Chapter Text
Grace had once explained to me the meaning of their surname in their native language. Elegance of form, beauty in motion.
I mull the concept over in my mind as I observe Grace at the lab bench, clearly engrossed in something as they twirl a writing implement in one hand absentmindedly. Fingers fumble for a fraction of a second and the thing goes clattering to the floor. Grace ducks to retrieve it, and as they attempt to right themself the back of their head collides sharply with the underside of the benchtop. Grace drops the pen reflexively, proceeds to step on it, then loses their balance as one foot rolls forward with the little cylinder pinned beneath. They land squarely on their ass and flop to one side, gripping the back of their head with a wordless vocalization.
Beauty in motion, indeed.
After a great deal of time observing Grace navigate their own environment, it astounds me that humans manage to survive at all. Soft, squishy outsides around an internal scaffold of bone, as if their body had been turned inside out and left that way. And for what? Grace had to constantly be mindful of damage to their integument. With an atmospheric pressure as low as Earth’s though, I’d guessed an exoskeleton isn’t strictly necessary. That is, until Grace had informed me that many Earth species did evolve hard carapaces, so maybe that’s a design flaw in humans specifically. Maybe most humans do have carapaces, and Grace is the odd one out. Maybe they should at least try to stop constantly bumping into things.
Which brings me to my next gripe, going down my ever-growing list of bullet points: bipedal ambulation. The human body’s center of mass is so high off the ground that practically any applied force has Grace toppling over in the ship’s centrifugal gravity (which is greatly entertaining to me, though seemingly less so for my companion.) Four spindly limbs, each tipped by five digits– wouldn’t it make more sense to have four digits per limb, for the sake of symmetry? But no, apparently “opposable thumbs” were the real evolutionary breakthrough there.
I do have to admit though, listening to Grace fiddle with the many delicate instruments in the lab, that the human hand is quite the feat of engineering. I’m struck by the memory of Grace in the airlock tunnel the first time we met, peering into the ship with hands pressed flat against the little hex of xenonite. Dozens of tiny bones, each with their own points of articulation anchored by muscle and connective tissue, the acoustics bouncing back to me in perfect clarity. Twenty-seven bones per hand, Grace had informed me some time later; fifty-four between the two of them, out of 206 in the entire body, more than one-quarter of the skeletal system packed so neatly into such a small space. It was really something.
That first contact was the most detailed look I’d gotten at human anatomy since coming aboard the Hail Mary. Of course, we’d talked plenty about our respective biologies; as Grace had said, we’d be pretty lame scientists if we didn’t. The problem, though, is that the extreme difference in environment between the two sides of our divider creates a distortion effect on my senses that, although slight, is incredibly annoying. Oddly sluggish acoustics thanks to the frigid air of Grace’s atmosphere, combined with the nature of the xenonite mixture that Grace had selected as their medium of choice; good for Grace to see through, but not optimal for sound conduction. Grace seems barely bothered by it at all.
“Like looking through a fishbowl?” Grace had supplied, when I’d attempted to explain it. Which meant nothing to me, and they then went on to explain the concept of “fish” and “bowls” and the mechanics of water-breathing Earth species (wow!), and why humans like to put them in bowls in the first place. The entire conversation spiraled out from there, the original subject forgotten completely.
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Grace lifts two limbs high overhead, fingers interlaced with palms flipped up toward the ceiling, pushing up as if trying to pull their own body apart at the joints. Nitrogen bubbles burst within the joint cavities in little pops and crackles.
“Biiiiig stretch!” I trill.
The motion usually signals a break in our workflow, a midday ritual in which Grace will usually saunter over to the lab divider with lunch in hand to chat and see what I’m working on. And today’s been a particularly productive day; I’ve been up to my elbows in xenonite all morning.
Grace squints through the lenses of their glasses to where my bench is situated at the far end of the room. “Whatcha got over there?”
