Scar. After you shrug, you’re supposed to… relax your shoulders.”

The alien awkwardly lowers his arms, allowing the bottom pair to brace against the floor while the top two fiddle aimlessly with each other. “Oops.”

“So anyway,” Mumbo interrupts, picking up a piece of paper and squinting at it madly. “You said that… the astrophage is… not overreproducing?”

“I have no idea what that means,” Scar’s computer voice says flatly, and Mumbo flushes bright red.

“Not duplicating excessively,” Grian interjects, and Scar nods in agreement. He also tenses up the muscles in his face, aiming for… what seems to be a smile, but just looks like him awkwardly baring some very sharp teeth.

“Yes. Something on the planet they are visiting is preventing them from duplicating too much. This is unlike on my system, where they are… too much.”

“Relatable,” Grian sighs, and Scar nods. Over the past week, while struggling with attaching the two ships and setting up the translator— which, to be fair, was mostly Mumbo’s job, Grian had been moral support— they had discovered that they shared pretty similar missions. Scar, from his planet much, much farther away from Earth, had been sent to discover the secret that would save his people from the threat of astrophage.

Scar was an engineer, which he bonded with Mumbo over, and they had eagerly taken to the challenge of creating atmospheres where both his species and humans could survive. They had failed (slightly), but the transformation of the airlock had, for the most part, been a massive success.

And during the time they spent together, Grian has collected some snippets of information. These snippets include:

That Scar had had crewmates, but they were no longer alive. He refused to speak about anything beyond that.

That the material that makes up the barrier between the humans and Scar, and the material that makes up Scar’s ship, is Xenonite. 100% pure xenon. Impossible to Grian. Easy to Scar. But then again, he was astonished by the existence of the lettuce plants that were aboard the Hail Mary, so at least it was a fair trade of information. Kind of.

“So it’s something aboard the planet,” Grian sighs, leaning back in the office chair he’s perched in. “That the astrophage are travelling to. That’s preventing them from overpopulating.”

Scar chirps in his familiar agreement tones, wide eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as he carefully processes what Grian has said. “Yes. That is what I—”

The next word he says isn’t… a word, and Grian gapes at him momentarily before spinning to Mumbo. “I think that’s the word for ‘think’.”

Mumbo types even more furiously into his computer.

“So we must travel to the planet,” Scar’s gesturing wildly with his top set of hands, claws glinting in the LED lights they’ve set up. “And see. What is there.”

Grian blinks at him, and then at Mumbo, who is slumped unmoving over his makeshift desk.

“Easy.”

~

Grian’s first thought is that the planet is beautiful.

It’s a swirling mass of blue and purple, with thick white clouds reminiscent of Earth’s own. The only break in its colours is where the Petrova Line breaks through the atmosphere, leaving a red mark on the surface that bleeds into magenta at the edges.

“Looks like—” Scar’s computer buzzes, and the translator does an echoed copy of the chirping sound he made. Mumbo and Grian both turn their heads to look at the Alien, who’s standing beside them, a bubble helmet fixed over his head to allow him to survive in the Hail Mary.

It turns out, Scar doesn’t actually need to breathe— at least, not in the same way that Grian and Mumbo do. His version of respiration is much slower, meaning that he only needs to ‘absorb’ ammonia almost once a day. This, luckily, has allowed him to stand aboard the Hail Mary with fewer complications— barring, of course, that his skin can’t contact the oxygenated air.

The solution to this is a thin xenonite layer over him, which he apparently resents, but has resigned himself to.

“Um, the translator didn’t catch that one. What was that last word, Scar?” Mumbo frowns at his laptop, which is still clutched in his hands. Scar blinks.

“A food.”

“Right. Uh. I’ll just… leave that. That’s a can of worms I don’t quite want to get into right now.”

Grian nods before turning his attention back to the planet in front of them. They’re all crammed into the cockpit right now, with the Tau Ceti E before them. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon dioxide and methane, with only trace amounts of nitrogen. But somehow, it’s controlling the reproduction of astrophage.

“We need a sample,” Scar’s computer blurts into the fragile silence of the ship. “Of the astrophage.” His antennae are twitching nervously, underneath the bubble of xenonite, and he’s fidgeting with his fingers— something Grian has noticed he does a lot. It must be easy to fidget when you’ve got six hands. And six opposable thumbs.

