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Ryland Grace was a coward. This was incredibly well known. The only brave thing Grace had ever truly done, of his own free will, was to go back and save Rocky. The decision was a hard one. Return to Earth, his life, his classroom, his home, or save a space rock he’d gotten emotionally attached to in less than a month.
In fairness to the rock, it was a sentient creature with a mate and family and friends.
Honestly, there was more going for Rocky than there was for Grace.
But Grace had been happy on Earth. Sure, he didn’t have any close relatives, pets, children, or lovers who he would miss dearly and would miss him in turn, but he’d made himself a life. He’d been a teacher, a scientist, a coworker, and a decently alright human. He made lessons fun for the kids. He learned to be artistic and make décor for the classroom. He learned how to comfort and reassure and cry with the kids, then turn around and make them smile all over again. He loved seeing how they would sit there, annoyed or bored out of their minds, then perk up when their interests were mentioned and he loved seeing them begin to like the lessons he taught.
Olivia, he remembered. Olivia had begun the year like any other attentive, 4.0 student. She paid attention, absorbed the material, and understood exactly what he was saying, but she herself had never loved the subject. It was just a grade, just an assignment, just an objective to complete before beginning high school. Then, as he delved deeper into it, he watched the bored-yet-focused girl become entranced. She began to ask better questions, read and study on her own about topics unrelated to classwork, and came to him with studies on subjects he himself hadn’t seen until years into college. She fell head over heels into the study, just as he had when he was her age.
Seeing her excited to talk to him about a study published a few years prior about Performance Comparison of Rock Detection Algorithms for Autonomous Planetary Geology was something that had truly convinced him of his place in the classroom. Together, they had poured over the study, asking questions about terminology and certain concepts, and he explained as well as he could the how’s and why’s of it all when she got stumped.
Olivia was not his kid. Now, he would never be able to have a kid. There was no one who’d wanted to have kids with him on Earth and now there was no one to have kids with at all.
Not that he particularly wanted to be in a space ship 11.9—no, probably about 12.1, now—light years away from civilization with a crying infant and no way to be alone or away from it in the small space they had. Or, if he’d had the infant when boarding, a 12-year-old with the intelligence and coordination of a newborn.
That’s a horrific thought to have.
However, the point of this all is, Ryland Grace is a coward. This is something Rocky learns and is baffled by continuously.
“Grace and Grace-Friend bonding, question?” Rocky’s musical hum began, catching Grace’s attention from where he’d been sitting at a small desk and writing a research paper about Taumoeba and how horrified he is that, according to calculations, he may have to eat the dammed thing before reaching Erid.
“Hm? What was that, bud?” Grace asked, blinking away from where he’d been starting a new section titled How to Eat Taumoeba and Not Want to Die: An Art Unperfected.
“Grace and Friend bonding, question?” Rocky repeated, tapping the ground as he usually did. Grace blinked at the alien. Rocky had never referred to himself in the third person as anything other than, well, Rocky. Grace and Friend were new ones. Not unwelcome, just new. If anything, Grace was flattered, Rocky had willingly called himself Grace’s friend. Rocky seemed anxious to get attached again, knowing how soft and fragile humans are, but had been slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’d gotten much closer to Grace than even the crew of his previous ship.
“Aw, yeah, we are bonding, Rocky,” Grace smiled, trying not to embarrass the poor guy but support him all the same. It seemed to go unappreciated as the Eridian huffed and stomped his front left claw in frustration.
“No. Grace stupid. Grace Rocky not bonding. Grace bonding with Friend. Rocky and Friend not bonding.” The other talked as if a third were on the ship, something that made his brows knit together in concern. Grace and Friend? Were the other’s sensors going off about something? Was he sick? Could Eridians get sick? Did Rocky have some form of Eridian schizophrenia that he’d forgotten to tell Grace about?
“Alright, you’re freakin’ me out here. It’s just you and me, pal. Who- where- …what friend?” Grace settled on, feeling the hair on his arms rise as he glanced around. Were ghosts real? Were space ghosts real? Or maybe there was an invisible alien that Rocky could see but Grace couldn’t. No, if there was a weird new alien then Mary would’ve said something by now. “Are you sick, Rock?”
Rocky hissed steam and hit the ground again, pacing around in his ball. “No! Rocky perfect! Grace stupid, stupid, stupid! Is Grace sick, question? Grace cannot hear friend, question?” Rocky hardly ever got this frustrated with Grace. The younger—or older? They were at similar points of maturity in their respective lifespans, so perhaps age wouldn’t be the best indicator— the blond raised his slender hands placatingly, an attempt at conciliation already on his lips.
