Archive of Our Own

save star rocky save save tell must hurts hurts

four point eight eight eight eight

listen and

not grown yet not old

leave don’t please don’t

loud loud loud

save star rocky save

termination denied nine point four three

help can help

TERMINATION DENIED PROCEED FOR

take please hurts

HURTS

rocky save star rocky

rocky save rocky rocky listen rocky listen last

rocky save star

last transmission four point zero two zero zero

rocky save

DENIED

rocky save me

hurts

hurts

hurts

*

Shaking, and the world coming apart, and I fixed it, of course I did. It stops shaking – it did stop shaking except this time it doesn’t, not for a while, and then it starts up again. After the meteorite struck the aft the strumlines in the tertiary sector snapped and whipped in their dozens, and one caught me on the side and rebounded off my right fore arm, and the chitin there split and the bone split and I bled all the way to the infirmary and screamed knowing no-one would hear, and I wrapped the wound while alerts howled and bound it in a splint but the arm stayed cracked until the scabs rotted and left it cloven in two, a divide that widened when I had to strain to operate navigation and the helm on my own, aching from the alarms that wouldn’t shut off, but I did it in spite of the pain, I steered us – I steered away, I repaired the damage, sealed off the crew cabins, even my own. All twenty-three, depressurised and exposed to the vacuum.

“Rocky!”

Shaking, even though I repaired the damage. There was only one meteorite. I remember the tiny shape of it and the hole it left behind, my blood sucked into an aperture that opened up to wild space. The strumlines I had to reconnect individually and the crystals that shattered in their thousands below the command deck, tinkling like chimes.

“Rocky, god – please –,”

Sensation. How? I can feel a rhythm with my claw. One, ticking against a surface. There’s something out of place. Loose instrumentation? I should know, I should know what the problem is – 

“Rocky, buddy.”

It’s regular, that rhythm. Glug-glug, over and over, fast, sprinting. Other writhing sounds, wet and soft. Whuffing air, again, too fast. The vacuum?

Loud knocking, and a large organism hovering over me. Not on me.

I tap, cold on the inside. I know I don’t know something important, and I should. What’s wrong with me? What did I miss?

“Rocky, I’m here, okay? Come back to me, pal, please.”

Of course I will, I think, drawn to that voice, that strange, wobbling voice, which I care about without knowing exactly why, and I should – it makes me angry, not knowing – I should know – I tap to hear better, and my claws are slow, my joints stiff and creaky, and I struggle to sense anything past the floor and the walls and the xenonite shell, the ball which was in a room – this room, the crew quarters, twenty-three – no, just three, too big and also empty, the console beside them, Mary humming, Grace shaking the ball, I start to shudder, Grace – I forgot – Grace –

“Apology,” I say, the tones slurred, discordant. Wrong, wrong. “Grace.” I feel sick. “Apology, Grace.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Grace is crying, my best friend, the person who saved my life. I scrape urgently at the floor to follow his movements up and around and then back to my front, frenetic, like he’s checking me for wounds. He’s plastered himself to the ball for so long that his tears drip down the polyhedral plates. His skin is damp. “What happened, Rock, what happened?”

HURTS

HURTS

HURTS

I wish I’d died.

No. I wished that. Years ago, I wished that. Before Grace. Now, this shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.

“Nothing,” I say, and I drag myself closer to him. I put my claw on the xenonite and I feel his hand press back.

save star rocky

save me it

hurts rocky

HURTS

“Apology,” I say again, and it’s not enough.

*

I excuse myself to eat and end up sitting in the laboratory tunnel, my arms falling deadened and numb. They lie around me like uncut stone, and when I try to stretch my claws it takes a long time for the command to make it from my brains to my limb. I wiggle the claws up and down to prove to myself that I still can. Touch the xenonite, touch the floor, glug-glug the next room over, safety. It’s safety and it’s familiarity, but I can’t feel it. It’s hard to feel anything at all.

When I eventually come back into the crew quarters, Grace is sitting on his bunk, twisting his hands in his lap. I’m back in my ball, and I venture close to his legs. I slump down beside him and reach through the glove panel to affix my claw around his bare ankle.

“Rocky.” He places his hand on the top of the ball. I sense the muscles twitch.

“Rocky,” he says again. “Will you talk to me?”

“Tired,” I reply. I keep a careful, but secure grip on him. My body is a stranger to me now, but his is not. I know my Grace, of course I do. The idea of forgetting him, even briefly, incites a panic so delirious within me that I have to go completely still to prevent myself from shrieking, from breaking us both.

“Rocky,” Grace says, swallowing. “You scared the heck out of me. You were – you were seizing. Or something. It went on for so long, I thought – I –,”

He goes quiet, and his breath catches. I picture Grace as he was hours ago, hunched over my ball, scrabbling at the xenonite that was keeping me alive. He’d babbled, while I laid down and tried to stop the shivers, the spasms. He’d begged me not to leave him.

“Did not mean to scare,” I say, the self-loathing tasting bitter, tasting right. “Won’t – won’t happen again. Just – little sick. Small sick, gone soon.”

“What happened to you?” Grace says, and he slides off the bed to kneel beside me. He keeps one leg folded up, so my claw isn’t dislodged, and his hand curves around it. “You were so out of it, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t – I couldn’t get near you. I couldn’t check on you.”

“I know,” I say, squeezing him gently. “Is okay now. Be better soon.”

“Rocky, please talk to me,” he asks, his eyes wet, and I hate refusing him. I do.