Shaking his head to clear his own mind, Grian hums his agreement. “Right. There’s no visual aspect we could win by. But in order to get a sample, we’ll need some pretty precise stuff. Like, a collection pan of some sort. And we’ll need to get into the stream of astrophage— and we need a way to contain it once we’ve collected it.”

“I can… um, maybe get us into the path of the Line,” Mumbo blurts, before flushing bright red when Grian and Mumbo turn to look at him. “I’ve been reading the manual a little bit. You know. Just to— yeah. I think I can do it. We’ll just need a collection device, and we’ll need to actually collect it from Tau Ceti E, so we’ll need to get pretty low over the planet. Which might be impossible, because—”

“Mumbo,” Grian cuts him off, not unkindly. He jerks his chin to Scar. Scar, who’s dangling a thin chain of xenonite from his claws and grinning.

“Ah,” Mumbo says, and then they’re off to work.

~

“This is not going to work.”

“It’s going to work.”

Mumbo and Grian stare at each other, sitting on the floor of the lab in the Hail Mary. Scar’s huge eyes dart between the two of them as if watching a game of tennis.

“Xenonite is stronger than anything we’ve seen before. Its tensile strength is—”

Mumbo’s eyes flash. “Grian, it needs to go so low over the surface of the planet. If we got even slightly too close with the Hail Mary, we’ll be stranded, with no way to even get back to Scar’s ship. We’d all die.”

“We won’t get too close, then,” Grian reasons. “The atmospheric pressure is high, we know this. That’s why we accounted for that by making ten kilometres worth of chain.”

“If we mess this up, we die,” Mumbo repeats, voice cracking, and Grian frowns.

“Wasn’t that always the plan? I thought that’s why you signed up for this stupid thing.”

Scar tilts his head at that, and his robotic voice blares from the speaker resting beside him. “What does that mean? Question.”

Grian frowns, turning to look at Scar, but he’s interrupted by Mumbo, who’s frantically waving his hands in the air. “I know, I know we’re supposed to be prepared to die! It’s just— not before we discover what the answer to this thing is!”

“What? Question.”

Both humans turn to look at Scar, who’s now waving wildly with all of his arms, eyes wide as dinner plates. Grian raises an eyebrow, and Scar angrily crosses (all six) of his arms. “What do you mean, be prepared to die?”

Grian and Mumbo share a panicked moment of eye contact before turning to Scar. “Uh— it’s how we volunteered for this thing,” Mumbo begins.

Grian frowns at him. “We didn’t all volunteer.”

Mumbo flinches at that, but continues on regardless. “Or we were dragged into this. We knew it was a suicide mission.”

“What is suicide?”

“Mumbo, you’re digging us into a deep hole,” Grian says warningly, and Mumbo blusters madly before gesturing at him.

“Fine! You explain it then!”

Grian swallows the lump in his throat before turning fully to face Scar and taking a deep breath. “When Mumbo volunteered for this with our other deceased crewmembers, they did so knowing that the Hail Mary, our spaceship, would not be able to return to Earth. There’s not enough fuel for that.”

Scar blinks at them.

“What does volunteered mean? Question.”

“Like. Signed up for this,” Grian says slowly. “Offered to do this. I didn’t— really offer to do this, but… I suppose I’ve come to terms with being shoved on here. I understand why she did it.” Mumbo looks at him with wide eyes, but Grian ignores him.

“Why would you volunteer if you don't have enough fuel? Also, why do you not have enough fuel?” Both the computer and Scar pause before continuing. “And why was it volunteered? Why not send the best of your workers?”

“I like to think we are the best of Earth’s workers,” Grian says lightly, before hastily adding, “that was a joke. We don’t have enough fuel because we only very recently discovered astrophage, and we had no time to develop a machine that could hold that much astrophage.”

“And we volunteered— or I volunteered, at least,” Mumbo adds, “because Earth is important to us. And we want to save it. Even if— we’re not there to enjoy it.”

