Chapter Text
Russell Eisner struggled to keep himself awake as he checked his watch.
2:40am.
He looked out the window of his rapid transport (RT) as it sped along the track towards the space center. Despite the considerable speed he was moving at, it felt to him like a crawl; the RTs moved at a slower speed during the overnight hours to keep from waking nearby residents. Russell wished it wasn’t quite so quiet, as it was nearly lulling him to sleep.
In the four years that he had been director of the Grace Space Center, this was the first time someone had asked him to come in at a time like this. The call came from the head of security, at the request of someone named Adrianna Watson, and she hadn’t provided any details other than that it was urgent and that he needed to hear it for himself. The name didn’t ring a bell. He looked her up in the staff duty roster as soon as he was seated in his RT, and found that she was assigned to the Antiquated Communication station that night. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, that certainly would have piqued his interest.
The Antiquated Communication station had been in operation at the Grace Space Center for nearly 20 years, and yet you could have worked at the Center for the entirety of those two decades without knowing of its existence. It was technically its own department, even though it just consisted of a single office. It had a single purpose, and a very niche one at that: to watch and listen for any signal received from any significant space vessel that had been presumed lost, destroyed, or out of communication range. Over the years, it had built up a large collection of vessels on its caseload, but never received a signal from any of them. And that was to be expected: if a space agency was still holding out any hope of hearing from a ship again, they wouldn’t have abandoned it to the AC station. It wouldn’t even exist if it hadn’t been for the miraculous story of Mark Watney from all those years ago, contacting Earth from what was thought to be a long-dead probe.
As his RT slowed to a crawl, Russell began to consider what the possibilities were. One of the Jupiter probes seemed the most likely. He had little knowledge of space communication systems, but it seemed plausible that a probe could have had its signal blocked for months or even years by a major storm on Jupiter’s surface. That just didn’t seem like big enough news to wake someone for.
Maybe it was Unity? The Koreans had just abandoned it to the AC’s caseload a week ago. That would be big news, not just for the scientific community, but for international relations. It was the first space launch in cooperation between North and South Korea, and it was thought dead due to electrical failure.
As he got out of the vehicle and walked towards the side entrance, he was researching Unity on his phone, refamiliarizing himself with the ship’s mission specifics. That had to be it, and he didn’t want to look clueless in front of the intern when she broke the news to him.
The security agent buzzed him in before he could get his card key to the sensor. Taking a step inside, he saw a wide-eyed woman who looked to be in her late twenties standing nervously a few steps away from the security desk in the direction of the elevators. She wore an open jacket over a t-shirt with yoga pants; she looked more like she was dressed for a workout class than for the office.
‘Makes sense,’ he thought to himself. ‘If I was asked to work all through the night alone, I’d at least want to be comfortable doing it.’
She looked vaguely familiar. He knew he had definitely seen her before, but never actually had any interaction with her.
“You must be Adrianne,” he said with a nod, letting the door close behind him. “And this must be important,” he added, his voice coming off a little more severe than he’d intended.
The woman swallowed hard, then a nervous smile crossed her lips. “Adrianna,” she replied, “And yes, it is. You’ll want to see this immediately,” she said, beckoning him forward.
“Just let me grab a cup of coffee first. This is probably something I need to be awake for,” he said, walking over to the coffee station.
Adrianna stood impatiently for what she knew was no more than twenty seconds, but it felt like an eternity to her. Her foot began to tap unconsciously as she waited, wondering why Eisner couldn’t stir his coffee while he walked.
“Alright,” said Russell, “AC department, right? Lead the way.”
“Yes,” said Adrianna, walking at a brisk pace towards the elevator. “And you’ll want to put that coffee down before you see this; I wouldn’t want you to scald yourself”
Russell could tell that she was struggling to contain her excitement. “It’s Unity, isn’t it? I can’t imagine anything else that would be this important,” he said, already beginning to go through the chain of who he should contact first if that were the case.
“Bigger than Unity. By an order of magnitude,” she said, almost in disbelief at what she herself was saying.
Unity was a big deal; the biggest space story of the last five years, and the cooperative effort to put it into space had done more to improve relations between North and South Korea than generations of diplomats could. Having it malfunction was a true disaster for international relations, with both governments keen to find ways to put the blame for the malfunction on the other.
Russell’s eyes locked on hers as they walked. She seemed to be totally serious.
“This would have to be something on par with getting a message from Challenger to even be in that ballpark,” he said, referring to the shuttle that exploded on live TV in 1984.
“It’s not Challenger, but it might be just as hard to believe,” she said as the elevator slowed to a stop on her floor.