“Just need rest,” I say, my notes faint and half-hearted, and by the long pause afterwards Grace can tell I’m lying, I know he can. He still doesn’t challenge me on it. He says, “sure thing, Rock,” and pulls a blanket down, settling in right next to me.

“I’ll watch you sleep,” he says, his soft hand covering mine entirely.

“Thank,” I say, listening to his blood flow and his lungs expand. It’s hypnotic to me, usually. I focus on Grace when he’s studying or working or exercising, and I revel in the many sounds of him living, inside and out. I fall away for long, luxurious sleeps and the whole time it’s like I can feel Grace alive, beating under my carapace where I’m as soft as he is.

I wait to fall asleep. I wait, and Grace does too.

*

Listening to people die en masse is a bit like hearing a mudslide, or volcanic flow. I remember the crunching and cracking of breath, the wet rush of excreta as they passed over. Most of them were wordless at the end, but if they did cry out it was in the language of children, of the freshly born or freshly orphaned. These sounds were not new to me; I have thirteen siblings and I grew up on a fault line. If the world wasn’t breaking around us every now and then, someone was wailing like they were sentenced to die.

It’s just not something you expect to hear on a deep-space mission, is all.

After we dwindled to six, I expected to carry on as normal. Whatever space illness had afflicted the crew may have been transmissible, so those of us who remained sequestered ourselves in our sectors and carried on working. We kept in contact constantly, checking in, reporting on our health, keeping each other’s spirits lifted. Then two died in the same night. Two more a few days later. The final death was the quietest, unsurprisingly, slow puffs of air and bubbling blood through a crack no bigger than a pinhole until silence. I begged them not to go. I watched them like there was greater danger still to come.

The meteorite that tore through the ship took the bodies and the auxiliary power reserves. I built a temporary heat shield, then a permanent one, then a pair of new airlocks to compensate for the pieces of the hull that were made ragged by the change in pressure. I monitored the Astrophage like it was beloved, like it could die too. I built and I scanned and I used the pre-set flight path to take me to the last healthy star instead of manually flying the rest of the way. I protected the microorganisms that were killing my people. I did a better job keeping them safe than the crew, the crew who were present in my mind until the collision, until they were ripped out of me and flung across the universe. Decay would have taken years in the ship. I could have kept them. I could have brought them home.

You can’t build while you’re sleeping, but you can die. You can die for no reason at all.

I reconstructed the cabins and wove fresh strumlines while orbiting the last healthy star, collapsing every few days into a state that passed for rest. I carved our names into the walls and inscribed last words onto tablets, since all personal effects had been lost. I designed impressions of them next to ages, mineral origins, ancestral clusters, living descendants, tonal preferences, and what they ate before succumbing. They were here. So was I. Whomever found the remnants of our efforts should know that.

Some ten years after realising I was going to fail my mission on my own, I had made the ship not only functional but also beautiful again. I orbited the healthy star and maintained the ship like I’d been trained to do, and in the meantime, somewhere in Eridani, I knew the rest of my people were dying. One after another.

*

“Rocky. We need to talk.”

My claws ripple across the xenonite, thread after thread interlacing around rhombi that I’m hoping will slot neatly with the plates I’ve already made. “Great. Love talking to Grace.”

Grace sits down cross-legged next to my tunnel. He’s wearing soft fleecy pants and a sweatshirt with his solar system embroidered on the front. I tap the floor idly to observe it better. I like these clothes a lot. Grace says each planet is textured to be different, and that it’s nice to touch them even as a human. Saturn is one of my favourites because it’s slightly fluffy, like Grace’s hair, but Earth is the best. There’s so many swirls and bumps that I can imagine the real terrain easily.

“Hey.”

Grace is tapping the glass. He’s got his grouchy face on, so I stop fantasising about rolling around on his fuzzy solar system clothes.

“Hello,” I say, weaving a little faster.

“Rocky, can you drop that for a second?”

“Why, question?” I say, inching away from the wall of the tunnel. My claws whizz through multiple threads, and I spot six, seven, eight, nine consecutive errors in the pattern as I go, but I don’t stop yet.

“I want to make sure you’re listening to me.”

“Always listen to Grace,” I mutter. “Excellent listener.”

“Prove it,” Grace says. “Put that down.”

“Not see point.”

“The point is that I’m asking.”

“Seem stupid.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Matter to Rocky.”

“Yeah, because you’re avoiding me.”

My claws nick one of the new plates, and it slips out of my grasp. I fumble to catch it and end up crushing it under an arm, the shards powdery on the floor.

I say a word I haven’t yet translated for Grace and spike the rest of the material onto the debris. The plates were applied securely enough that most of them don’t break; just the small, fragile ones that took me the bulk of the previous week to carve. I whack at the mess and send up a flurry of dust that settles in my vents, making me cough and steam.

“Important project,” I grit out, shoving the material away. “Was very important project.”

I feel shivery, strange. I have the urge to snap and jab at something, so I scurry up to cling to the ceiling of the tunnel instead. I squeeze myself in tightly, preparing to ignore Grace as punishment.

“You probably shouldn’t have broken it, then.”

I let out a soft hiss, without meaning to, and Grace laughs. I don’t. I don’t find anything funny, but then, I have the impression Grace doesn’t either.

“You’re not acting like yourself, Rock.”

“How should act, question?” I ask sarcastically, my whole body clenched in so rigid and small that a single knock to my carapace would shatter me like the plates. “Tell Rocky and will be show for Grace, act like for movie. Be so entertaining, be dumb animal!”