Scar’s face twists into a grin, which Grian has learned is not a pleasant expression to his species. “I see. It is good that you were able to volunteer or not volunteer. I would have liked that. Also, you are the best two humans I have ever met.”

Mumbo laughs, “We’re the only two humans you’ve ever met, mate. But thank you, anyway.”

Both he and Scar go back to fiddling with their own items— Scar, with his small mock-up of the collection machine and chain, and Mumbo with his laptop. Grian, however, has focused on something else. “Scar, what do you mean that you ‘would have liked that’?”

Scar looks up, while a pair of his hands continue fiddling with the small chain. Another pair prop him up on the lab bench, where he’s lying across it as if it were a lounge chair. “I would have liked the choice to leave or not. On my planet, it was not— a question.”

His mouth perks up into a small smile, before flattening out once again. “I would have said yes, of course. But I would have liked… to be asked. It is different, though. I have the chance to go home. I just miss my friends, and my home.”

Mumbo and Grian frown at him, before simultaneously opening their mouths with the same question: “You weren’t given a choice?”

Now, Grian’s fully aware that his disbelief is a little hypocritical. But… he understands Pearl. He understands the importance of the genetics that he held, and the fact that he was one of the only ones capable of withstanding the induced coma— their dead teammates are more than proof of that. But— Scar hadn’t been put in a coma. There was no factor like that for his species— and as Mumbo and Grian had been horrified to learn, he had been floating alone in space for over forty-six years.

And maybe Grian’s crazy for it, but he has forgiven Pearl. She may be his murderer, and the reason he’ll never set foot on Earth again before he dies— and that still brings tears to his eyes— but… Grian can’t bring himself to blame her.

Not when… well, she’s his baby sister.

And she’s trying to save the world.

And Grian has no other reasons, but maybe that’s enough for his delirious, hope-riddled brain. And lucky for him, he doesn’t need to try and explain it to anyone— not even Mumbo, who’s more than happy to avoid the subject altogether.

Scar makes a sound in his throat, something that Grian has come to attribute to his version of clearing his throat, and chirps out something wobbly. The sentence comes out from the translator as “Never on exercise wheels.”

The two humans blink at him, Grian opening his mouth to blurt, “What?”

Scar rolls his eyes (something he’s definitely picked up from Grian) before speaking again. “It is a saying. About… impossible questions. Why would I be asked, instead of them just telling me to go and I do it? Question. Not a real question.”

“Good to know that Scar’s species has rhetorical questions,” Mumbo says weakly. “And, uh. Maybe totalitarianism.”

Grian just blinks, words wedged and stuck in his throat. Maybe Scar had his own Pearl on his home planet. Or maybe… not quite. Maybe his departure hadn’t been quite so desperate and tearful. Maybe it had just been… expected. Not heroic.

They sit there in the lab, in silence, until Scar breaks it with all the grace of an eighteen-wheeler.