She led the way down the hall to the large room that housed the AC department. It was a large room, with nearly all of the floor space taken up with technology that spanned most of the history of space exploration. More than half of the machinery in the room was older than Adrianna. About a quarter of it was older than her mother.
Taking a seat at the main computer, she opened an audio file.
“This is broadcasting on loop. And I have every reason to believe it’s authentic,” she said as she pressed ‘Play’.
“Hello. This is Ryland Grace, and this is a recorded message being broadcast from the Hail Mary. If you received my data from the beetles, you are aware that during my time in the Tau Ceti system, I made first contact with a creature from the 40 Eridani system. You should also have my findings about his basic anatomy and biology. In the event that you were not able to retrieve that data, the Eridians are pentagonally-symmetrical intelligent beings consisting of a pentagon-shaped carapace and five nearly-identical limbs, each ending in a three-fingered claw. The outside of their bodies consist primarily of metallic compounds, and their natural environment has an atmosphere of nearly 100% ammonia at much higher temperatures and pressures than experienced on Earth’s surface. They do not have any form of light sense, and communicate and ‘see’ their surroundings using sound waves.
I have spent the last 20 years as an honored guest on their planet, and now they have sent a delegation to establish communication with Earth. As a first gesture of peace and good-will, I have given them the Hail Mary on behalf of Earth. They have spent the last three years redesigning it to be operated by their species. I know that the ship was not legally mine to give, but I ask whatever agency may have legal ownership of the Hail Mary to honor this.
As for myself, I am also present on the ship, but I am using the same coma technology that was originally used to get me to Tau Ceti. It is not ideal, but it seems to be the most practical solution now that the majority of the ship is controlled by Eridian life support. The Eridians have studied the ship’s logs and human biology, and believe they know what caused the death of my crewmates. They hope to leave me in the coma until I can be attended to by human doctors, but they will attempt to wake me if I am needed for communication between them and Earth as they make their approach.
Rocky, the Eridian that I met on my trip, is the spokesperson for the Eridians. He will handle all communication as the Hail Mary approaches Earth, and will be working with a voice emulator. He is fluent in English comprehension. Each of the other twelve Eridians present have a scientific or diplomatic specialty, and also a role in the operation of the ship. They have taken the names of the constellations in the Western Zodiac as their human-language names, and each has chosen a gender for the sake of pronouns despite their species not having a concept of gender.
The ship has two methods of making initial contact: a telescoping tunnel that can join one airlock to the other for ship-to-ship transfer in orbit, and a small lander capable of landing at a moon base if needed. If Earth has one, that is. Eridians do not have EVA suits, but they have developed small containment capsules that attach to either tank-style treads or robotic legs, controlled from the inside of the suit that will allow them to move around in Earth’s atmosphere.
This message will be played on loop from the time the ship reaches Mars’ orbit until we are within one light minute, at which point Commander Rocky will attempt to open up two-way communication on this frequency.
Hello, this is Ryland…”
Adrianna stopped the recording. Director Eisner looked stunned.
Ryland Grace wasn’t a household name until after he went into space. But since then, clips of him speaking at conferences had surfaced from his time in academia, and a few audio samples were released from meetings he attended relating to the astrophage problem. These clips had been featured in media packages aired around the world. The voice on the recording was clearly older, but it was also unmistakably Ryland Grace.
“This… this… this explains a lot, actually,” he said finally, wiping his hand across his brow as he considered the implications of this transmission.
“Um… I guess you must know something I don’t,” she said, hopeful that there would be an explanation coming, but well aware that she was not in a position to expect to have classified information shared with her.
“Remember what the Hail Mary project team told the world when they retrieved Grace’s findings? It looks like those ‘ravings of a mad man’ weren’t so mad after all. And it explains why the files were never released.”
The intergovernmental agency that had taken over the astrophage problem at the time that the beetles arrived on Earth had never declassified the raw data obtained from the probes. They explained what Grace had said about his comrades not surviving the coma, and that he had successfully captured, isolated, and bred the predator that would become known as Grace’s Amoebozoa. After that, his log entries were said to resemble a fever dream as he seemed to spiral into madness, struggling to cope with his inevitable doom and isolation without another living human within 12 lightyears. No mention of the Eridians was ever released to the public.
“So you agree? You think this is all real? That they are on their way here right now?” asked Adrianna. On one hand, she was thankful to have him believe it; she feared that he might think she was crazy and gullible, buying into some elaborate prank. But she was also amazed at how quickly he had come to accept this paradigm-shifting revelation.
Russell smiled. “Let’s pretend I believe it. For now. How far out are they? How soon will they want to make contact?”
Adrianna searched the pile of papers on the desk in front of her for the one with her calculations. “Um, this isn’t my field of expertise, but my rough calculations say they are about seven days travel away, and that it will be just over five days from now that they attempt to establish communication.”