Grace doesn’t say anything for a while, and I’m not used to labelling my shame but I know the sensation, slow and warm like a proximity burn. It’s resident inside me, more acute now.

“Rocky, can you come down here?”

My claws are glued to the handholds in the tunnel. “No.”

“Please?”

I’m about to spit something corrosive. It’s welling up dangerously: an insult about Grace’s body or his intelligence or his dependence on me, a weapon that will fend him off for hours, days, weeks more. We have three more years to go on our journey home and if I keep it up I could make the damage permanent. I could be alone whenever I want.

I unfurl each claw, creaking like they’ve petrified. Then I clamber down one arm at a time. Grace breathes out when I touch the floor, his shoulders settling, his soft solar system folding up again.

“Thanks, bud.” He places his hand on the wall of the tunnel.

I haven’t done anything to warrant gratitude, but I touch the xenonite against his hand anyway. I remove it after a second, curling myself in again. I’d been close to hurting him. That’s never, ever supposed to happen.

Grace drags his hand through his hair until it sticks straight up.

“Rocky,” he says. “I’m worried about you.”

“Am okay,” I say grumpily, and Grace frowns at me.

“Do you believe me whenever I say that?”

I’d held him hostage inside his toilet room when he tried to tell me vomiting three times a day was normal, it’s true. Not my most delicate approach to taking care of him, but it had worked. We’d sorted out his digestive issues a few weeks after that, together.

I growl, with nothing better to say. Sometimes I forget Grace is watching me as closely as I observe him.

“You’re not sleeping,” Grace says, as though he knows what I’m thinking. “I haven’t heard you eat in days. You don’t – you don’t talk to me anymore, Rock, you just sit out here and work on your projects –,”

“Important,” I interrupt, and Grace glowers at me.

“What could be so important –,”

“Triple-dimension schematic for Earth habitat on Erid,” I say to the floor. “Preparation for arrival. Long-term stay, forever stay on Erid. Must create suitable environment, must be perfect. Must be safe.”

This makes Grace quiet, for a moment. “I didn’t know you were doing that.”

“Hard work,” I say, still not focusing on him, on his expressive face. “Most important work. Take time.”

“Okay,” Grace says slowly. “I appreciate that, I do. But we have years to go before we get to Erid. You shouldn’t be neglecting your health because of that. I’ll be okay if it takes a bit of time to set up a permanent home there, y’know?”

Part of me sings at the word ‘home’, almost as much as ‘permanent’.

“Must be perfect,” I insist. It must last forever.

“It will be,” Grace says, patting the xenonite again. “You’re making it, right?”

“Yes,” I say, thawing a bit at the praise. If I’m good for nothing else I’m good for the design and construction of machinery that lasts.

“Then you can stop killing yourself over it,” Grace says, tapping two fingers on the wall. My own claws, fisted on the floor, twitch in response. “You can sleep properly, now.”

I fidget. “Not killing self.”

I don’t like that Grace said those words, and I don’t like repeating them either, but it was idiomatic, like a lot of what he says, and he couldn’t know – of course. He couldn’t know about year sixteen. I haven’t told him, and I won’t. I’m still here so it’s like that year and the most silent days of that year didn’t happen.

“I mean you can rest,” Grace says, sounding cautious.

My claws scrape up and around each other, refusing to stay still. This is Grace, I remind myself. He’ll be kind no matter what I say.

“Hard – hard to sleep,” I admit. “Sometimes. Energy too – too much. Very loud.”

“Where’s it loud?” Grace asks, shifting closer to the tunnel. He’s clever, he knows I don’t mean him or Mary or the robot or anything outside my carapace.

I tap at my centre, the flat plane between my left and right hind arms. It’s the side of me that’s closest to Grace. He lifts his hand again and strokes at the xenonite, and I’m not strong enough to pretend I don’t need him. I bonk my carapace against the wall and listen to his blood pump.

“You slept okay when we met,” Grace says, moving his thumb back and forth. “And for a long time after that. Did something change?”

The mission kept me away from deadly thoughts, as did the presence of another living being. Memories of bodies were swept beneath Earth language, Grace’s anatomy, taumoeba, the planet Adrian and burns from oxygenated air. I’d been idiotic enough to think the distractions would last.

“Slow journey,” I say. “Much time to think.” And remember and remember and remember. “Too much time.”

Grace’s blood sounds like rushing water. “What do you think about?”

He would be kind. He would remind me that the deaths of the crew weren’t my fault, which wouldn’t stop me from knowing how it feels to hear my captain crying out for their long-dead parent, their voice mangled, the strumlines ringing with their agony.

“Stupid things,” I say, because when I’m hurt so is Grace, and I can’t do that to him. I can’t.

Grace sighs anyway, and leans his head against the tunnel. His eyes are closed. I trace around the shape of his face with my claw, committing this memory to my bottomless vault, alongside the sorrow and destruction. If I have to keep the bad, I get to keep the good too.

“What can I do?” Grace asks, his eyes squeezing into lines. “Tell me how to help you.”

“Be here,” I say. Don’t die, I think.

*

I knew it happened, to older people and war veterans and patients with terminal illnesses or chronic pain. I’d heard horror stories in circulated news, met neighbours and colleagues who claimed to know a friend of a friend who’d suffered from a mild case of it. I’d shuddered and moved on with my day, as most people do when confronted with the concept of luck so bad it seems obscene, indecent. It would never happen to me, so why dwell on it?

