just kinda here

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“Perfect. There are no elevators in space.” 

You’re a God damn liar, Yáo. Wish you could be here to see this. 

Grace hesitated over the Mary’s orbit control panels. He didn’t have time to be hesitating, but it was completely involuntary. He was scared stiff about what had to come next. 

Namely: match orbit with an absolutely ridiculous space elevator over a hundred thousand kilometers above the surface of 40 Eridani and go on one final EVA to actually get in the thing. It was the very last task standing between him and wriggling free of a suicide mission once and for all. 

Rocky wasn’t with him, which made this all the more unpleasant. Rocky had gone on his own spacewalk the day prior to prep the space elevator’s cabin to have a habitable zone for Grace. So, the past 24-ish hours had consisted of Grace fretting about everything alone. He could still check-in via radio communication with Rocky every 5 hours when the elevator passed near the Mary again from the planet’s rotation, but otherwise, it was all quiet aboard the ship. 

He started changing settings on the panels. He had roughly 840 seconds before the elevator’s counterweight would be passing by at the correct time to start orbiting with it and dock. The two of them had planned every aspect of this in great detail well ahead of time, so it’s not like he was unsure of what he was doing. He was just terrified to actually put the plan into action. His hands were shaking as he very dutifully, swiftly did every step. 

He got the orbit going. He could see the massive counterweight dwarfing his little ship through the cockpit porthole. Go time. 

He left through the airlock and pushed himself off to be able to grab the outer handholds of the counterweight-vehicle thing. It went smoothly, though he bumped up a little hard on the side of its outer wall with his first contact. When he got to it, he quickly latched one carabiner to the side before unlatching himself from the tether that was tying himself back to the Mary. This also went smoothly. 

The Mary was still drifting along in time with the elevator—but in the near future, the autopilot would shut off and the orbit would decay enough that it would drift away from the space elevator substantially. They didn’t currently have a retrieval plan for the Mary. It would sit up there unmanned forever, maybe. 

Goodbye, Mary. It was nice knowing you, sometimes. 

He’d miss Armando. 

He started making the moves to get inside the elevator. 

He had to enter from “underneath” the counterweight structure, because once he was in there, he had a sort of upside-down artificial gravity that would pull him down to the “ceiling.” From within the counterweight structure the centripetal force of Erid’s rotation was pushing him out, away from the planet, like the classic grade school science demonstration of swinging a bucket of water over your head. You wouldn’t be able to enter through the top of the structure, it would fight to fling you away from itself. You had to drop down into it from underneath. 

He pulled himself into the airlock with quite a bit of effort, switched it to seal himself inside, and grabbed hold of a ladder leading down into the capsule when the door to the main compartment opened. 

When he got to the bottom of the counterweight’s capsule, he rushed embarrassingly fast to where Rocky was and pressed his arms up against the Xenonite barrier that he had been putting up for the past day. Rocky pressed himself against it back. 

“Grace did it! Amaze, amaze! You are okay, question?” 

“Yeah. Yes!” He huffed. He was completely breathless, but temporarily giddy with the adrenaline from pulling the whole thing off. 

“We did it!” Rocky yelled and whistled. 

“We did it!” Grace cheered back. “Oh my God, we’re going to be on solid ground. We’re alive. You’re going to be home. Home sweet home, buddy!” 

Grace got the urge to scoop Rocky up. He wished this was possible. Instead he just tried to press himself a little harder against the barrier. 

When they felt like they were done—which took a while—Grace eased away from the panel, and started looking around the room. It wasn’t very large. The counterweight itself was massive, but the detachable pod they were in that actually traveled down the tether was fairly small. Maybe the size of the Mary’s lab. 

Also, concerningly, whatever specific formulation of Xenonite they used for it was semi-transparent to Grace’s eyes. Which was just great. He could vaguely see the blur of the Erid above his head. At least it wasn’t completely clear, just opaque, but he would much prefer to not be able to see outside at all. Glass space elevator, get a load of that idea. 

When Grace asked Rocky why these particular Xenonite panels were used in the construction of the capsule, he hesitated and said “Resonance best for shape of room.” Okay. Sure. 

It was probably as if Rocky were to ask why the inside of the Mary was white. Grace would give a similarly unhelpful answer. 

He observed everything a little bit more. Lots of handholds. Few other features. 

Then he took a deep, deep breath in and out. 

One last step was left now: get the space elevator moving. 

Rocky had the controls. They were limited, because much of the controls for the elevator came from a ground source instead. Eridians planetside were in charge of monitoring and sending command instructions to the capsule. Rocky was actually chattering on and off to those ground-control Eridians over a sort of radio panel. The feeling of hearing other Eridians after nearly 50 years must’ve been unlike anything else. 

Grace couldn’t pick up on all of what they were saying. Or even much of what they were saying. It was like trying to grasp a language you hardly know over a crackling phone. 