Russell looked over her shoulder at the calculations. “Looks like you had to make a lot of assumptions. They’ve had a long time to modify that ship. Who’s to say that it is still maxing out at 15 metres per second-squared? Could be faster. Maybe ‘Eridians’ can’t handle as much G-force and they’ve had to decrease the acceleration. And do we know their current location?”
“I don’t know, but I’m certain that another department would have some means of picking up the signal very soon if they really are inside of Mars orbit,” she said. “There’s so much to consider, so much to prepare! Are we even ready for this? As a species?” she asked, amazed at the magnitude of the event unfolding around her.
“It looks like Grace was at least. And it looks like he’s done a lot of the hard work for us,” Russell said with a smile. “Now, what was your name again? You’ll be the answer to a trivia question for the rest of time.”
********
Six hours later, five people sat around a conference table at Grace Space Center while 11 others listened from around the world on video calls.
“It all checks out,” Charlton Smith said as the recording of Grace’s voice concluded. “Every conceivable step that we could take at this stage in their approach that would provide evidence to support his claims has been taken, and they all match what Commander Grace said in the recording.”
Smith paused, allowing the translators time to catch up for some of their international attendees. As Director of Communications for Grace Space Center, he was one of the lucky few that were aware of Grace’s findings about the Eridians from all those years ago. And now, finally, it looked like it was time to share those findings with the world.
When Grace’s research was first analyzed, the top-level decision makers had unanimously agreed that the information about Eridians should be withheld from the public temporarily. It would give the scientific community time to focus on implementing a fix for the astrophage problem, and to focus telescopes on the Eridini system in the hopes of finding some evidence to back-up Grace’s claims.
Using state-of-the-art telescopes that were beyond Earth’s technological capabilities at the time Grace left, they were able to conclude that his information about Erid’s atmosphere were correct. This pointed rather firmly towards his claims being legitimate; Earth didn’t have the technology required to make those determinations before he left, and the Hail Mary wasn’t equipped with the type of machinery he’d need to do that sort of analysis on a planet lightyears away.
However, there was one major problem with telling the world about our alien neighbors: what would we do next? Billions of people would inevitably begin clamoring for a mission to Eridini, but the expense would be astronomical (literally and figuratively), it would take decades for a return trip, and the dangers associated with a trip on that scale were enormous. Add to that the fact that Grace’s positive interaction with a single Eridian wouldn’t necessarily indicate a warm welcome if an Earth ship arrived uninvited to their homeworld, reliant on their ability and willingness to refuel it.
As Earth was a planet on the mend, still recovering from the ecological and economic disaster brought on by astrophage and the world’s attempts to limit global cooling, it was agreed that no trip to Erid was in the near future. Once that decision was made, the decision to keep the existence of Eridians secret followed quickly on its heels.
“We have five days to decide on an initial plan of action. By the time we adjourn today, we need to have answers to the following questions: Do we honor Grace’s decision to give the most expensive object Earth ever built to a race of aliens that we’ve never met? How and where do we schedule first contact? Who should be a part of it? Do we invite them down to Earth? And what, if anything, do we tell the public? We welcome your input as we make this monumental decision.”
Charlton had chosen his words carefully. There was no official policy on whose role it was to communicate with interstellar visitors, so he was attempting to make it clear that he was claiming that distinction for his agency.
Shannon Carson, United States government liaison, was the first to speak.
“The answer to the first question should be obvious: yes, we let them keep the ship. We only even know of its survival because they are bringing it back to Earth, and we had already accepted it as a loss. Besides, at this point it’s 35 years old, has logged more miles than the rest of our spacefleet combined, and is probably unrecognizable if these creatures have adapted it for their own use. It’s worth far more to them than it would be to us as an attraction for space tourists. And the alternative could mean alienating the aliens, and that seems like a really bad idea.”
Most people present seemed to still be digesting the information that they had just been hit with, but her argument was met with some silent head-nodding and no clear objections.
Charlton spoke up. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace,” he said, his eyes panning the room and the video screens. This was a good start.
********
“Commander Bauer, this is Charlton Smith, from Grace Space Center. Get ready for some very important guests.”
Commander Bauer was on-board ISS-3, the space station orbiting Earth. It had been in service for eight years now, and was the major extraplanetary hub of Earth’s space exploration. He was near the end of his tenure on the space station, and he was eagerly looking forward to his return home. ISS-3 was more roomy than some space vessels, but it clearly wasn’t built for a man with a 6’5” frame.
“An inspection? Already? No, if that were the case, you wouldn’t be contacting us on the confidential channel,” he said warily, his German accent barely perceptible over the transmission.
“No, Commander. Ryland Grace. And he’s bringing some friends.”
