Chapter Text
An interesting quality about the sand in Ryland's biosphere is that certain portions of his beach closely resemble the sort of volcanic, basalt-derived black sands of Sausalito.
If he closed his eyes, the sea brine could almost trick him into thinking he was still there, with the ferry rides he'd take on longer school breaks, and the people he used to take them with.
None of that mattered anymore. The seas could have frozen solid, for all he knew.
The colorful rocks strewn about the shore that he collected like a geologically obsessed bowerbird looked nice against the dark, sandy backdrop. Colors weren't something Eridians could appreciate, but he was starting to. Much more than he used to, with his lack of artistic ability. He knelt to pick up a smooth, deep blue stone. It twinkled slightly with the minerals embedded inside, and he smiled to himself. Looking out the window of the Hail Mary, he used to see the same light in the stars.
It fit in his palm comfortably, and would do nicely in one of the gradiated spiral structures he had been working on. He stood up again and cupped a hand over his brow, squinting at a silhouette in the fog. He never had to guess who. Ryland raised his hand high and waved at Rocky in a happy, sweeping arc.
"Rocky!" He called out.
"Grace!" Rocky chimed back, high and happy. His carapace shuddered with excitement as he barreled towards his friend, the momentum coming to a slightly uncontrolled skidding halt as his xenonite ball nudged against Ryland's shin.
"Hello Grace! I adjusted the temperature in your bedroom! Was too hot. Now is flawless."
Ryland raised an eyebrow at the claim. The difference in Eridian usage of "better" compared to "flawless" was by several orders of magnitude. You'd be hard pressed to find an Eridian that couldn't spot the flaw in something.
"Oh yeah? You seem pretty confident about that."
"Yeah-oh, Grace! You will feel as comfortable as electron in 1s orbital."
"Good, because I've been sweating my butt off in there for the last three night-cycles."
"What is sweating, question?" "It's when the eccrine and apocrine glands start to secrete water. Usually for thermoregulation, but it can happen for a lot of different reasons, like discomfort."
"Repulsive."
Ryland chuckled softly. They began the stroll up the beach to his quarters, Rocky keeping companionable pace alongside him.
"Says you, monostome."
"Is efficient. Unlike Ryland. Who possesses many vestigial structures."
He snorted, but he didn't quite have a retort for that one. He thought back to the time he got his wisdom teeth removed in high school and couldn't eat anything but ice cream and mashed potatoes.
"Mint chip…" he mumbled to himself and frowned. Eridians have never made the aggravating choice of selecting an ice cream flavor to sacrifice forever. He hadn't touched it since that week of recovery.
"What is, question?"
"It's this flavor of ice cream, which is a dairy pr—"
"Requires too much context. Nevermind."
Ryland shrugged.
"Your loss. Ice cream is a delicacy."
"Irrelevant to topic at holding-claw," Rocky replied. He'd been growing very fond of altering Ryland's phrases. Fond enough that Ryland had begun adopting them himself.
"I am curious about mint chip..."
"Requires too much context!" Ryland repeated in a horrendously inaccurate falsetto. Rocky glared at him (as much as one could without a face), and he glared right back.
They burst into a fit of giggles.
***
Ryland sat down on the bed with a heavy huff, closing his eyes. Rocky was right, damn him. The temperature was flawless, which, to Ryland, meant just this side of subzero.
"Yeah-oh," he hummed pleasurably, nodding to himself. "This is nice."
"Grace sounds surprised," Rocky said, though his own inflection was amused. Ryland opened an eye to look at him.
"I underestimated how nice this would feel. Not you, buddy. This is really nice."
"Only nice, question?" Ryland rolled his eyes and let himself fall back, arms spread wide.
"Okay, fine— flawless. Happy?"
Rocky's carapace raised.
"Yes."
"You and your ego," Ryland muttered. There was a brief lull of silence as he enjoyed the new bedroom temperature, that is, until Rocky piped up again.
"Eridian scientists noticed irregularity in exosphere recently," Rocky suddenly recalled, now that the pressing matter of Ryland's comfort was resolved.
"What do you mean, irregularity? Like… organisms, or…?"
"Foreign object."
Ryland's attention had been captured, and he sat bolt upright in bed.
"What kind of foreign object are we talking here?"
"Don't know yet. Is large, but slightly smaller than Hail Mary. Orbiting."
"What? What?! You didn't think to tell me sooner?" Ryland knocked his glasses down his nose as he tumbled out of bed, pacing circles around Rocky.
"You gotta take me to the Astronomy hive. Like, now. I need to know what's happening."
He had so many questions. Was the orbit stable? Decaying? Actively maneuvering? What of the thrust's chemical signature (if there was any)? How long has it been up there? Could it have possibly been from…? He grabbed a jacket off of his clothing hanger and threw it on, although he didn't need one. It just felt appropriate.
"Come on, Rocky. We're going."
"Alright!"
***
Eridians did whatever Ryland requested. And if that meant having his own divider wall in the science center so he could sit back and witness a thrum, then so be it. He came and went often— there was much to share with them, after all, and there was never any shortage of things they had to share with him. He rapped his knuckles against the xenonite.
"Hello? Hello? What's this about a foreign object in the atmosphere? Seriously."
One Eridian with a mottled copper carapace— he'd taken to calling this one Marty (he had run out of names from the Rocky franchise by this point, and had since moved on to other films)— approached him.
"Hello, Grace."
"Marty! Could you tell me what's going on here?"
"We took samples from the drive plume. Chemical signatures say it's powered by astrophage."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You are forgiven. We have samples from the exosphere. They are of astrophage."
Ryland blanched, a clammy hand covering his mouth.
"And this isn't one of yours?"
"No, the construction is completely different. Materials seem likely to burn in atmosphere."
"Materials like...?"
"Very similar to the Hail Mary."