The paralysis arrived in year eighteen, by which time I’d resolved not to switch off life support. The continuous maintenance work kept me busy, kept the ship humming, and left me exhausted enough to drift off for a few hours until I jerked awake, cold and alone. I’d crawl up to the long-distance transmitter, which had been hastily redirected to the quinary sector, under the Astrophage reserves, and recite my distress call. I was too far away to get any sort of contact with home, but when my arms were on fire and my mind was screaming I could lie to myself, and easily. I’d talk to my parents, to the Director of the Space Research Centre, to my first apprenticeship master and to Adrian. I’d request help and tell them I was sorry. I’d bleat pathetically until my voice ran out and the void welcomed me back, recycling the day so I could work again. It was a flawless system until my body rebelled against it.

I remember that first time: waking to the sound of clanking, a navigation array dislocated. I remember going to get up, going to fix it, and my arms lying still and cold. I moved, except I didn’t. I would lurch up, claw myself out of my nest, and then my brains would glitch and I’d find myself lying exactly where I had been, lifeless as a corpse.

It lasted for an hour and then I was released, gasping, screeching, terrified. I did laps around the sector and repaired the array and recorded a thousandth message for Adrian in a log long desiccated, and when sleep next claimed me days had passed. The second time I woke up I was frozen for hours. A week passed, and the third time I awoke after unwillingly falling unconscious, I laid in place for three days before violent, agonising shudders wracked me and yanked me out of it. I bled from below. Food roiled when I willed myself to eat it, foul and tasteless.

Decades passed like this, shivering and labouring and sleeping when absolutely necessary, and waking alone every time, the ship echoing endlessly with the tones of people long gone.

They won’t know how we died, I thought, repeatedly, every time it happened. My mate, my family and our entire species would soon waste away in ice and snow, wondering if their saviours got lost out in the emptiness of space. They might assume we passed peacefully.

*

“This will work,” Grace says happily.

“Yes,” I say, keeping my tone upbeat. It’s an active struggle, lately.

Grace is two metres in the air, teetering on the rungs installed in the wall of the dormitory like he has anything like guaranteed healthcare out here. He’s sticking blankets to the outside of my xenonite bunk and letting them drape haphazardly around it, so that the ends reach past his own bunk. He’s using material from the cots, spare sheets, his favourite quilt and ghoulishly cut up flight suits to make a vague representation of a cloth dwelling, which he says is popular back on Earth.

“Nothing like a blanket ****,” Grace chirps, ripping off a length of duct tape and slapping it over a creased blanket corner.

I tap the bottom of my ball. “Need word.”

“A ****? It’s like a safe place, a refuge,” Grace says, realigning one of the sheets with the end of my bunk. “The real thing was used by soldiers in wars sometimes, way back in Earth history. But a blanket version is made in childhood. It’s like a little hideaway made of soft, cushiony things.”

“Purpose is sad, then,” I say. I’m imagining a miniature, scared Grace hiding in a heap of blankets, and I dislike the idea immensely. “Needed for when child in danger. Bad, bad, bad.”

“No, no,” Grace laughs, tucking a final corner of a sheet in under the mattress of my bunk. “It’s a nice thing. Fun that you have with other kids, I guess, although I usually set up forts with my aunt or my grandma.”

“Grace family help make refuge, question?” I ask, watching him climb down. I roll my ball closer, though I’m not sure if it would help or hinder a hypothetical fall. “So is good?”

“Very good,” Grace says, smiling at me. “I used to be insanely afraid of the dark, right, so one night, while staying over at my grandma’s house, my aunt made a fort for me in the living room. Blankets and duvets and pillows from all over the house.” He pets the hanging sheets fondly. “She even put a nightlight in there for me. She said I could read for as long as I wanted, and went to sleep on the couch, snoring up a storm. Well, I lasted about ten minutes before I passed out too. Best sleep ever.”

“Why different from bed, question?” I say curiously, bumping into his shins when he gets to the floor. “Bed more comfortable.”

“Yeah,” Grace says, absent-mindedly rubbing the ball. “But a fort feels safer. Like you’re in your own little world. Nothing can get you in there.”

“Think Rocky sleep better if inside refuge,” I say. I’m humouring him, so I manage not to make it sound judgemental. “Question?”

Grace sinks into a crouch and squashes his face against the xenonite. “I know you will.”

“Grace not know,” I say, scoffing, even though my stomach is doing several funny flips at the sound of his sincerity.

“I know,” Grace says, pulling his face down the ball so it mashes up his nose. I sputter at the display. “I’m the Rocky-whisperer.”

“Not whispering,” I scold, trying to roll the ball away from his seeping mouth water. Grace clings to the top of the ball to stop me.

“It means I know you, pal.”

“Know Grace too,” I retort. “Know Grace won’t clean ball, now Rocky have to clean ball from liquids, ugh, disgust.”

Grace is laughing, so I keep up the little complaints, tipping him off of me and chasing him around the dormitory until I actually trip him up. We tussle, as much as a human can tussle with a giant ball, and call out finishing moves from Grace’s Mortal Kombat games. Things are simple, when I can focus on making Grace happy like this. Remove everything else about me from the equation and it’s paradise.

Eventually even Grace gets wise to my stalling, and directs me and the robot to conduct our nightly duties. I bumble around, taking my time with system checks and eating tiny strips of food at a time. I try to obstruct the robot as much as possible, but Mary tattles to Grace about my efforts before I manage to lock it in the lab.

