Chapter Text
"You're sure your rope's strong enough to lift that ship out of there?"
"Grace ask this three times before. Rocky's answer not change."
"Okay, okay." Grace sighs, tapping his screen as if it'll give him better insight about what's happening underneath the planet's surface down below. Almost a full kilometer of xenonite 'rope' has been extended out of the ship, the unknown planet's gravity sufficient to drag it downward for them.
Grace gets up to pace, checking the viewing windows. The planet's slow-moving liquid surface looks even grosser up close. "I'm telling you, it looks just like blood."
"Human blood made of common substance."
"Sure, yeah, but like...finding all of them in that ratio? Covering an entire planet?"
"Grace disturbed by blood planet, question?"
"Yeah, obviously!"
Grace has to leave Rocky's side to go suit up, while Rocky keeps slowly tugging the pulley system they created to begin dragging the tiny spaceship out of the...blood lake. Red lake. Hopefully it's just red water...really, really thick red water with iron in it.
Grace shudders as he attaches the helmet. In just a few moments, the tiny ship should be level with theirs, and they can decide if they want to have first contact with it outside, or bring the whole thing into the ship in a Rocky-containment-zone of xenonite.
***
They saw this planet just three days ago from afar, first as random radar readings as they were on their way back to Erid - together this time. The sense of urgency to rush them both back to Rocky's home planet with the cure had been interrupted by a weird reading - an SOS that shouldn't be possible in a language either of them understood.
Another ship had been booking it away from the planet, and Grace had a sinking feeling as they both read the incoming radar feed and Grace, in shock, translated the Morse code.
"I know it doesn't make sense," Grace had said, staring out the viewing window at the tiny speck that was the planet they were picking up on. "But I'm telling you, that's an Earth language. It might be another human. Or a crazy coincidence."
"Big ship leave little ship on surface." Rocky announces. He sounds confused. Grace can't blame him.
"Maybe there's an emergency and they can't save the ship on the surface?"
"Maybe humans forget other ship, question?"
"...I don't think anyone forgets a whole ship."
Silence for a minute.
"Little ship abandoned."
"It could be empty..." Grace chews his lip.
"Then why send distress signal, question? Grace act stupid."
"I'm not— Ugh." He rubs his eyes hard enough his glasses fall down his nose. They dangle off one ear. "Yeah, yeah okay. Maybe it's stuck and they can't get it out."
"We save little ship. Find Grace other human."
Grace can't help the fact that his heart aches at the idea. "Yeah. Okay. Let's go save the little ship."
***
"Uhhh Rocky? We got a small problem. I think."
"Problem?" Rocky's voice is pitched with concern in Grace's helmet. "Grace safe, question?"
"I'm fine. It's the ship. It's uh... I can't find a door." Grace is tethered just outside the airlock, having circled the whole new ship once, nearly strangling himself on the cords as he did so.
Rocky is silent. Apparently he was 'looking', as soon he chimes in with, "Little ship have one door. Door sealed to close ship. No handle."
"Where?"
"Left side. No. No. Closer... No."
"This isn't helpingggggg!" Grace bangs on the side of the tiny ship in frustration.
And then screams and recoils when the ship bangs back.
"Grace okay, question?"
"Yeah, but— fudge, that scared me."
"Grace use Morse code on little ship, statement."
Grace is a little chastened he didn't think of that first. He looks over the ship again - more like a literal ship, a first-kind-of-ship ship, a submarine. No windows on any of the sides he's investigated.
He bangs on the side, rhythmically. Carefully.
H-E-L-L-O
He waits. He imagines he can practically hear Rocky's attention entirely focused on them from inside the ship, not needing a viewing window to 'see' them.
Banging starts up inside the ship. Rhythmic, loud. Angry, Grace imagines, finally starting to not wince at the noise. He's taken to feeling the outside with his gloved hand, trying to find whatever Rocky had identified as a door...
He finds that seam just as the answering word finishes.
O-U-T
"Yeah, yeah, fair. But how?"
"Little ship answer, question?"
Grace hollers into his mic as if the distance between them matters. "Whoever it is says they want to get out. Can't blame them."
"Precaution. Must keep Grace safe, keep Rocky safe. Must get back to Erid."
"Oh yeah, agreed. Hey, uh...whoever's in here is sealed inside this thing. I can't open this with my bare hands."
"Grace hands not bare."
"Okay, can't open it with just my gloves, either."
In the silence of Rocky thinking of a solution, there's renewed banging against the hull. Grace shouts again and leans back, then hits it impulsively himself. "Stop scaring me like that!"
O-U-T
O-U-T
O-U-T
Followed by more frenzied banging that Grace is certain isn't words. Not real words. But the desperation of the noise, the ache in his own fist after hitting the hull just a few times...
Something in him pinches.
"Rocky, help me navigate this thing right up against the airlock."
