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Having a time-travelling best friend was super cool and everything, until he started beating you at your own game. At least, that was Olesya’s opinion on the matter as she watched him effortlessly navigate the model of The Hail Mary’s cockpit in the neutral buoyancy pool like he’d been doing it for years. Which he sort of had, in a sense, but still. The support divers didn’t know that, and they were having a rapid signed conversation with each other that she could only presume amounted to “this guy was such a bumbling idiot in his first few EVA drills, and now he’s suddenly better at this than the career astronauts- what the fuck is up with that?” Or something of that nature. Olesya didn’t speak Chinese Sign Language, so she was only guessing.
While Yao was still the better pilot, Grace certainly knew his way around the cockpit better at this point. The real thing was still under construction, and Grace himself had contributed to the blueprints. A lot of it, according to him, was just the same as the ship last time, but he’d made some minor adjustments. Such as “let’s move the big red emergency button a little closer to the pilot’s chair. So that it could, hypothetically, be reachable in case you’re spinning out of control and being pressed down by about 6Gs while rapidly losing consciousness. You know, hypothetically,” he’d added again, at the horrified faces of the team leads, Stratt, and his crew. Nobody believed he meant hypothetically.
“How are the joystick controls?” Grace asked Yao as they changed back into their regular clothes in the locker room. “Personally, I always found them to be a little too touch sensitive, but I’m not a trained pilot. I want to make sure they’re just right for you. I could still fly Mary in a pinch even if they’re not exactly to my taste, and obviously the top priority is making sure she handles in a way you’re comfortable with. Let me know if there are any changes you want- we don’t have to do things exactly the same as the first time.”
“I’ve so far found them to be acceptable, but I’m doing another simulator training tomorrow, so I’ll let you know then. By the way, you maneuver quite well in the pool, Dr. Grace.”
He shrugged. “I spent a lot of time in the buoyancy pool the Eridians built for me to help with the arthritis. Sometimes, on days I wasn’t teaching, I’d just spend the whole day floating around and drinking a vitamin shake. They’d put these cute little paper umbrellas in them for me- they listened to too many tropical vacation movies, I think. They put heat lamps in the buoyancy chamber to simulate tropical sunlight and even put up a little swim-up bar. It was really sweet.”
The image of an older, arthritic Dr. Grace chilling with aliens at a poolside resort brought a small smile to the pilot’s face. In Yao’s mind, he wore colorful arm floaties, cheap plastic sunglasses, and a hideous Hawaiian shirt. He had a feeling that the Eridians were capable of making such things if they so chose.
“Hey guys,” Ilyukhina said, and Grace jumped.
“Ily, this is the men’s changing room. What are you doing here?” he squeaked, face red. He quickly pulled another science pun shirt over his bare chest (it had two sodium molecules and a picture of a fish and said ‘NA- T-U-NA’. The shirt, that is. Not his chest.)
“Seeing what is taking so long. You don’t even have to put on bra! And oh, I can’t wait to tell Annie and Martin that you are very muscular under cardigans. They want you so bad. Is funny to drive them crazy.”
“Oh Pasteur,” Grace whimpered. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it is true. And very funny.”
“Please stop telling me these things,” he begged as Yao huffed a quiet chuckle. “I have no desire to know who wants to fornicate with me.”
“Better question is who on ship does not want to fuck you? Me, Yao, Stratt, Reddell, and also you, obviously. Unless you do masturbate?” At his horrified expression, she nodded. “Ah yes, thought not. So yes, I think those are most of people who would say no. But my Mandarin is bad, so I have not asked soldiers on boat.”
“You’re asking people if they want to have sex with me? Why would you do that?” his eyes were mapping possible exit routes, since Olesya was blocking the door.
“I don’t have to ask. They tell. Internet is also very vocal about this topic.”
“Olesya, stop. You’re going to give him a heart attack,” Yao chided.
“I cannot wait to leave this planet and go back home where I don’t have to worry about this,” Grace moaned, head in his hands.
“Are you sure none of Eridians want to fuck you?” Olesya asked. “Surely Erid has alien fuckers too.”