“You want a time out?” Grace asks me, hands on his hips like he’s trying to be intimidating. Extremely funny, objectively speaking, since he’s in his underwear with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

“Just assessing motor function of medical aide,” I say innocently, and zoom away to find something else to bother.

I can’t exactly sabotage anything else on the ship without genuinely risking it, so after a few minutes of searching, I give up on that course of action and hide instead.

“I can see you.”

“Can’t,” I reply. I wriggle further into the dip under the entryway to my tunnel, wedging all my limbs inside it. It scrapes my carapace and my left fore arm is angled weirdly, but I’m basically embedded. He’ll need levers and drills to get me out.

There’s the slap of bare feet, and then Grace is huffing, dull thuds paired with the squeaking of skin against xenonite as he climbs on top of the tunnel. I observe him almost fall twice before he’s lying flat on top of it, staring down at me.

“Hey, buttface.”

“Not buttface,” I say.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, not!”

“Then why’re you hiding in buttface corner?”

I growl in frustration. Grace tuts to himself, like I’m being the annoying one.

“C’mon, I made the fort for both of us, Rocky. You really gonna leave me on my own in there?”

I listen to his heartbeat and remember my brief stint on my ship before Grace came back for me, the cold and the silence returning before the doom did. Escaping death multiple times and embracing it multiple times, and Grace being the one to rip me away. I owe him everything. I can make him happy now, and fix myself later.

I pop my arms out of the hidey-hole and yank up my carapace, heaving myself out inch by inch until I topple into the main tunnel. Grace is grinning down at me, his hair in disarray and his glasses wonky on his face.

“Thanks buddy.”

“Going to put Grace in time out,” I say under my breath. “Going to put Grace there for rest of eternity.”

“No way,” Grace says, slithering off the tunnel. “You’d get so bored without me.”

“Will form unbreakable bond with robot.”

“Armando already imprinted on me. Sorry.”

“Then Rocky become xenomorph,” I say, waving my arms menacingly in the air. “Kill robot and eat Grace organs for dinner. Mm.”

“Big talk for a guy who ran when he saw the facehugger,” Grace snorts. “Now quit yapping and get to bed.”

I do what he says, even if it’s just to make the night pass faster. I use the ball to transfer around to the dormitory, then scuttle up the tunnel to my xenonite-covered bunk. I fold my legs and settle in, pillows squashed on either side of me, the sheets swaying with the cycling air.

“Perfect,” Grace says, sweeping into the room. He repositions a few cushions and blankets, then pecks the robot on the top of its light sensor. He pushes aside the hanging sheets to come inside the fort, and climbs up on his bunk to kiss the underside of mine. “Goodnight, guys!”

“Grace weirdo,” I say, even though my vents feel warmer than usual.

“Don’t be mean, we’re relaxing,” Grace says. He shimmies down under his covers. “Hey – wanna play sleepover games?”

“No.”

“I-Spy with my little eye –,”

“Not have eyes.”

“Something beginning with… M!”

“Mary.”

“No, it’s –,”

“Man.”

“No –,”

“More fun game.”

“Watch the sass, buddy.”

“Fine. Mould.”

“Huh… oh yeah! We really should clean the cyclers in the morning.”

We play additional item-locating competitions, astronomy trivia, ‘Truth or Dare’ and ‘Would You Rather’ before Grace’s yawns become frequent interruptions to his hypotheticals about whether I’d choose to be a human or a whale. The answer comes to me very quickly until Grace reminds me he can’t swim, which would make it hard for him to live with me. I’m contemplating ways I might construct an underwater habitat, or perhaps a giant tank on land, when I hear the gentle whuffs I know so well. Grace’s heart has slowed steadily, and he’s tangled up in his blankets, one knee up and one leg dangling over the side of the bunk. He’s fast asleep, his chest rising and falling in a mesmerising rhythm.

I observe him for a while, making note of the intricacies of his breath, the outline of his body, and the way his muscles flex when he shifts slightly or mumbles in a dream. I always ask Grace about his dreams, whether they’re nice or not. I like hearing about the stories. Grace says dreams are his brain trying to understand itself when it’s not busy, which is fascinating, if bizarre.

Grace says my name, at one point, and curls his hand. He does that sometimes, when he’s very deeply asleep. I think his brain is still trying to understand me. Not that I mind. I think about Grace most of the time, so it’s nice to know he does the same, even when he’s dead to the world.

I tap my claw rapidly against the tunnel. When he’s sleeping, is what I meant. Grace is alive, and he’s not going to die, so I can stop worrying about that.

I shuffle around into another position and lie down again. I can hear Grace’s heartbeat. I can hear his blood. I can hear his insides writhing, even though Grace has told me not to listen to those. The noise is a good thing. It’s the silence that’s dangerous.

I shuffle around again. I haven’t slept in a few days, which even Grace doesn’t know about. He thinks I slept beside him two days ago, when I actually laid in place, unmoving, and observed him reading on his computer. I only pretended so he wouldn’t be so anxious about me, and I don’t regret it.

I get up and sit down again. Grace frowns and grunts in his sleep, and slides his arm up over his head.

One person is easier to protect than twenty-two. He’s clumsy and impudent and wilful, but I can keep track of him easily. I wouldn’t change him for anything.

I get up and walk to the end of the bunk, then back again. Grace is still breathing.

It’s been approximately three hours since we laid down. The fort is motionless unless Grace brushes one of the blankets with his knee or elbow, and the ship is humming healthily. It’s calm.