“Could you repeat that? I must have misheard you,” asked a confused Bauer.
Charlton chuckled, loud enough that the microphone picked it up. There were eight other employees around him as he spoke, all having now dropped what they were doing to listen in stunned silence to the conversation.
“Ryland Grace. He’s bringing some of our neighbors over for a visit.”
********
In truth, Ryland Grace wasn’t bringing anyone anywhere. Despite the fact that his recorded audio message was rapidly becoming one of the most replayed bits of audio in human history, the actual Ryland Grace was laying in a coma in the small section of the ship kept at Earth temperature and pressure. An Eridian - Aries, as he would be called on Earth - monitored Grace’s vitals. Since Grace’s arrival on Erid, Aries had been assigned to learning human physiology. He had attended to Grace during his stay on Erid, he was the closest thing Erid had to a doctor for humans, and he would be responsible for bringing Grace out of his coma if it came to that.
‘He,’ after thousands of hours of analysis of medical texts and the Nannybot’s coding, had been the one to come to a conclusion about what had caused the deaths of Grace’s crewmates. He, and much of the scientific community on Erid, had been disappointed to learn that the bodies of Grace’s crewmates had been jettisoned. The opportunity to dissect and perform an autopsy on them would have been of great interest to the curious public of Erid, and would have helped to confirm his conclusions about the cause of their deaths.
“GRACE REMAINS STABLE. ROBOT IS PERFORMING ITS DUTIES ON SCHEDULE,” Aries said in the tonal language of the Eridians.
There were radios on-board to contact different parts of the ship in emergencies, but they were rarely used, mostly relics of the ship’s time as a human vessel. Any Eridians could easily hear and understand anything another Eridian said between any two places in the pressurized segment of the ship.
“GOOD GOOD. MAINTAIN NORMAL MONITORING SCHEDULE.” replied Rocky from the control room.
There had been moments of uncertainty during the mission, the most concerning of these being nearly two months into their journey when their chief navigator determined that their current location didn’t match the computer projection, with no clear explanation for why. This, and most of the problems they encountered, were the result of their struggles to modify human technology for Eridian use. They had little trouble deciphering written English with Grace’s help and made huge scientific strides, but in their attempts at building a new computer from scratch - one capable of surviving in their atmosphere - had failed on all fronts. That meant making the most of the technology that the Hail Mary had delivered.
Their journey had not been a direct one. After a lengthy thrum involving all of the leading scientists in any field even tangentially related to the mission, they concluded that a detour towards the Tau Ceti system was warranted. It would give their crew the opportunity to assess the condition of the Blip A, and if necessary, to refuel it enough to change its trajectory. When Rocky left his ship and traveled back to Erid with Grace aboard the Hail Mary, he had left the Blip A on a trajectory bound for the Eridani system. Its exact location wasn’t known, but logs from the Hail Mary had been helpful in determining with a high degree of precision what its velocity was when it was abandoned.
Recovering the ship was not a possibility on this mission. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible one day. And when that day came, they would need to know what condition it was in.
Rocky had been thankful that they chose that route. Rocky was not prone to being overly sentimental, even by Eridian standards, but he was glad to visit what had been home to him and his crew for a long time. And home to himself alone for far longer. From a practical perspective, it also allowed for some salvage of useful components, and it allowed them to use the hull-mounted robot (a machine that Rocky himself had played a role in developing, and which still worked just as well as the day the ship launched) to assist in some ship repairs before making the long haul from the drifting vessel towards Earth.
It was in good shape and structurally sound. Nearly everything that wasn’t bolted down had been either damaged or taken by Rocky to the Hail Mary. Some components would have been inevitably damaged by the long-term exposure to the cold of space, but this brief stopover wasn’t long enough to fully power it up, heat it and pressurize it to give each machine a proper test. What mattered was that it was still intact, still on course for the Eridini system, and in time a salvage mission seemed likely to succeed.
Back on the Hail Mary, the modular nature of the control room had come in handy, as many of the interchangeable panels had stopped functioning either before or during the trip. As they entered the solar system, they were down to six that functioned properly, with one of those still assigned to Grace’s coma unit. The other eleven were now in various states of dismemberment. Some parts had been scavenged from broken panels in attempts to fix others, but their efforts had been in vain. These machines and this species were simply never meant to coexist.
Anticipation was building among the Eridian crew, but it remained largely unspoken. Such a momentous occasion, now such a short distance away. Rocky was the only one among the crew whose focus remained more on getting his friend safely home than on this journey of discovery. In a way, he felt like this was finally the culmination of the Astrophape project that had started all those years ago. Grace was inseparably linked to his species success against the scourge, and now he was finally going to get the retirement he deserved.