I'm actually quite proud of myself for my own handiwork. A form-fitting exosuit made of an optically clear xenonite similar to my ball, made thinner and allowing for free range of motion. Or at least it will, when I get around to attaching the arms. Right now I’m tinkering away with the shell for the central body, fiddling with the seal where the respirator sits atop the carapace. I sit my tools down and sidestep so Grace can see the work in progress. I flash them the jazz hands.
“Making new suit! Better than ball, more access to Grace side of ship!” Grace’s Eridian language comprehension is progressing in leaps and bounds, but I still find myself in the habit of sticking to the translator-talk when I really want Grace to catch my meaning. The nuances of syntax will fill themselves in with time.
“Oh, wow!” Grace huddles closer to the barrier, interest piqued.
“Was thinking, after Adrian sampler accident. Would not have injured you if I had suit like Grace EVA suit, to interact with simulated Earth environment."
“Oh, buddy, that’s a great idea, but I don’t want you to feel like you have t–”
“No, is good!” I cut them off, not keen to rehash this particular topic. “Is easier for ship maintenance. Can use ship controls in emergency if need.”
We’re still picking up the pieces of it, both literally and figuratively. I’m not sure it counts as survivor’s guilt if nobody died; I know that Grace wouldn’t be standing in front of me now if I hadn’t breached my atmosphere to save them. And I wouldn't be here either if Grace hadn’t done the same for me. Still, though, the texture of Grace’s burned skin is a reminder that it could have gone better. Work to be done, improvements to be made in the aftermath.
I pull up the schematics for the arm and hand sections of the suit, pointing out the material’s tolerances for tensile strength. I think Grace understands the diversion, because they don’t return to the topic of our near-death experience. We fall into a back and forth discussion about the suit design, the mathematics of it, equations for atmospheric pressure differentials and thermal coefficients and the like. Lighter subjects. Grace’s head tilts quizzically as they study the suit’s carapace.
“This is gonna sound weird, but it kind of looks like a UFO.”
“A what, question?”
Grace chuckles. “Unidentified flying object. A flying saucer. Like, what humans think an alien ship would look like. One sec, I’ll show you.”
They raise one finger in the air in that familiar “wait” gesture before turning heel and trotting off in the direction of the dormitory. Too curious to stay in place, I follow close behind. When I reach the tunnel entrance into the dormitory, Grace is on hands and knees digging through a pile of worn shirts on the floor. I don’t know why it’s so funny to me when they get quadripedal like that.
“UFO is in dirty laundry, question?”
In response, Grace pulls out one of the shirts and shakes the wrinkles out before holding it out in my direction. “Check it out. One of humanity’s finest television programs. Stratt probably even pirated it onto the ship’s database, if we can find it.”
I draw my scanner from its holster on my toolbelt and take aim, checking the readout on the texture monitor. On the front of the shirt is a depiction of a disc-like object, round-edged instead of pentagonal, but nonetheless roughly the same height-to-width ratio as my own carapace and radially symmetrical. A little dome pokes up from the top of it, right where my suit’s radiator fits over my vents. Below the saucer is a line of text that reads “I WANT TO BELIEVE”.
Gotta hand it to them. It does kind of look like the body of the suit, without the arms.
“Agree, does look like UFO. But– don’t be alarmed–” I put two hands up in a we come in peace gesture, “I am… actual alien.”
Grace nearly chokes on air in a peal of laughter. “Scully, you’re not gonna believe this.”
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“Grace!”
I can hear the familiar shape of them in the next room over, rummaging around for some piece of equipment or other in the lab storage. “Gr-aaace!” I try again, raising the amplitude for their puny human ears.
“One sec!” comes the returning shout, Grace’s voice tinkling brightly off the racks of glass tubes.
I allow a moment’s pause. “Been one second… two seconds. Three seconds.” I bounce eagerly from foot to foot. “Grace get lost in there, question?”