I tuck my arms underneath my carapace and try to relax, like Grace had instructed. I imagine having a dream: one in which Grace and I explore Erid together, or one where I reunite with Adrian. One where I save my crew.

Bad, bad, bad to dream about this. I shake myself. Dreams are not real.

Except – it could be, briefly. It could be one of those dreams where Grace emerges from sleep smiling, and trots right up to me, and describes how he just ate his favourite food or introduced me to his parents or taught a classroom full of children again.

I save the crew. I dream it, in the only way I can. I construct a detector for radiation and I warn my friends. I tell them to gather under the fuel tanks. I tell them to launch escape pods. I tell them to wait, wait until a baby is born and grows up and launches from Earth to help us. I tell them to turn back.

Grace sighs under me. In my dream, where the universe is kinder, Grace is never sent away from his planet. We all die anyway.

*

There’s a crack in my arm. Winding up from the divide that’s scarred and healed over, there’s a leak and a pain, jolting like lightning.

I move it but I can’t. I get up but I don’t. I’m doing it again.

The pain resounds and I start to sob, not because it will help but because when there’s nothing left to be done you can at least wail about it. I’m tired of waking and not waking, sick of staying asleep when I know I’m not. This contradiction between my mind and body that was alleviated by my mission has come back to punish me for taking so long to complete it.

I move my arm, I don’t. I burn, inside my carapace, listening to my blood droop and fall, spattering thickly on the floor. It hurts. I don’t want it to hurt. I whimper as much as my vents will allow, faint trickles of sound that go nowhere. I don’t know what day it is, or even what year. I don’t know if my friends have died yet.

There’s a pattern, thuds against the wall, the wall of our ship. The strumlines must be broken again. They need at minimum two attendants for daily upkeep, and after – after, I could only polish and wind them once a month, too occupied with keeping the entire ship afloat. I’m not capable of doing everything. Maybe another one snapped, which means I’m alone. Maybe it cut across me again and tried finishing the job on my arm, splitting me so far up this time that my entire body would be cracked open, my soft parts exposed and pulled into space.

Thuds, and a voice, the captain calling for me. rocky save listen rocky save save

They’re alive?

I tried, I want to tell them so. I tried my best, but how could I do it all on my own? The mission was too big. The responsibility was too much. I’m just one person.

rocky rocky please please rocky

I don’t want them to be scared when they die, but I don’t want to hear this either.

rocky I’m here.

The voice is close, and lower than the captain’s had been. Vibrations through a surface that ripple right into me.

love you rocky love you so much. take your time. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

Thuds that become taps, glug-glug and a billow of air too smooth to be Eridian. This serenity didn’t exist on my ship. Fear fuelled the journey, the deaths and my lone push to the last healthy star.

I tap back, but I don’t, but I keep trying because there’s certainty in that voice that I haven’t heard before. I want to hear it again, very badly. I tap, I don’t, I tap, my claw flicks the xenonite. The tunnel.

“Hey, pal,” Grace says. He’s damp with sweat and blinking furiously. “Rocky, hey.”

He keeps talking, short, tender little words that feel the way his skin had felt, the single time I touched him. We both suffered. We both finished the mission. Me and Grace. I remember.

I want to whack myself with my arm, send that jolt higher, if necessary. I want to stop forgetting. I remember him, of course I do, I always will.

My body shifts in increments. There’s blood on the floor and smeared on the wall; I deduce that I slammed my arm off of it without realising. I seized again, after disappearing into a sleep that kept me too long. The blood has clotted. My arm throbs. The chitin was already weakened there, and now it will be prone to breakage for the rest of my life. When we get to Erid, they’ll think I was mauled.

I ignore that thought. I’m in Mary, and here, my priority is Grace. Nothing else.

He watches me intently as I drag my carapace upright. I leave my arms abandoned around me. They’re too sore to move.

“Rocky,” Grace says, stroking the wall. He’s kneeling on his bunk, pressed up as close as he can get to me.

“Hi, Grace,” I warble back, tapping in the region of his forehead. Grace copies me, tapping hurriedly. “Happen – happen again.”

“Yeah, bud.”

I’m so tired. “Think – think there is problem.”

Grace’s voice breaks a bit. “Yeah. Me too.”

He gives me time to recover. I lie there while he taps against the xenonite and sings to me, humming tunes he hasn’t taught me yet. His language surges and descends in a wave, and I follow him. I listen to him soothe himself with poetry, with nonsense words and stories as the hours roll by and the day cycle begins, his body hunching with exhaustion. He tells me about his family, his schooling, his academic rivals, the foods he wishes he could have again. He talks about me, about my ship, about Adrian, and about Erid, feeding me the things I’d told him in turn. He talks about my crew, how brave they were, how strong I was.

I want him to know, all of a sudden. I want Grace to know all of me. He’d been so nervous when he told me how he was forced onto Mary, but all I cared about was that he’d gotten here. He’s safe now. Any lingering doubt or regret would be managed between us. I have to believe the same is true for me.

“Grace,” I say, when he’s mid-yawn, halfway through a recount of basic Eridian geography. I’m stiff, but I rotate my body so I can set a good arm on the floor of the tunnel. My injured one has stopped bleeding, and a thin film covers the crack now.

“Yeah,” Grace says instantly, jumping up and putting his hand against mine. “Hey, Rock. You doing okay? You need anything?”

“Just you,” I say, and Grace’s facial muscles do something complex.

“I’m here to stay,” he says. “Promise.”

“Thank,” I say feebly. I start to stand, and my arms tremble under my weight.