*******
No one at Grace Space Center had ever seen a buzz throughout the building like there was over the next forty-eight hours. Perhaps the busiest of them all had been Adrianna. Since being the first to hear Grace’s transmission, she had only been home for six hours. Even that was punctuated with two interviews, the seventh and eighth she’d given since the discovery. She regretted putting “fluent in Spanish” on her resume now; that just added to her list of media obligations, and perhaps “fluent” was a stretch. She never imagined when she typed those words that she would one day be expected to do a live press conference being broadcast all over the Spanish-speaking world on two-hours sleep.
Now, there finally seemed to be a lull in the action. People all over the world were still full of curiosity and questions, but they were gradually coming to the conclusion that no one had those answers yet. Their answers were hurtling through space towards them.
That didn’t mean people had stopped calling her. She didn’t have any more shifts scheduled at the AC station for the rest of the week, so that meant multiple departments were trying to poach her for the coming days as they made frantic preparations for the big day. She had finally accepted a request from Charlton Smith to work with Communications. He’d even instructed her to turn her phone off as soon as they got off the call. He said it was to give her some “peace and quiet,” but she suspected it was to make sure no other department poached her away.
As she stepped out of her RT and towards the side entrance that she’d met Director Eisner at two days earlier, she could hear a dull roar emanating from the swarm of media representatives set up near the front entrance. A strong wind was coming in from the south, pushing her long brown hair across her field of vision as she pulled her open jacket tight around her. A short man with a GSC lanyard who Adrianna knew she had seen in the hallways in the past opened the door and held it for her. “Adrianna Watson, right?” he asked. The tone in his voice told her that he was only feigning uncertainty. He’d see her face in interview after interview over the past few days to know with confidence that’s who she was.
Adrianna just smiled and nodded, mouthing a ‘Thank You’ as she stepped inside, took a moment to straighten her hair, and then turned her phone back on. Her missed calls numbered in the triple digits. She looked quickly through the list of names to make sure she didn’t see a ‘Charlton’ or a ‘Smith,’ and decided to ignore the others, at least for the moment. She had work to do. She didn’t know what that work was yet, but she knew she had work to do.
*******
Lieutenant Chalmers slowly floated down the corridor towards Commander Bauer.
“I don’t know how you can be still at a time like this. We could be hearing from alien life in about fifteen hours. Isn’t there something we should be doing to prepare?” she asked.
“Like what? Sure, we just found out about them, but they’ve known about us for decades. They’ve been planning this interaction for at least half of that time. From what they’ve learned from Grace and the massive database Stratt sent on the Hail Mary, they know what to expect from Earth. And what to expect from an Earth spacecraft. All of those questions that Mission Control is fretting about now are questions they likely found answers to while we were still in college.”
“I… I guess… it just feels like we’re being lazy?” she said, eager to have something - anything - to occupy her time while she waited. The anticipation was too great to pass the time idly.
“Why? Because I’m not rolling out the red carpet for our visitors who can’t even see red? They’ll establish communications soon. Right now, what we have to do is make sure all of our systems are in working order, and that we have medical personnel on stand-by for Commander Grace. We have that. It’s a big moment, and I’m just as excited as you are. But right now, all we have to do is wait.”
*******
Adrianna hadn’t expected to find herself back at the AC station so soon, but less than an hour after reporting for work with the Communication department, she was back at the same desk she sat at when she first discovered the transmission. The room was a lot more crowded than usual, but that seemed like a trend all over the building. It seemed like they’d called in everyone who was even tangentially connected to the space center to work.
One aspect of Grace’s message had some at the Space Center spooked: why were they waiting until they got closer to communicate? It made sense to keep broadcasting that initial message to make sure it was heard, but The Hail Mary had lots of communication equipment aboard. Just because they were broadcasting Grace’s message on one frequency wouldn’t prevent them from initiating communication on another channel. It would be slow, with communication speed being limited by the speed of light, but there was no reason why they couldn’t be in contact with each other right now.
There were a ton of conjectures as to why that might be. They ranged from the sinister - some believed that this was some sort of invasion force, trying to keep Earth at bay as they made their approach - to the nearly implausible. Two possibilities stood out to her as the most likely. One suggestion was that the Hail Mary’s equipment was malfunctioning. This seemed very possible. Nothing in Grace’s original messages sent with the beetles (at least the parts she was aware of) or his recorded message said anything about how familiar the Eridians were with Earth technology. Maybe they had removed most of the communication equipment to make room for their own equipment.
The other suggestion, and the one that Adrianna was hoping was true, was that the Eridians simply weren’t aware of how all of the communication equipment worked. Grace may have just omitted some details about how their communication equipment worked, so they thought they only had the one radio frequency to work with, and needed to stop transmitting in order to receive a response.