It didn’t matter, though. Rocky had it covered. 

The controls that Rocky actually cared to point out to Grace was the emergency stop and a few other protective measure features. If anything was ever wrong, Rocky informed him, they could halt the elevator immediately and figure something else out. 

He maybe emphasized this to ease Grace’s anxieties, or maybe his own. Either way, it worked. It was nice to know they had that in their back pocket. 

“Grace ready, question?” 

“Yep. Mhm.” 

“Heartrate very very very fast. You are bad liar.”

“Hey, you don’t know why my heartrate is fast. Maybe I’m excited, what about that?” 

Rocky cocked his carapace towards Grace. 

The dam broke immediately. “Alright, alright. Rocky, I have to confess something. On top of hating space, I absolutely hate elevators. I hate every part of this, actually. I don’t want to do this.” 

“Is okay. Elevator ride will last 1,560 seconds. Then done.” 

“Agh, that’s part of what I’m worried about.” 

The thing went fast, Rocky had informed him. Not quite rocketship fast, but almost. 

Traditionally, the limiting factor in ever actually building a space elevator was the fuel usage and the material strength required. Astrophage and Xenonite just… evaporated the problem. Like that. You could go nearly as fast as you wanted, so long as the body could comfortably withstand that. Before this, most estimations of what a functioning space elevator would be like put the full length of the journey at a week or more. Going any faster would burn ridiculous amounts of fuel. 

This would not be a week. It would be a shockingly brief 10 minutes. 

Worst of all: in addition to the speed, he would need to be contending with gravity flipping on him. 

The gravitational force he was experiencing at the moment would only last a brief amount of time before they reached weightlessness at geostationary orbit level—a fancy term for the altitude above a planet where objects rotate exactly in time with the rotation of the planet below. You’re in freefall here. It’s where satellites go. Once they were past geostationary orbit, he’d be at the mercy of the typical direction of gravity. 

If a human being were to design a space elevator, it would likely include some type of cabin rotation during this. You would never need to feel like relative “up” and “down” have switched. But this type of feature did not really matter for a species that can’t see space, has a perpetual 3D view of an entire room, and can get around on handholds perfectly fine in any direction of gravity. It would be a ridiculous amount of extra effort to add something like a complex rotating cabin, for very little payoff. So they didn’t. 

So he had that to look forward to, along with all the other bizarre sensations and forces that would probably come with being in a space elevator. He didn’t know exactly what it would be like. He was going to be experiencing another of humanity’s firsts. First person in an actual, real space elevator. 

Cool. He wished he wasn’t. 

If he was being honest, he was completely and totally through by this point with experiencing impossible new advances in space technology firsthand. 

Would it be too hard for the universe to put him in a slice-of-life? Maybe a romance? That’s been conspicuously absent his whole life; he could stand to experience it. Sci-fi was never his thing. 

He stopped his little spiral. 

“Agggh. Alright, let’s get this over with,” he said to Rocky. He plopped himself down and grabbed two little handholds in an attempt to ground himself. 

Rocky did something to the controls. Said something into the communication panel, and received a message back that Grace could actually parse—"All clear."

The thing accelerated amazingly fast. It didn’t rattle or shake at all, like you might expect from a rocketship launch. It was extremely smooth. It also just put a lot of force on him at once. His vision grayed out a little at the edges, then slowly fuzzed back in. 

The speed of the elevator was also causing a nasty little sensation of being pulled to the side—coriolis effect. A space elevator was just one big tether from the planet to the planet’s orbit, and as such, it rotated in an arc with it as it traveled down. At enough speed, you can feel the fact that you’re following a curved path. 

Whatever, the specifics all meant very little. The end result was that weird forces were acting on him in weird directions, and it made him dizzyingly sick and very frightened almost immediately. 

He tried very hard to weather it. He shut his eyes tight and held himself to the floor as still as possible with a handhold, including when they began phasing into weightlessness just a minute or two into the whole thing. He could feel himself being gently pulled up into that familiar freefall sensation. 

“Grace okay?” 

“Mhm. Can’t talk right now.” Grace said. He felt like he probably would start hyperventilating if he didn’t focus his energy solely on keeping his breathing steady. 

The panic eventually ebbed away with that effort.

When he was fully in weightlessness, he let go of the handholds and tentatively allowed himself to drift up. This he could deal with, because zero G was about the only experience here that felt familiar. It was still something his inner ears were not happy with at all, but it was an improvement in sensation. 

This weightlessness only lasted a minute or so. Then the gravity started to switch up on him as the elevator phased through geostationary orbit. 

He sort of… ungracefully flipped over himself when he started feeling the tug of gravity back down to the other side of the capsule, and the visual of the entire room rotating 180 degrees to his eyes on top of everything else was one of the most nauseating things he’d ever experienced. He shut his eyes tight immediately, but it didn't help anything. It was too late.