“Too?”
“Is good thing you teach middle school, at age before they start talking about such things with their friends,” Ilyukhina replied, her grin growing.
“Grace hate Earth, statement,” he muttered, grabbing his keyboard out of his locker to say it in Eridian as well. “This is a horrible planet full of horrible beings.”
“See what happens when you spend most of Internet time on Google Scholar? You are unprepared for hidden weirdness of humans. Internet is where they put it all. You spend enough time in internet, you are never surprised,” Ilyukhina told him without mercy. “Poor little time-traveller. You cannot handle Arcane Knowledge.”
Grace wanted to melt into the floor. This was even worse than the one (and only) time Rocky and Adrian had asked about the adult film industry.
_________
“Maybe you should consult with another scientist on this,” Grace told Eva as she handed him the proposal. “I only have an average knowledge of quantum physics.”
“Do you know anything about quantum physics?” Eva asked.
“Well, yeah…”
“Then you have an above-average knowledge of quantum physics,” Eva replied. “I am not a scientist, Doctor Grace. You are the only person on this ship who is capable of keeping that in mind when explaining things to me. So look it over and come back after lunch with your opinions on its feasibility.”
Not only was the proposal not feasible, but the calculations were so dangerously off that, once Grace explained them to her, she decided to have the scientist who’d submitted the proposal escorted off of the project. Grace watched the helicopter go with a conflicted face.
“Jeez, Eavie, you didn’t have to fire the guy.”
“He wasted both of our time with his kuddelmuddel,” Eva replied. “There is limited space on this ship, and I only keep the best. He’ll find another job; the project is too classified for others in his field to be aware of how deep his idiocy runs.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve submitted worse reports,” Grace replied. “And here I still am.”
“Your reports could often benefit from a spell-checker, but the science and equations are always strong. That’s the bit that matters, even if your abysmal writing skills in your own first language are problematic and give me second-hand embarrassment.”
“Wow, Eva Stratt, you sure know how to build a guy’s confidence. And I’ve barely written anything in English since the trip to Erid on Mary, so you should give me a break,” Grace grumbled at her.
“They were like that before you came back. You’re just a bad writer,” Eva told him. “Don’t blame it on your preference for Eridian.”
He still took most of his initial lab notes in Eridian before translating them into English, she knew. A few of the cleaning staff were convinced that his lab was haunted since they kept finding papers full of ‘unknown occult symbols’ in the wastebasket. Apparently written Eridian was more ‘intuitive’ than English for scientific writing, whatever that meant. Carl was now personally responsible for disposal of Dr. Grace’s scrap paper. Letting him use his flamethrower was a nice way for him to vent his frustration over the constant new additions to the first officer’s security detail.
______
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Are you insane?” Their visiting aristocrat’s security detail yelled at Grace as he stood over the man’s prone form. “You just punched a marquess! That’s a peer of the realm!”
“Well, he was peering at my staff. And he couldn’t keep his hands to himself,” Grace replied casually, shaking out his fist. “And to answer your question: Yes, I am insane. None of the sane people teach middle schoolers. But that, I assure you,” he continued, pointing to the bruise blooming on the man’s chin, “was a perfectly reasonable response to attempted sexual assault. Even a man with a gene pool shallower than a spilled solo cup should know that.”
Carl stood menacingly over the security guard, daring him to try something. He apparently didn’t want to take that bet, so he settled for helping his employer to his feet.
“Director Stratt will be hearing about this,” the man muttered petulantly.
“She certainly will, and that is a threat. I’m sure the king will be pressured into revoking your title by morning,” Grace replied nonchalantly, trying to see if he’d chipped his blue-green nail polish. “You know, neither Stratt nor I were big on this whole ‘tours in exchange for large donations’ thing. I suppose now we have an excellent excuse to revoke that policy His Royal High-Horse kept pushing for.”
“I will certainly not be donating now,” the pervert protested.