Another unsettling possibility that the Communication Department had to consider was that Grace’s message may have been set up to automatically begin broadcasting as soon as they reached Mars orbit. If that were the case, that meant they knew absolutely nothing about the well-being of the crew and virtually nothing about the state of the ship. There could have been any number of mishaps along their trip that could have killed their crew but kept the Hail Mary on course towards Earth. The last thing the space program wanted was to get into a collision in orbit between the biggest spaceship Earth had ever built and the biggest space station Earth had ever built because we didn’t realize there was no one in control of the Hail Mary.
‘Okay,’ she thought to herself, taking a deep breath, ‘That’s enough speculating about what might be going on up there. Time to do something about it.’ She held her breath for a moment, then exhaled slowly and got down to work.
The console in front of Adrianna had most of the functionality of the computer’s used by Mission Control during the departure of Hail Mary all those years ago. The radios weren’t being monitored by the Eridians; others had tried that already with no success. But there must be other means of communication…
Her first thought had been about the robot installed in the dormitory. Perhaps she could find a way to remotely operate the robotic arm? Maybe use a system of opening and closing the robotic hand in Morse code to send a message? After diving into the schematics and contacting the robotics department, it seemed like a possibility. The problem was, she didn’t know what that robot was doing at the moment. If it was engaged in some form of care for Grace, her hijacking control could potentially cause serious harm and get this interaction off on the wrong foot.
She decided to put that idea aside for the time-being, but that left her with no clear starting point. In time, she decided to rewatch a video from two weeks before Hail Mary’s departure where Commander Yáo gave a guided tour of the Hail Mary as it sat in orbit while it was being loaded with provisions, introducing the general public to its interior for the first time. She picked up the retro headset, plugged it into an old-school headphone jack, and clicked ‘Play.’
As the video began, it brought back a flood of memories. She recalled watching that same video in her third grade classroom. It was already years into the mission at that point, but that hadn’t diminished its meaning to her or her classmates. She remembered playing pretend astronauts with her brother and twin sister, where she and Brianna would always argue about who would get to be Ilyukhina and who would have to settle for being boring old Ryland. She remembered the feeling of elation when the beetles returned. Then days later, how hard she had taken the realization that Ilyukhina hadn’t even survived long enough to play a role in saving the planet.
She skipped ahead to the part of the video when Commander Yáo presented the dormitory and the medical robot.
“This is where the crew will be staying for the majority of our time on board. We will be in comas for most of the trip, with the medical robot tending to us. It will be monitoring our vital signs and providing for all of our needs while in transit. Once we wake up, the robot will be responsible for assisting us with a variety of tasks, such as meal preparation, laundry, medical care in the event of an emergency, and a variety of other ways.”
Turning towards the robot, Yáo says in a loud, clear voice, “Laundry,” while holding out his mission jacket. The robot arms extend, clutching the jacket and tucking it away in an unseen compartment. “Soon, the robot will be able to respond to our requests verbally, but the voice recordings haven’t been uploaded from Earth yet.”
His choice of words caught Adrianna’s attention. She paused the video, considering what this might mean. ‘I wonder how those voice recordings were supposed to be sent,’ she thought to herself. The first idea to cross her mind was the possibility of sending a voice message herself to try to communicate through the robot. In her imagination, it played out so simply: the crew on-board the ship would hear some voice message sent from GSC through the robot and they could use this first message to explain how other communication tools on the ship worked.
“No, that’s way too risky,” she finally concluded. Anything that could interfere with the robot that was responsible for keeping Commander Grace alive needed to be off the table. And she had no way of knowing how the robot may have been modified by the Eridians over the years. Maybe it now had new responsibilities, that she might unwittingly interfere with in her attempt to send a message.
Unpausing the video, she let Commander Yáo continue giving his tour.
*******
Rocky was doing a routine check of the ship’s Human Systems. That was the term they had applied to all of the ship’s systems that were designed for human use that they hadn’t managed, or hadn’t bothered, to adapt to Eridian texture display screens. Out of all the checks they had done since leaving their rendezvous with the Blip A, not one had turned up anything noteworthy. On this occasion, there was just a single small light registering that was out of the ordinary.
“ODD,” said Rocky to himself. He had once criticized Grace for the unusual habit of speaking to himself, but over the years he found himself adopting it. The light was coming from the same panel that Grace had used to get a status report when the power to the ship went out during the first Taumoeba escape. Rocky reached over and clicked the button beside it. The central panel now lit up with an unfamiliar screen. It seemed to be some sort of data table, but all of the font was too narrow for his camera to be able to convert into anything legible.
“SAGE, REPORT TO THE CONTROL ROOM.”
