Chapter Text
Doctor Captain Ryland Grace was ever so rudely woken up by aggressive banging on the walls and the loudest singing he'd ever heard.
"Awake! Awake! Awake!"
Grace groaned and rolled over to his other side. It felt like his body was fighting him through it.
"Five more minutes, Rock," he complained. His voice was hoarse and weak for no reason he could discern. But, he couldn't discern much of anything these days. He couldn't think properly, couldn't move properly, and now can't even speak right. It made him beg the question: what can he do right?
"No no no, bad bad bad. Grace sleep 57,600 seconds."
That couldn't be right. Grace couldn't quite do the math right now, but that's well over ten hours if what's left of his mind serves him right. He didn't respond for a few moments until Mary cut off his train of thought, blasting in his ears, "Now approaching: 40-Eridani AB."
"Grace Rocky arrive at Erid!" Rocky shouted. It was too loud. Grace covered his ears.
Grace sat up reluctantly. He felt tired just from that one simple movement.
Wait, how was he going to get down to Erid?
The heat and atmosphere would kill him instantly; he was reminded of the scar on his arm from when Rocky saved his life after that disastrous fishing trip. Not just the heat, but humans couldn't breathe ammonia anyways. Rocky and him had talked a bit briefly about building a biodome for him to live in, but that would take time.
Time Grace didn't have. He would starve before they got there.
Grace stood up from the cot on shaky legs, and was immediately greeted by his eyes filling up with static and an overwhelming feeling of dizziness. He had to grab the wall for support. It took a minute, but he made it to the lab eventually. Rocky followed him in the tunnels they built together maybe a few years ago now. Rocky was probably saying something to him--he was chittering excitedly-- but Grace couldn't comprehend a word of it. After what felt like hours, they made it to the lab. It was more of a mess than it was when Rocky first rolled into the Hail Mary like he owned the place. There were empty cans of taumeoba about from when he ate it in a desperate need to feel, well, not starved. There were papers, markers, equipment, all sorts of things laying about. Grace didn't even remember how most of them got there in the first place.
But then he saw the photos. And the drawings, and the cards. Laying on the floor like the other bits of trash.
Grace crouched down with a bit of effort, before falling down into a criss-cross sort of sit. The same kind of sit his students would do. His students that he would never see again.
He turned that one over in his mind for a minute. His students are probably now the same age as Grace was when he left. That is, if Stratt and the others were able to fight the astrophage with the taumeoba and such. If not they'd have been long dead by now.
A long, slow, painful death of cold and of starvation.
Not unlike what Grace was experiencing now.
He quickly pushed that to the back of his mind and continued flipping through the photos. Rocky had stopped his chittering and was now watching Grace with rapt attention. Grace found an old polaroid of himself. He was somewhere on the aircraft carrier he was brought to. If he remembered correctly, they called it Stratt's Vat, much to her chagrin.
Grace pressed his lips in a straight line and stood up slowly as he could, gathering all of the photos and putting them somewhere safe. He pulled up a chair in front of the whiteboard. It still had the calculations from when Grace was trying to figure out how to save Rocky on it. Grace erased it with no small amount of effort. He grabbed a marker and attempted uncapping it with his teeth, before discovering it was incredibly painful. He had to do it the old-fashioned way instead.
"Hey Rocky, could you tell me everything you know about Erid's atmosphere and surface?"
"Yes! Can!"
—-------
Grace had to bust out the translator for this one. Rocky was speaking too quickly for him to understand, and it seems he was losing his ability to understand Eridian along with his mind. But here's what he's learned:
1) Erid's gravity is circa 2.09G, or about twice that of Earth's. (Grace had to calculate this from the planet's mass and radius, since Rocky had no understanding real earth gravity. When Rocky first boarded the centrifuge was going slightly faster to match the Blip-A's, and they never changed it back to normal.)
2) Erid's atmosphere is very dense. Probably denser than Venus's. Technically, he should know the density of Venus's atmosphere, but he's forgotten with everything going on, and he was too focused on writing down what Rocky was saying to Google it. But Erid's atmosphere is so dense that no light from the star, 40-Eridani A, gets through it. Probably means that not a whole lot of communication gets through it, too, which would make things difficult if they wanted to land safely. Grace wasn't keen on crashing the Hail Mary on a planet he would die instantly on.