That was it. He was gonna puke. 

He did bring a bag for all this, just in case. He’d already made the mistake of forgetting to bring a bag once, and he would not make that mistake again. 

Problem, though: he had gone from feeling queasy to feeling like his stomach was in his throat so fast that he honestly wasn’t sure he’d make it anyway. He scrambled for it in his flight suit pockets. He clumsily fumbled with the zippers in a panic. 

He did make it, just barely. When he brought it up to his mouth not a second too late, he vomited immediately. It wasn’t pretty. And it also meant he lost the rest of what little he had eaten that day, too—he was down to some pretty slim rations. There wasn’t a ton in his stomach. 

He felt terrible. “I can’t do this” terrible. “I am so, so done with this” terrible. 

It must’ve looked and sounded terrible, too, because Rocky started completely freaking out. 

“Grace is not okay, we E-stop now.” 

“Nope! No E-stop!” Grace said with urgency. Rocky had his hand hovered over the button. He had already frantically opened up the protective panel and latch guarding it. 

“Grace not okay,” Rocky pushed. 

“I’m okay! I’m okay,” he coughed out, despite feeling the furthest thing from it. His heart was pounding and his head was swimming and he still felt like he could easily puke again, but he was obviously in no danger. “Just motion sick. And scared, if I’m being honest. This feels really weird to me.” 

They’d had a conversation about motion sickness before, but it was still very abstract to Rocky. He seemed unconvinced. 

“You sure, question? No danger, even small danger?” 

“No danger.” He swallowed hard. “Stomach’s upset, but no danger. Nothing’s hurting me.”

He backed off the button and slowly flipped the panel back into place. Which was great, because Grace did not know how he would be able to cope with Rocky inevitably needing to start the elevator up again. That was the absolute last thing he wanted. 

“Apology,” Rocky said, after a moment. 

“Pff. Apology for what, bud?” 

“Grace feel sick. Very sick. Apology.” He brought his knees closer to himself. 

This kind of melted Grace’s heart, if he was being honest. He was already made a little sensitive by feeling so horrible—this was the final straw. He started tearing up, just a little. A tiny bit. He sniffed and wiped at his eyes. 

“Now Grace leak from eyes! We E-stop—“

“No! No,” he said. “Cool it. I’m okay. That was just—really kind.”

Rocky shifted with extra energy. 

“Hey. I promise, it’s fine.” Grace added. 

In the process of this conversation, gravity had slowly pulled him down to the floor. He had carefully touched his feet to the ground as the weightlessness faded. He felt very wobbly from his discoordinated vestibular system and shaky from anxiety, but he was standing upright. Which was the most important part. 

“I am so glad that’s over,” Grace said. 

“Yes,” Rocky agreed, though it obviously wasn’t a rough ride for him. He was actually just hanging out in the exact same spot he had been in the whole time, unbothered. 

The whole ordeal took maybe three minutes total—geostationary orbit wasn’t the halfway point, it was towards the top third of a space elevator, a little below where the counterweight sat. He had about seven minutes left of travel that would feel more-or-less like a normal elevator ride, just with steadily increasing gravitational force.

Manageable, by comparison.

He backed up to the nearest wall and slowly slid down it to the floor. He curled himself up and put his head down on his knees. 

Rocky didn’t let him sit in silence for long. Only a moment passed before Grace was getting another check-in. 

“Grace okay? Feel okay?” 

“Yep. Still okay.” He gave a thumbs-up. 

He wasn’t really looking forward to greeting a brand new planet and alien society like this. “Hey guys! I know I’m the actual first contact of other intelligent life in the universe to you, and you have a lot of work to do to save your planet, and you have a lot of questions to ask, but I don’t feel too good and I think I really need to lay down for a solid few hours. Is that alright? Thanks!”

So it goes. The rest of the elevator ride was significantly less awful. Emptying his stomach had evidently cured the worst of the motion sickness, at least. When they reached closer to the planet the deceleration of the room made him feel a little yuck again, but it was otherwise fine. He deliberately did not look up during any of the remainder of the journey, though, because the last thing he wanted was to see the world whizzing by. His heart had already been fluttering enough just from being generally aware of how disgustingly high up he was.

When the capsule finally slowed to a stop down at the surface, Rocky tapped the Xenonite barrier to get Grace’s attention. 

“Is done.” He said. And then, one more time, for good measure: “Grace okay, question?” 

He put a lot of effort into forcing a steady tone. “Good. Yep. Completely okay.” 

He stood up with a sway to his gait. He probably could’ve benefited from a minute or two sitting there to collect himself, but he really, truly did not care enough to. He wanted to be out of there more than anything. 

“Rocky?” Grace asked. 

“Yes? Yes, Grace?” 

“We really did it. We’re free.” 

A beat of silence passed.

Then they both wildly, manically whooped and hollered together. 

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