Moments later, another Eridian emerged, this one slightly larger than Rocky, the stony substances on his limbs coming to more defined points than Rocky’s. Sage was the leading expert in computer science on Erid. She was originally assigned the name “Sagitarius,” but refused it after the first time she heard Grace pronounce it. ‘Too inefficient. If choosing a name arbitrarily, why choose one with five syllables?’ she argued. As a compromise, Grace suggested shortening it to Sage, a relatively common name on Earth. Her intolerance of inefficient systems was part of the reason Grace had immediately recognized her as a natural for the field of computer programming.
“A MESSAGE HAS APPEARED HERE. I CANNOT READ IT. DO YOU KNOW THE PURPOSE OF THIS SCREEN?” Rocky asked. He knew that Sage had studied every system on the ship in-depth. If anyone on the ship could explain this - anyone conscious, anyway - it was her.
Taking the camera from Rocky, Sage looked over the confusing jumble. “YES. THIS TABLE IS A SUMMARY OF MESSAGES THAT HAVE BEEN SENT TO THE SHIP. THE TOP ONE HAS SLIGHTLY THICKER LINES. THAT INDICATES THAT THERE IS A MESSAGE THAT HAS NOT BEEN READ YET. IT IS NEW; THERE WERE NO UNREAD MESSAGES WHEN WE LEFT ERID”.
‘So someone has contacted us. Or was trying to contact us, at least,’ thought Rocky to himself. It was unclear what their next step should be.
“CAN YOU MAKE THE WORDS LARGER?”
“NOT WITHOUT RISK. IT IS LIKELY POSSIBLE, BUT I MAY LOSE THE MESSAGE IN THE ATTEMPT.”
A few quiet moments of contemplation passed between them.
“IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO CONNECT THIS MODULE TO THE MEDICAL ROBOT. THAT COULD ALLOW THE MECHANICAL VOICE TO READ THE MESSAGE.”
“HOW LIKELY IS THAT TO SUCCEED?”
Sage was silent as he calculated. “WITH ASSISTANCE FROM TAURUS AND SUFFICIENT TIME, I EXPECT AN 83% CHANCE OF SUCCESS. 17% OF FAILURE, INCLUDING A 0.5% CHANCE OF IRREPARABLY DAMAGING THE ROBOT’S ABILITY TO SPEAK.”
Sage’s ability to succinctly and thoroughly analyze the risks and benefits of an action were a very useful trait on an interplanetary mission. It was the reason that Sage had become Rocky’s de facto second-in-command despite there being no established hierarchy amongst the other twelve Eridians on-board.
“GOOD. INFORM TAURUS, AND ENSURE HIS DUTIES ARE BEING ATTENDED TO. I WILL INFORM ARIES.”
*******
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Preparing for your visit
Hello, this is Adrianna Watson contacting you from Grace Space Center on Earth. We have received your message, and wish to assure you that you will be received warmly here on Earth. We are planning to meet you at the new International Space Station. Its orbital trajectory will be attached to this message.
We are unsure if you will be able to receive this message, so if you do not reply, we will continue to prepare for your arrival as best we can. However, if you do receive this message, and are able to respond, our most pressing questions are listed below.
1) How long does your contingent plan to stay on Earth?
2) How do you intend to dock with the space station? It has the same type of airlock connection as the Hail Mary had when it left Earth.
3) How much fuel will you need for your return flight? If your fuel tank is still the same size as when the Hail Mary left Earth, it will take us many weeks to fill.
4) Is there anything that your contingent urgently needs? If the space station doesn’t have it aboard, we will send it on the next shuttle.
5) Can you provide us with an update on Grace’s condition?
6) Where would your contingent like to stay while you are on Earth? We will begin making preparations as soon as we know.
We would also like you to be aware that the space station is likely not able to support the high pressure that your species lives in, and we have no ammonia on-board. The space station also does not have the Hail Mary’s ability to spin, so we will not be able to simulate gravity.
I hope you have received this, and we eagerly await your arrival.
*******
The e-mail sent, Adrianna spent the rest of the day trying to find other ways that she could possibly initiate communication while trying hard to fight the urge to check for a response every thirty seconds.
A part of her was surprised as she sat to write the e-mail that she hadn’t been given a script of what to send, just a few key bullet points. ‘The possibility of e-mail must not have been on their radars,’ she thought to herself as she looked over the message she’d sent for the sixth time. The only part that stuck out to her was the last line. She’d spent that whole message talking on behalf of the space center, but then in that last sentence she had let it become about herself for that one word.
‘I.’
‘I hope you have received this.”
It was minor, but to her it was improper, and a bit of an eyesore to a perfectionist like her.