3) There's liquid water on Erid! Further proving that Grace was wrong about the only original idea that he'd ever had. Damn.
4) The Blip-A mission (he didn't know what the Eridians called it) was the first time they've been to space. Furthest they'd gotten before was a big ol' space elevator. Grace...wasn't quite sure how that would work, but Eridians were smart, they would've figured it out.
5) Adrian was really cool. Like really cool.
That last one didn't matter as much to the task at hand, but Rocky deserved to gush about his mate now that he's going to see them again after so very many years.
Once Rocky was done, Grace chewed on the edge of his glasses, deep in thought.
"Hey Rock?"
"What, question?"
"I think I've got an idea.”
—-------
Grace lost track of how long he took explaining his idea to Rocky. He had the basics of it down, but it still had to be refined. But for now, these were the basics:
Step 1) Get something down to Erid to send a message. Something to let them know we're here and need help getting down.
“So. Any bright ideas on how to do that?” Grace asked Rocky. He may have sounded sarcastic, but the truth was, he was too exhausted to consider his tone. He just wanted an answer.”
“Simple. Grace ask stupid question. Build beetle. Send down to Erid with message.”
That hit Grace like a truck. “Why didn't I think of that?” He asked, mostly rhetorically, admonishing himself for his stupidity.
“I did.” Grace smiled at that.
Step 2) Build a satellite that the Hail Mary can dock to. Equip said satellite with a pod or two that would actually let them go down to Erid and safely land in an ocean.
“...Don't suppose you know how to build a satellite, do you, Rocky?”
“What is satellite, question?”
Yeah. This was going to take a minute. Thank God that Stratt sent them with all human knowledge on board, so there were probably instructions on how to build a satellite somewhere here. Maybe they could equip the not-beetles with the instructions?
Ok, they couldn't call them not-beetles. Grace immediately got to thinking. The ants? No, there's no pun there. Grace was all about puns, not having a pun would be so wildly out of character for him, even in this state. The rocks? He rolled it around in his head a little. Maybe. He'd have to workshop it.
Step 3) Have Eridian scientists start work on biodome. Rocky can go down there to help-
Fuck.
Rocky.
Rocky would have to go down to Erid before him so he could help build the biodome. He was the only Eridian who knew what a human needed to survive, after all.
But Grace really didn't want to be up here alone.
Cold, slow, painful death of starvation? He could barely stand that on its own. But add being alone? Absolutely not. He'd rather kill himself-
He stopped those thoughts in their tracks. Nipped them in the bud. Another expression he couldn't think of.
Because Ryland Grace didn't want to die.
Ryland Grace was going to live. He was going to live, goddammit! No matter what it took, Doctor Captain Ryland Grace of the Hail Mary was going to make sure both he and his very best friend were going to make it to Erid.
“Why Grace leaking, question?”
Fudgenuggets. Had he been crying? He was still able to produce tears? Dehydrated and malnourished as he was?
Grace took a second to compose himself. “You might have to leave without me, bud. You might have to make it back there first.”
“No. Bad bad bad. No one to watch Grace sleep.”
“I'll be fine, Rock.”
“What if…you don't wake up?”
—-------
Step 4) Have the engineers build the biodome. There will be instructions on the yet-to-be-named not-beetle. Rocky is not leaving without Grace. Rocky is not leaving Grace.
“I agree with this step. Seems good plan, statement.”
Grace huffed a weak laugh, “That's the first time you've said that to me in a while.”
Step 5) Once the biodome is done, have Rocky and Grace board a capsule on the satellite and have it land on Erid. It splashes into the ocean. Have Eridians drag the capsule over to where the biodome is, build a xenonite tunnel that matches the atmosphere and let Rocky and Grace out there, with Rocky, of course, being in a xenonite ball.
“Amaze amaze amaze! Good plan. Rocky like plan.”
“Yeah, bud.” Grace smiled sadly. He didn't want to spoil Rocky's good mood with a glaring issue: there was no food for Grace on Erid. He'd starve either way.
Step 6) Make food on Erid. But they'll cross that bridge when they get to it. As decided earlier, Rocky didn't need to know about this step yet.