“Wire transfer went through before we even sent the helicopter. We’re a boat full of scientists, did you really take us for fools?” Grace replied, unbothered. “Also, I don’t know why you’re complaining, really. I think I did you a favor and punched a few of your teeth back into place. Having only one side of the aisle at your parents’ wedding really did a number on the alignment of your jaw, it seems.”
He and his security were bullied into the helicopter by Carl and a Chinese soldier before the man could think of a reply.
“You really went in on him, damn. I’m surprised you didn’t make him apologize in front of the class,” Carl chuckled.
“Nobody in my lab wants a forced apology from a man who was trying to paw at them,” Grace replied. “And I was sick of looking at his face. Also, you know I would never be that harsh towards an actual student. My students are kids; that man was an adult, even if he couldn’t outperform a sea slug on a cognitive test.”
______
“The king of England sends his regards,” Eva told him that night in her office as they shared a quesadilla while going over the day’s reports. She had a satisfied expression on her face that spoke of a meeting that was very productive in venting her frustrations, if nothing else.
“Well then, it looks like we both found an acceptable outlet to exercise our tempers,” Grace chuckled.
“I heard you have quite the punch; I wouldn’t have expected it,” Stratt continued, ignoring his indignant face as she took the last of the guacamole from his side of the plate.
“Well, I learned from literal rock people, so yeah, I can do some easy damage on squishy leaky humans,” he replied, stealing her coffee in retaliation. Black and strong, but with enough sugar that he was sure her dentist had thoughts about it. He preferred his with cream and a more moderate amount of sugar, but after years of no coffee at all and then Eridian half-caf, he was no longer so picky. He drained the mug and ignored her glare.
“You need to actually sleep tonight, Eavie,” he scolded.
“And you don’t?” she scoffed.
“I took a nap this afternoon because I knew I’d be supervising the latest spin-drive tests until at least 3 AM. Can’t leave the engineers alone with a volatile substance.”
That was probably fair, Eva reasoned. Even if Dr. Grace was the most safety-conscious scientist she’d ever met (and for good reason, a dark part of her mind reminded her, ears ringing with an explosion that had never happened in her living memory), letting engineers explode things with only the (questionable) judgement of other engineers was never a good idea. “Senior Engineer” was less of a supervisory title and more of a “person who has been exploding things the longest” designation. Other than space, the reason they were only sending up one engineer was that the last thing an engineer needed on such an important and risky mission was to be enabled by another engineer. If there was more time and space for double the crew, she’d be sending three science officers instead of two engineers.
“I haven’t seen Dr. Komarov in a while- have his eyebrows grown back yet?”
“Nope,” Dr. Grace snorted. “And I don’t think they will, at this point. I love the man, but limited supply was far from the only reason I was afraid to give him astrophage way back at the beginning of all of this- you saw what he did to his eyebrows with basic lab chemicals. I clocked him the day I met him; he has the same look in his eyes as some of the kids who were always a little too excited about the combustion unit.”
“I suppose engineers are 50/50 for either saving the world or ending it,” Eva mused drily.
“Russian engineers are 30/70, but when they hit that lucky thirty, they sure can work some miracles,” Grace agreed.
“From your stories, it sounds like you did some pretty impressive engineering up there yourself,” Eva told him.
“I taped two laptops together and html-ed a translating system that would have made both linguists and programmers cry and smash things,” he corrected. “I know, because as soon as the Eridians in those fields got a hold of it after figuring out how computers work, they actually did both of those things. And computer engineering had only been a thing on Erid for like, six months at that point.”
Eva couldn’t help the small chuckle. “So you didn’t use all that travel time on the Hail Mary to fix the translator or learn to code properly?”
“Nah, I stopped adding to the translator at all once I didn’t need it any more. Like I said, linguists hate me. I mean, not the Eridian ones- they’re too kind for that- but I’m sure the Earth ones would’ve. I did learn to code once I got to Erid, though. Eridian coding languages, however. So unless you let me incorporate that tech onto Mary, Lesy’s gonna be doing all the computer stuff.”
“I think re-inventing alien tech just so you can use Eridian Python to tell the ship what wake-up songs to use would raise too many questions,” Eva agreed.