“So, are we going to do this? Question.”

~~~

They do do it, after all.

Despite Mumbo’s incredibly risky piloting and Grian and Scar shouting warnings into the two-way radios that are probably completely unnecessary, they do it. They reel back in the impossibly long chain of xenonite, Scar recycling it as they do so, so as not to take up too much space. And there, sitting at the end, is the airtight xenonite box. With astrophage in it.

But before that, there’s the storm.

~

They had swooped into the Petrova line in order to dip down close to the planet’s atmosphere, into the stream of astrophage producing brilliant infrared light. And it was beautiful.

So beautifully alien, and unfamiliar, and yet something so comforting all the same. A hailstorm of glitter and red lights, as if a thousand sunlights were happening in a fractal, casting the red glow of a dying light over the horizon a million times. Grian had been standing aboard the Hail Mary, clad in a spacesuit and frozen in awe.

In one hand, he held the collection box. In the other, a handle on the exterior of the spacecraft.

And he was utterly surrounded by the most beautiful destruction he had ever seen.

It seemed impossible, in that moment, that the astrophage were posing such a threat to all life in the universe and could simultaneously be so beautiful. So undeniably gorgeous.

But then, Scar’s robotic voice was calling into his radio, and he had to move.

~

If the red lights of the astrophage were dangerously beautiful, then the atmosphere of Tau Ceti E was fatally gorgeous. Forgive Grian for his lack of creativity in these descriptions— he’s probably still delirious from smacking his head as he reeled back in the xenonite chain.

Helmet and all, a good knock to the head has never made anyone think any clearer.

That’s probably why, when later in the lab, they begin to study the astrophage— Grian can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Not until Scar steps up to take a look for himself.

“No, you’re right,” the laptop blares. “That’s not only astrophage.”

Grian takes a steadying breath, impossible hope flooding through him, setting his veins alight. “I think,” he says, looking at his two companions, “we’ve found our deus ex machina.”

~

After he fails to explain what deus ex machina is to Scar, they confirm the discovery. There’s another organism, mixed into this astrophage, that’s killing it. Or eating it, maybe. Either way, it’s responsible for the population control of this particular Petrova Line.

“We did it,” Mumbo breathes finally, his lanky frame once again slumped over his desk. “We’re going to save the Earth. And…” He turns to Scar, who’s hanging half off of a chair, limbs dangling haphazardly over piles of papers at his feet. “Your planet.”

“I call it—” Scar releases a series of chirps, and Grian and Mumbo share an exhausted look. Grian’s own head is filled full of a tired static, and he can’t even be bothered to crack a joke.

“We need a name for that,” he says slowly, and Mumbo nods.

“There’s already one,” the other human says after a second, blinking. “Scar and I checked the location of his planet in our human maps. It’s in the Eridani star system.”

“Huh.” Grian closes his eyes, welcoming the blissful darkness that ensues. “So. Erid.”

“Sounds good to me,” Scar’s computer chirps. The monotone of its robotic voice doesn’t match the way the alien is sprawled in the lab, skin paler blue than usual. “I wish you humans could come visit. It is very pretty there. And I want you to meet—” Another word that the translator can’t create. Scar lets out a frustrated noise before he corrects himself: “My friend. Who is not the same species as me. A… smaller.”

“A pet, I guess,” Mumbo mumbles, and Grian nods tiredly.

“She is being taken care of by my friend. I do not think I will see her again, either,” Scar admits. “Since I will have so many space missions after this.” There’s a brief pause, and then the alien frowns. “Although,” Scar says musingly, “I wish I could visit your planet one day as well. Your photos are very beautiful.”

“You’d love it,” Mumbo tells him. He turns his head so that his cheek is pressed against the desk, into the papers that are strewn across it, to look at Scar. “You really would. You’d love the Grand Canyon, I think. And I think you’d enjoy roller coasters. You’re a bit of a thrill seeker.”

Scar squints at him. “I know none of those things.”

“I wish you could,” Grian says flatly. “But I don’t think any of us are experiencing those things in the near future. Or in any future.”

Scar slides all the way off his chair, landing with a thump on the metal floor of the lab. He stares at the ceiling, all six arms coming to rest in various positions alongside him. “You might never know. There is a chance. Because once I go back and they know space travel is possible, they will send me back up.”

“Immediately?” Grian blurts, and Mumbo levels him with a confused frown.

“Yes, probably.” Scar’s chirps fade for a second before he continues. “It is a big jump in our technology. They will want me to explore more. Especially if the ship is still intact.”

Something is itching in Grian’s soul that he can’t quite put a finger on. “So… they’ll just send you back up once you’ve shared your research? No break? No time to… readjust?”