“Woah,” Grace says, his hands grabbing the tunnel. “Rocky, you need to stay there! You need to give yourself a minute –,”

“Take many minutes,” I murmur. “Want come down now. Want ball.”

“Okay,” Grace says helplessly, as I skid and almost trip down the tunnel’s incline. He follows beside me, gripping his hair. “Okay, just – take it slow, please, there’s no rush –,”

I couldn’t rush if I tried, but I don’t tell him that. I plod over to my connector panel and half-climb, half-drop into the ball.

“Jesus –,”

I bat at the panel until it seals with a hiss, then I roll around to Grace, who thankfully meets me in the middle of the room. He hugs the ball and grabs my hand tightly when I reach through the glove panel. We sit like that, for a long time. Grace leaks some tears, which he hastily wipes away.

“Sorry, Grace.”

“Don’t say that,” Grace says, sniffing. “I don’t want you to be sorry. This isn’t your fault, I know that much.”

“Not know.”

“There’s something wrong with you, Rocky,” Grace says hotly. “And no, I don’t know what it is! But that doesn’t mean –,”

“Rocky made sick.”

Grace falters. “What?”

“Rocky made Rocky sick,” I say. “Long – long time, has happened before.”

Grace pulls at my claw. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Will explain reason,” I say. “Not nice.”

“Okay,” Grace says, settling in front of me. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“Not – not normal,” I say softly, trying to absorb the mundane security of Mary. Grace and I are safe. We are. “Sleep should be regular. Sleep ten hours, no dream, wake, rested. Sleep with no rest, cannot properly wake. Short time with no rest, not problem. Bad temper and stupid, but will heal with good sleep.”

I plunk to the bottom of my ball. My arm pounds, the scab singeing the chitin.

“Refuse sleep for one year – poor health,” I say wearily. “Many years, body fixes self where possible to prevent coma or death. Body will enter state of paralysis when wake, so energy not expended. Very scary.” I whistle a few breaths. “Feel like – like can die any moment. No control.”

Grace sags, but keeps holding on to me.

“When crew die,” I say, “everything bad. No navigation, damage to ship, exposure from meteorite impact. Rocky – Rocky alone. Crew depend on Rocky for mission and to bring crew home. Did not. Tried save star for many years. Did not. Rocky fail and Rocky do all jobs badly. Must work to make better, cannot sleep while work, sleep not happen for long time.”

“Oh, Rock,” Grace says quietly.

“When – when did sleep,” I say, trying not to fidget, “woke up in paralysis state. Cannot move. This happen every time, some long, some short. Rocky think much while in paralysis state. Think about crew and home, very sad, very afraid. Make Rocky mind – make it broken. Not work properly, bad for mission and for Rocky. Until meet Grace.”

I squeeze his hand, and Grace smiles wetly at me.

“Think about crew again,” I say reluctantly. I scrape at the bottom of the ball. “Not know why. Love Mary, love going home, love being with Grace. Memory is hurting mind. Making broken again.”

I don’t know what else to say. I want to give him some hope that I’m not a total loss, but if I can’t believe that, why should he?

“Well,” Grace says after a moment, blowing out a breath. “That’s rough. All of it. I wish you hadn’t gone through that, Rocky. I wish I’d been here for you sooner.”

I shake my carapace back and forth. I wouldn’t want Grace to have missed out on crucial Earth experiences just because I was lonely.

“But,” Grace says, “I think that maybe, you might be healing from what you went through.”

I start to protest, but Grace waves me down.

“No, listen for a sec. You’ve been living in such extremes for so long that your body became accustomed to it, right? But once we got the taumoeba and started back to Erid, we went from survival mode into – like, standby mode. There’s no emergency now. We’re going as fast as we can. We just have to live now, which means you have time to deal with what happened to you.”

“Not want that,” I say angrily, and Grace shrugs.

“I know, believe me. Those seizures, and – and how you hurt yourself, it’s horrible. I watched it,” Grace says, sounding strained. “But you can get better.”

I warble a few dejected notes. “How, question. Feel like getting worse.”

“That’s because you turn into a total stinker whenever I try to help you,” Grace says, tapping on the xenonite. “You went through something awful. I want you to feel like you can tell me about the very worst of it. I’ll listen, like you did for me, and it’ll take some of the burden off you. Swear.”

It’s not the same, I think. I volunteered for this. I was trusted to a duty that I couldn’t fulfil on my own.

“Grace think Rocky weak,” I say, my voice so small it might as well disappear.

Grace bristles, forming a scowl. “You really believe that? After everything?”

I turn over his hand. I force another one of my claws through the panel and hold both sides of it, this fragile, vulnerable thing, which is a part of the strongest person I’ve ever met. A person who has always given me the benefit of the doubt.

“No,” I say. Grace nods, satisfied.

So I tell him. I tell him about the deaths, which came in bursts, bodies littering the halls and blood streaking the floor around them. Rotting flakes of chitin in the command deck, screams for families echoing, disrupting communications between sectors. The last death, and the sound of it. The dark days, the dark nights, the endless working hours that came after. I tell him about my transmissions to nowhere, my logs that would never be heard, my messages to a mate that I knew might have moved on without me already. I describe the waking sleep in detail. The sounds I couldn’t decipher while prone, the surety that I would be attacked or sucked away or smashed by space debris and that I would feel it all, limp and useless, unable to even lift my arms to shield myself. I tell him about year sixteen, and the last log, the one I destroyed when I changed my mind. Grace goes silent at that part, shaking his hanging head.