It was nearing five o’clock. She hadn’t been explicitly told when this shift ended, and in the ever-shifting landscape that the workplace had become recently, she suspected that there really wasn’t anyone to ask. And if she did ask anyone, she’d be inevitably assigned to some other task.
That was when the computer made an unfamiliar dinging sound. Her hopes soared. And her hunch was right; it meant she’d received a new e-mail. A response. An e-mail from alien life.
*******
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Preparing for your visit
Hello this is Rocky contacting you from the Hail Mary. We have received your message and we look forward to our arrival at Earth. We do not understand what you mean when you say that the trajectory is attached. We do not know what it is attached to. I know much English and I know that some words have different meanings but I do not know what you mean by the word contingent. Grace used it rarely. I believed it to mean dependent on. I may have misunderstood, and Grace did warn me that the way humans use words changes over time. We hope to have the Hail Mary stay for 12 years. If your leaders will agree we want to establish a permanent embassy on Earth with this being the first of many voyages to your planet. We can easily attach our tunnel to the airlock you described. When we first attach it will be from our medical bay where Grace is being kept. The entire tunnel and that section of the ship will be kept at 0.4 atmospheres with Earth gasses and temperature. When your doctor’s come to attend to Grace they will not need pressure suits or a supply of oxygen. Our fuel tank is 96 percent larger than the Hail Mary’s originally was. It will be nearly empty upon our arrival and will need to be completely refilled before we can return home. We hope Earth can supply us with astrophage to refuel for our journey home. Some of our medical supplies are running short. Our most urgent needs are for mercury and gallium. We want 6 liters of gallium and 18 liters of mercury. We thank you for your help. Grace is doing well. Our doctor says his vital signs are still in the expected ranges. The medical robot has not indicated any signs of distress. Before leaving Grace and I designed some plans for Eridian living quarters. We will share them with you when we arrive. We assumed that your space station was designed only for human needs. We have come prepared for this. We hope you receive this message and are able to understand it. We look forward to meeting you Watson.
*******
Adrianna hurriedly typed off a response to Smith. Once that was done, she leaned back in her chair to absorb the situation. So much to take in. Especially that last word.
The computer she sat at was connected to a local network that linked to a printer at the back of the room. As the document printed, a response from Smith came through. It was brief: “I’ll be there in five. Don’t tell anyone else yet.”
Scarcely four minutes later, she heard Smith’s voice as he stepped into the office. “I need everyone except Ms. Watson to leave the room, please. Immediately,” he added firmly, standing by the doorway as he waited for the others to leave. He was doing an admirable job of hiding his excitement as he gestured with his hand for people to speed up.
The last intern finally hurried out, fumbling with his papers and coffee stein. Smith immediately closed and locked the door behind him.
Adrianna, the printout in hand, approached him. “I made contact. They’re on their way,” she said. After receiving that initial transmission a few nights earlier, she had been certain that would be the biggest moment of her career. Of her life, even. But this… this felt bigger. If for no other reason than because it required her own outside-the-box thinking and not just dumb luck from being in the right place at the right time.
Smith pulled up a seat, took the printout in hand, and began reading aloud, staring first at Adrianna’s message to them. He nodded along as he read, seemingly approving of how clear and professional the message appeared.
“This looks good. Especially considering you were no doubt working quickly. We could have put a committee together to work for a week at crafting a message and not done this well. It would be good to know about their speed and when to expect them, but now that we have a means of communication we can discuss all that,” he said with a smile, handing her the first page as he turned his attention to the more exciting stuff.
His eyes momentarily went wide as he took a first glance at the Eridian message. “Eridians don’t use paragraphs, I see,” he said with a smile.
“Maybe. But if I sent you a message that I had dictated with speech-to-text, this is probably what it would look like. No commas, no paragraph breaks, but still some periods. Maybe they have some sort of technology like that. But they definitely don’t have e-mail attachments,” she suggested.
“Uh-huh,” replied Smith, paying little attention to her, mouthing the words silently as he read through the alien message. His eyes suddenly went wide as he mouthed what Adrianna was quite sure were the words ‘twelve years’. Smith looked up and off into the distance for a moment, making a mental checklist of who he should contact and in what order before diving back into the message.
As he reached the end, he read the last sentence aloud: “ We look forward to meeting you Watson.” He read it as it was written, not including the hesitation where the comma should be.
His eyes shifted to Adrianna. She blushed, turned to avert his gaze and looked towards the floor.
“I’m sure he was just being polite,” she said modestly.
The next few moments passed in silence. He looked to her, then to the paper, and back to her again.
“Go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to book you for a physical. If that goes well, I want you packing your bags immediately, because you should be on the ISS-3 in our contingent that meets their contingent. You can tell them what that word means in person.”