***
The chemical composition of the hull is easy to identify. Familiar, even. Grace is barely letting himself feel the rush of the reality that comes closer with each inch of steel plating melted away. The reality that he might be about to face another living human for the first time in well over a decade.
Or, well. Or it's another intelligent alien life form, which is also an exciting thought.
When the 'door' has been completely cut open, Rocky uses a xenonite mechanized 'arm' to grab the cutout and pull it safely away. It's laid on the floor with only a dull thud, and avoids Grace's foot by mere inches.
No one comes to the doorway.
Grace and Rocky stand there, both facing down into the absolute darkness of the small ship. Xenonite has fused the foreign ship, airtight, up against the opening of the Hail Mary. There's not really any going back now.
The silence stretches on. Nerves and excitement slowly bleed into new emotions that Grace likes a lot less.
"There's no way whoever's in there didn't hear us cutting that door open." Grace takes a flashlight off the wall. He hadn't expected to need one, but the inside of the ship is so dark it almost seems to be leeching light right out of the airlock.
He clicks it on and illuminates dark metal walls, screws and bolts haphazard and ugly, and a floor covered in something shiny and almost as dark as the metal. He leans in and doesn't censor the disgust on his face.
"Rocky hear heart in little ship." He pipes up.
Grace nods and takes one cautious step forward, trying to avoid the moment when he'll need to step into the filthy container in search of wherever they just spent a days-long detour to rescue.
"Human heart." Rocky narrates. "Sound like Grace. But other heart faster."
"Faster, huh? Maybe it's like when you find a spider." Grace finally steps into the dark, whining in disgust at the way his shoes squelch in the coating at the bottom of the ship. If he didn't know better, he'd say it feels and looks like congealed blood.
"Grace say nonsense again, statement."
"Earth phrase." Grace shines his flashlight to the left and right. While inside of the ship, it feels even smaller, like it's closing in on him. He doesn't think he's ever been claustrophobic, so he's blaming it on the overall creepy vibe of this specific ship. "Lots of humans are scared of spiders, but we've got a saying: 'they're more scared of you than you are of them.'"
Whatever Rocky responds with is completely drowned out by Grace's shriek of pure shock and terror a second later.
"Holy fudgeballs!" He yells, at the same time his ears fill with a litany of furious, vicious phrases, none of which he'd ever utter in front of his students.
Grace stumbles back from the very broad figure that just came out of absolutely nowhere, and is then slammed the rest of the way to the ground.
"Who are you? Where the fuck am I?" Grace wriggles to no avail underneath what he's gradually realizing does seem to be another man. There's hair draping down into his face, which isn't as glamorous as it sounds. Grace spits some strands back out when they stick to his lips while he screams. They feel stiff and filthy. "Who the fuck are you working for, you fucking asshole? About time someone came down to— ugh!"
The man falls sideways off of Grace, and for a second Grace is proud, thinking he managed to throw him off with all his struggling.
Then he realizes Rocky is there, and just head-butted the guy with his hamster ball. Rocky is saying a string of words that are only half-translated.
"Don't tell me Eridians have even more swears than you taught me already?" Grace wheezes.
Rocky keeps butting up against Grace's side protectively. Grace curls up and starts using him to sit up, shamelessly grabbing onto Rocky's protective suit-ball to regain his balance. It's strong and warm under his palms, grounding while his heart pounds in his chest.
"Look," he starts, standing and turning back towards this angry stranger at the same time. "I think we got off on the wrong foot, but—"
The stranger socks him in the jaw, and Grace is out like a light.
***
Grace wakes up to Rocky's non-face right above him.
"Oh gosh," he gasps. "You scared me." And then, with a wince, "Ow, my jaw."
"Other human use small force. Grace fall. Human all so fragile, question?"
"No no no, he was strong." Grace protests. He's resting on the ground still, but Armando is hovering nearby, presumably summoned by Rocky or perhaps reading his distressed health signs from across the ship. "Where'd he go?"
"Human run. Loud human." Rocky sounds, perhaps, a bit angry. "Rocky hate other human." Okay, definitely angry.
"Look, I'm not too happy with him either, but I can't really blame him. I was scared when I first woke up on this thing, too." Grace rubs both palms over his face, blinking the slight blur from his vision. His jaw hurts more than his head. "Did you see where he went?"
"Rocky hear other human. Human on other side of ship."
"Okay, so at least we can track him down. Maybe we need a, uh…a peace offering." Grace rolls over onto his side, braces himself on the floor. Rocky butts against his arm again and Grace's stunned haze lifts enough for him to give a genuine smile. He uses Rocky's suit to push himself the rest of the way up. "Oh, wow… You know, I might not need your help to find him after all, bud."
"Why, question?"
Grace shakes his head at the floor. Leading away from the melted-open hole in the side of the foreign ship, right around where Grace had laid collapsed on the floor, out the opening into the lab and beyond…are footprints. Red and brown streaks, congealed bits and wetter smears still shining at him. "Let's… Let's say he's leaving a colored trail I can follow."