It gets less heavy, after that. I talk about the work, and the fear, but also seeing Mary. The buzz of pure euphoria that shot through me when I observed life in a sea of nothingness.

“Felt like new Rocky,” I say, leaning the ball forward and letting it rock back. “Sleep half a day after meet Grace. Amaze, alien fix me so quickly. Want to keep alien forever.”

Grace rubs at his eyes. “Yeah, well. You’ve got me.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, yes, yes.” I rock the ball again and Grace pulls at my arm, still wound around his. He waits until the ball tips into his chest before lying against it. I push myself up, still unsteady, and bump against him. The second we get back to Erid, I’m researching a way to make a suit specifically for hugging. It’s going to take up a lot of my time.

“I wish that hadn’t happened, Rocky,” Grace says, low and sad. “You didn’t deserve to go through that.”

“Rocky and Grace both have bad time,” I say, listening to his heart, as usual. “Over now. Question?”

“Over now, statement,” Grace says, patting the ball. “You might get sick again, Rock, but you won’t be alone this time, you hear? I’m going to get you through it, no matter what.”

I hum, the emotion within me to big to hold. “What if – what if stay broken?”

Grace thinks about this for long enough that I start to tap anxiously, even my bad arm.

“I think that’s okay,” Grace says, hushing me when I trill indignantly. “Rocky – if you keep waking and being stuck, it’s all right. Because I’ll be there for you. You’ll know you’re safe, and eventually, your body will catch on. You’ll sleep better.”

“Not want stay broken.”

“Then let’s fix it,” Grace says, smiling at me. “We fixed two suns. We can fix one Rocky.”

I waver, my ball tilting back and forth. “Grace keep saving me.”

“Just returning the favour,” Grace says. “And I’m honoured to do it.”

*

We set up the memorial service in the EVA room. Grace tidies away loose equipment and scattered tools, and lays his quilt flat on the floor. I deposit the funerary monuments into the shared drawer in my corridor tunnel one by one, each woven out of xenonite. I had searched for minerals that represented each of my crewmates in my luggage, but nothing fit their composition exactly. I stuck to carving impressions of them into the little statues. It’s almost the same.

Grace removes each statue with gloves and places them on a table to let them cool. Once the last one has been transferred through to him, I slip into my ball and roll around to the entrance of the EVA room. I observe as Grace slowly moves each statue to the quilt, setting up every one of the twenty-two with immaculate care. We don’t talk while he works. Grace doesn’t need the distraction and I can’t muster up much in the way of conversation anyway.

When they’re all set up in neat little rows, Grace changes into his flight suit and I put on my ceremonial garments. We stand at the foot of the quilt, facing the audience of monuments. I should say something, but every platitude I want to give is turning to vapour in my mind. There are – were so many of them. I sway in my ball, trying to summon something. I can’t just leave them like this, wrapped in silence like their true bodies.

“I didn’t know any of you,” Grace says suddenly, startling me. “But I want to say goodbye.”

Grace has folded his hands in front of him, and his head is lifted like he’s formally addressing a superior. I tilt my carapace to listen better.

“You were commanders, engineers, scientists, navigators, and mathematicians,” Grace says, gesturing to the assembled statues. “You were also friends, siblings, parents, children, partners, and spouses. You were brave, to come all the way out here. You were heroes for trying to save your world. You should still be here, and you should be able to go home.”

Grace looks down at me. “I’m grateful to you for bringing me my best friend. Thank you for protecting him while you could. I hope you all find peace among the stars, which are shining because of you.”

Grace lifts his fist and runs it along his forearm, performing the Eridian farewell I taught him. It’s strange to observe it without any corresponding clacks, but it’s precisely because of that that the motion strikes me so deeply. I push out the glove panel and stroke his leg, the tether I need to keep going. I pause to collect myself before rolling the ball forwards.

This is not how it should be done. The procession should last months. Figures from every government on our planet should be marching alongside the bodies. People should be gathered in the millions to preside over them, mourning dirges ringing out for leagues.

And yet this tiny ceremony feels more meaningful. No-one but Grace and myself as witnesses to their memory, dignifying the deceased as best we can while traveling to finish their mission. The captain would have liked it. I hum, to think of them. They would have been so in awe of Grace, so astounded at how much he had to teach us.

“My dear friends,” I trill in formal Eridian, the notes stuttering with lack of use. “Revered saviours. Your sacrifice and courage will be hewn in the deepest rock and sung to the final generation. I commend you to the sky that bore our ancestors.” My breath hitches, my vents sticking with effort. “I ask your forgiveness. I wish you peace.”

The tones flow and echo for longer than I had intended. In the tiny room, for the slightest second, they sound like a chorus of voices.

Grace’s face is wet. “That was beautiful, Rocky.”

I rub my fist up my right fore arm. “For last time.”

Grace nods. I back up in my ball while Grace picks up each statue and sets them in a new pattern around the airlock. He collects the quilt and follows me out of the EVA room, sealing the door behind us. He glances at me, his hand hovering over the side panel.

“Release,” I say softly.

Grace dials the sequence that opens the airlock. I tap the floor and feel the crew separate from me for a second time. It’s not painful, now.

“Goodbye,” I say, hoping that wherever they are, they hear me.

Grace crouches down and leans on the ball. I lean back.

“Tired,” I say to him, low like it’s a secret. Grace nuzzles the ball, his grin growing.

“Want a nap, buddy?”

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”