______
“Hmm,” Dimitri muttered. “The experimental spin drive we’ve coated in xenaluminum seems to be both more energy-efficient and slightly less combustible. Fascinating.”
“How much more energy efficient?” Grace asked, curious.
“Well, if your bodies could handle 2Gs while in a coma, I hypothesize that we could get the ship going that much faster and cut 25% off the travel time using the same amount of fuel.”
“No shit,” another Engineer replied. Grace, blinking, didn’t even think to scold them.
“We need to run more tests,” he replied. “A lot more tests.”
_______
“Why didn’t you wake me up immediately?” Stratt demanded the next morning, smacking Grace on the shoulder. “This is enormous news! We’ll have nearly seven fewer years of famine and waiting!”
“Well, it’s still early stages of testing, but yes, it does appear that way,” Grace replied. “You needed your sleep though, and I wanted to be a little more sure before I brought up the possibility.”
“Next time, wake me up the second there is a possibility of that sort of breakthrough,” she scolded.
“You know I’m not going to do that when your sleep deficit is bigger than the US National debt,” Grace replied.
“You are so lucky you’re too important to throw into the ocean,” Eva replied back, already on her second coffee. “Grab your breakfast burrito and then take me to Komarov’s lab.”
“You’re eating one too, or I’m not taking you anywhere,” he replied, grabbing three wrapped burritos from the buffet and juggling them a moment before tossing one to Carl, another to Eva, and opening his own.
_______
“I heard family road trip got shorter,” Ilyukhina said later as Yao finished up in the flight simulator.
“Yeah, you guys will experience my home gravity. Darwin, I miss it,” he sighed. “I know it’s horrible for my joints, but I’m so used to it now. 1G is like this constant reminder that I’m on an alien planet. I love you guys, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still homesick all the time, so the physical reminder on top of everything else isn’t super helpful.”
“I understand,” Yao replied, catching the tail end of their conversation as he climbed out of the pilot’s chair. “I am on a Chinese boat, but still I am homesick for Szechuan. Most soldiers on board are from the Hunan province. Even that little bit of difference causes me to feel out of place sometimes. It must be much worse for you, on a planet that doesn’t feel like yours anymore.”
“I mean, I don’t wanna compare struggles or anything, but you kinda hit the nail on the head,” Grace responded.
“English idioms are so stupid,” Ilyukhina interrupted, seeing that Gracie was starting to look a little too melancholy for her tastes. “Nails don’t even have heads!”
“I mean, technically that round flat part on top is called the head,” Grace corrected, immediately making the instinctive and involuntary switch into ‘teacher mode’. “So when you hit the nail on the head, it means you did it right instead of, like, bending the nail or bringing the hammer down on your thumb.”
Ilyukhina smiled and pretended to be interested. Distraction achieved. It was worth having to learn more English against her will (her opinion on her English was that of an Engineer- it worked fine, so who the fuck cared if it wasn’t pretty?).
“You should give lecture to Dimitri. He went to graduate school in UK. He even uses all those ‘an’s and ‘the’s and shit,” she replied, once she decided he had gone on Long Enough. “For me, save language teaching for Eridian only. My English is fine, no point for wasting time with more of it.”
“I strongly disagree,” Yao objected, reprising their old argument. “And I am ahead of you in the chain of command, young lady.”
“Gracie is commander, and he gives zero fucks,” Olesya argued.
“I mean, watch your mouth, but yeah, I don’t really care about your grammar. If it were up to me, I’d be speaking Eridian. It’s way more information-dense and far easier on the ears. But none of you speak it except for Oly a little bit, so…” he looked at Yao. “You’re welcome to join us. I know you’re a little self-conscious about your childhood violin teacher saying you were ‘tone-deaf’, but your childhood violin teacher was a jerk. If your ears work, you can learn Spoken Eridian. I mean, I did.”
“Oh, oh!!!!” Olesya bounced up and down and pointed at him eagerly. “Self-depreciation joke! I’m telling Stratt- Nap Time for you!”
“Aww crumbs,” Grace muttered, as Yao tried to force Ilyukhina to correctly pronounce ‘self-depricating’.”