They finally surface from the storage area, head poking up from the open floor panel with an annoyed huff (theatrics) before clambering to their feet. I do a little wiggle in anticipation.
Grace rounds the corner and immediately stops in their tracks the moment they lay eyes on me, body going rigid in a posture I recognize as alarm. A box of micropipette tips slips from their grasp and a hundred little plastic pieces go skittering across the floor between us. There’s a beat of silence as Grace stares, mouth agape.
“Is okay!” I raise two hands in a gesture of reassurance. In retrospect I probably should have given a warning. After all, the last time Grace saw me out of my ball I was... well, on fire and everything. So I understand the fear response.
“I’m good, I’m good! Safe in suit! Came to show you!” I click towards them, gingerly parting the sea of no-longer-sterile fittings as I approach.
It takes a moment for Grace’s stance to soften into surprise, then joy as the realization sinks in. They drop to their knees in front of me with a heavy thud.
The suit had taken weeks of design and redesign, scrapping ideas, calibration, stress testing and rebuilding. I hadn’t had much else to do in the time spent waiting for the Taumoeba to evolve, so it was something productive to put my mind to. It had come together nicely; I’d actually gotten the material down to just a fraction of the thickness of the previous prototype using a network of tightly faceted panes similar to the flex panel of the old ball, on a more refined scale. Instead of a sphere filled with pressurized ammonia, the suit exerts direct external pressure equal to that of my own atmosphere. The finished product is sleek and conforming while still allowing full range of motion. The gloves each consist of a single piece, smooth and flexible, the result of a lot of recipe tweaking. The clunkiest part is the astrophage-powered cooling system over my radiator, but that was unavoidable. I just try not to think about how I’m carrying enough raw energy on my back to blow up the entire ship, and all is well.
“Oh Rocky, you clever little devil, that’s amazing!” Grace’s face splits open into rows of teeth, a display of happiness.
“Agree! Amaze amaze amaze!” I tap my arms all around me in a little circle, giving Grace the full 360.
Grace lifts a hand to ghost over the tiny facets of xenonite, marveling. Once again I can make out the little bones that underlie the pads of each fingertip. They smooth a thumb over the material at my palm before gripping my whole hand in theirs, hard, like life depends on it.
The surface tension over Grace’s eyes is rapidly increasing, a sure sign of impending waterworks. They throw both arms out towards me with a sniffle. “Get in here, man.”
And then Grace lurches forward to close the distance before I can even respond, practically tackling me. Two arms come up to meet around my carapace and squeeze with all their might. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on but I follow suit, mirroring, two of my own arms encircling Grace in turn and matching pressure. Grace’s glasses slide up and askew as they bury their face into my shoulder, fingernails scrabbling against the panes at my back. Their skin is so cool to the touch that I make a mental note to tinker with the insulation later.
Grace sucks in a sharp breath. I’ve always been able to sense Grace’s respirations– from pretty much any vantage point on the ship, really– but never in this level of detail. I can hear the wide, muscular diaphragm at the base of their chest contracting as it pulls down, the resulting vacuum drawing air into their lungs from below. A negative pressure system. Millions of tiny air sacs all crackle and pop to life simultaneously. With Grace flush against me, the sound is practically deafening. They let the breath out slowly, carefully. The exhale quavers just slightly in a way that might have been imperceptible even to me at any other distance. Grace swipes a hand at their eyes.
“You are good?” I hum.
“Yeah,” Grace murmurs against the xenonite. They pull back to face me, and I recognize the configuration of facial features. The same expression they wore when they first peered through the lenses of the microscope and saw life in the atmosphere of Adrian. Awe. A tear wells up and out of one eye, trailing down their cheek before plinking off the panes of my suit. I press my carapace back into their body.
“Your thorax is loud, statement.”
The comment manages to pull a laugh out of Grace. “Yeah, buddy. It does that.” More tears fall.
We stay like that for a long while.