“Well, I guess not?” Scar flashes a frown, or his species’ version of a smile, at Grian. “I don’t think it is necessary. I am strong.”

“Yeah, but…” Grian trails off before he realizes what he’s been doubting has popped into his mind. “Scar, your crewmates died in there, and you still don’t know why. They’d just send you back up in the same ship anyway?”

Scar blinks at him with his massive, slitted eyes.

“With a new crew.”

“But still you.”

“Yes?”

“That’s a suicide mission,” Grian says, gut dropping. “Like canaries in a mine. Just sending you in and hoping people come back.”

“Is that not what your mission is, question?” Scar’s robotic voice is slightly muffled, and Grian looks over to see the speaker slightly buried by Mumbo’s sleeve as the taller human stares between his two companions. “Suicide?”

“I can’t believe you put that on the translator,” Grian mutters to Mumbo, mind wandering. They had met the first confirmed intelligent extraterrestrial life, and they had taught it the meaning of suicide. “No. Not… not in the same way. That’s more of an execution, Scar.”

“For the sake of my people, it is understandable,” Scar frowns. “You are lucky, I think.”

“We’re not ever going back to Earth, so I don’t think we are,” Grian says ruefully, and Scar lifts his head.

“Yes, you are. Going back.”

Mumbo lifts his head wearily. “Scar, we don’t have enough charged astrophage for that. Earth is inconceivably far away—”

“I do.”

Heavy silence falls across the lab.

“I have enough power. I can share it with you. So that you can return to Earth and go back to your people.”

Grian and Scar both stare at Scar, gaping openly at the alien. He had said it so casually, as if it were obvious. Simple. Previously discussed.

Grian grips the armrest of his chair, thin metal cold under his sweating hands. “Scar, that would make your journey home take… forever.”

“That is fine,” Scar shrugs, mouth twisting into a weird shape. A half-smile, half frown. A mix of the two species’ customs, in an attempt at comfort. “Gives me an extra rest before my next space mission.”

Despite the lack of emotion in the machine’s speech, there’s a sort of rueful tone in the words that raises the hair on Grian’s arms. “Scar, do you want to go back to Erid?”

The alien pauses, tilting his head. The humming in the lab fills Grian’s ears as he stares at him, Mumbo silent nearby.

“No,” Scar says finally, chirping slowly. “I do not want to.”

Mumbo jerks upright, his tiredness suddenly moulting off him, into nearly manic energy. “You don’t have to, mate.”

“I need to save my planet.” Scar’s eye twitches, and Grian suddenly realizes that he doesn’t have eyebrows. Huh. He had never noticed that. “Not wanting to return to my planet does not mean that I wish for it to be destroyed.”

“You might not need to go back to save it,” Mumbo says excitedly, and Grian has no idea what he’s thinking. Mumbo bolts to his feet, charging out of the lab at breakneck speed as Grian and Scar look on in disbelief.

“What is he doing?”

“I have no idea, mate.”

When Mumbo returns, footsteps pounding loudly down the metal hallways, he’s clutching something in his hands. The return probes. The machines that Mumbo and Grian need to place the astrophage’s predator (that Scar had named the ‘Taumoeba ’), and send back to Earth, before they kill themselves via lethal injection. But what Mumbo’s suggesting is—

“We could reprogram them,” Mumbo pants, eyes fixed on Scar. “We’re both engineers, and we have the manuals and the materials. We could send them to Erid. And you could come back—”

With us, Grian finishes mentally. “To Earth,” are the words that actually leave Mumbo’s mouth.

Scar is frozen, staring at them. He’s almost statuesque in his shock, and Grian realizes how big a decision this is for him. His species hadn’t even thought space travel possible before Scar took to the stars, and now—he’s being asked to go to an entirely different solar system, permanently.

“You don’t have to,” Grian says quietly. “Just— it’s an option for you to consider. You can think about it.”

Scar jerks his head in a little nod, eyes fluttering shut. His eyelashes are longer than a human’s, Grian notes absently. “I will think.”

The lab hums once again, silent.

~~~

It’s in that same lab, days later, that they manage to breed strands of the Taumoeba that will survive the nitrogen-rich atmosphere of Venus. They also successfully breed a subspecies that will be resilient in the cold, methane-dense air of a planet in Scar’s home system that is serving as the breeding ground for his own Petrova line.

And four days after that, after the four bugs launch from the Hail Mary, astrophage in tow— Grian and Mumbo begin their journey back to Earth.

This time, with a new friend in tow.

And as they sit on the floor of the kitchen in the Hail Mary, arguing over a game of chess— Grian begins to doze off. His head is resting on the back of the kitchen counter, with the faint humming of the spaceship around him, and the promise of Earth is within his grasp.

He dreams.

He dreams of the Earth. He dreams of the beaches he had grown up on, of sand between his toes, of the cold sting of seawater on his skin.

He dreams of the salty smell of rain, and the heat of asphalt in the summer.

He dreams of Pearl. Her voice, her laughter, their jokes in a silent house at night.

Grian dreams of home.