“Hey, hey, let’s calm down. I can’t hear like you, remember? Gross human eyes can only see whatever is in front of them and to the side at about 95 degrees. So whatever is over my shoulders I can’t see, or if it’s underneath or inside something,” Grace reminded, even though it wasn’t like Rocky could forget. “I can’t see our friend. Do you mind pointing him out for me, pal?”
Rocky tumbled closer in his ball, the clear panes of xenonite clanging against the ship’s floor as he got closer. Eventually, he came to a stop in front of Grace’s legs, pointing a claw at the glass and tapping. “There. On back of Grace shirt.”
A horrible, dripping feeling of dread fell down Grace’s spine and he felt every single muscle on his body tense. There were no bugs aboard the Hail Mary. The ship was too sterile, too clean, and anything that had snuck aboard had no doubt died by now with the 4 years in a coma and lack of food or water. Yet, as he became aware of every single hair on his body, the back of his shirt seemed to prick into him like the threatening edge of a blade.
Glancing over his shoulder, he peered down his back to the best of his ability.
Resting inches away from his spine, toward his left shoulder, sat something he hadn’t seen in a very long time. About three inches in diameter, long thin legs clung to the fibers of his shirt and its head peered up at him with two rows of eyes and thick mandibles.
Grace flailed, yelped (see: screamed like a child) out and tugged at the shirt to attempt to swipe off the damned thing. Oh my god, it’s a spider. It’s an actual spider. One survived. There is a spider on the ship. It was on me. How many of them are here? How many of them are on me right now? Rocky chirped in surprise, rolling back a pane or two before tilting his carapace in confusion. Grace was already tugging off his shirt, throwing it at the black dot that crawled quickly over the ship’s floor as if the soft polyester could kill it.
“Jesus, Rocky! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!” Grace cried out, heart hammering quickly in his chest. “How long has that thing been on me?!”
“Grace not notice friend, question?”
“No! And that is not a friend,” Grace shuddered, adjusting his glasses so he could properly look for the thing. At some point in the struggle of him getting up and throwing his shirt, the glasses had tumbled off his face and onto the floor. It was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t broken by now with how clumsy he is. “That, Rocky, is the Earth spider I was telling you about. Well, one of them, anyway.”
Rocky danced in his ball. Yes, danced. As if he were happy. “Amaze! Scary Earth alien survive! Will survive on Erid, Rocky make sure.”
“No!” Grace yelled, shuddering at the idea of having to breed spiders for the next four years traveling back to Erid. Or worse, living with them on Erid. Rocky startled in his ball, pausing in his movements to skuttle away after it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I- I don’t want to have spiders on Erid or in my ship at all.”
Rocky moved awkwardly in his ball, fiddling with the arms facing Grace in that anxious, awkward way he did. “Apology,” he sang out after several seconds of silence. “Rocky fix, question?”
Grace sighed with a smile. “Sure, Rocky. Rocky fix, statement. Can you hear where it is?”
Rocky did his equivalent of a nod.
“Good. Give- give me just a second,” he said, already looking around for something he could use to squish it with. He thought distantly about that joke, the one where someone sets their house on fire because of a spider, or crashes their car, and debated whether or not to risk lighting it and its webs on fire inside the ship. No, probably best not to, he thought with mild disappointment. He’d never set a spider on fire before. Not that he would, or particularly wanted to, but there was only so much entertainment on the ship. It wasn’t designed for people to be alive and awake long enough to be bored, after all.
Way to think happy thoughts, Ryland, he chided himself silently. Focus on killing the spider.
“Hey, uh- how many spiders are on the ship, Rocky? If you know,” Grace asked aloud from where he was elbow-deep in a cabinet looking for something hard and flat to smush it with. Big enough that he didn’t have to risk it crawling on him, should it survive, but still small enough to kill it if it was in a corner. What I wouldn’t give to just have a thick book.
Rocky shifted nervously. “Grace mad, question?”
“No, buddy, Grace not mad,” he replied. Recently, he’d begun to realize he answered Rocky’s questions similar to the way he said them. It wasn’t an unwelcome observation, or particularly upsetting, but should he ever return to Earth it might be odd behavior for other humans.
Rocky hummed nervously, hands fiddling with each other and Grace could almost imagine eyes darting from one side of the room to the other to avoid looking at him. Would Rocky have blue or brown eyes? Would he even have them, if he were a human? Would he be blind, as reflection to how he would see as alien? No, Grace decided, Rocky would have wonderful eyesight. Better than his own, surely.
Hazel eyes, he decided, ones that reflected the pattern of his carapace.
“Scary Earth alien…” Rocky sounded almost sheepish now, his notes hardly louder than a mumble. “Rocky count thirteen Scary Earth alien.” Grace felt himself pale all over again. “… and three nests.”
Burn, Grace heard himself think, I need to burn this entire ship.