Do It Scared

She’s been recording local body information since she entered the Tau Ceti system years ago. On the star, the planets, the Petrova line, stray steroids that caught her attention - anything that could be measured was measured. Just in case. The historical data and accuracy of Mel’s numbers is more than a little insane. It’s the kind of thing that would get even the heartiest nerds at NASA a little wet. 

To be fair, getting mathematical calculations of any kind from an alien would do that, but still. These are particularly good. 

Tau Ceti-E (named after its star, Tau Ceti) is 3.93 times the mass of Earth and almost double the radius, with an orbital velocity of 35.9 kilometers per second. Those are the nitty gritty details that Frank really appreciates being able to work with when it comes to calculating their ‘don’t fall into the planet’ velocity. She even got the position of the planet within 0.00001 percent of locational error. 

Knowing Mel as well as he does, Frank shouldn’t have expected anything less. He, of course, makes sure to shower his effusive compliments over her as Mel graciously accepts.

“Incredible.” Frank says, plugging in the values for their upper atmosphere insertion thrust.

“Stop.” Mel huffs, chords short and embarrassed.

“Fantastic.”

“No.”

“Show-stopping-”

“It’s just math. Math isn’t hard.” Mel argues as she pointedly keeps working on the crystal-tipped device in her lap like she's barely paying attention. She absolutely is.

Frank knows how to read Mel. Every part of her body language is as descriptive as Mel saying something to him outright. The unconscious little furrow in her brow that appears when Mel enters the zone, the bounce of her antennae shifting to watch him every time they talk. Frank knows how to read Mel and that means he knows that she hasn't actually moved anything on her project in seven and a half minutes.

Mel is paying just as much attention to everything as Frank is, despite her attempts to play it off in the face of a compliment.

“It’s math that’s about to save us time and fuel.” Frank says as he runs his eyes over the values one more time to make sure he got them right. Getting incredibly accurate data and then fucking everything up by mistyping a digit is not how Frank intends to go out.

“Or maybe the data is wrong and we die.” Mel says, raising an eyebrow like Frank might not have thought of that.

“Yeah or we die.” Frank laughs, agreeing easily as he adjusts the spin drive angles on one of the physical toggles. “But we won’t. Because they’re your numbers, and I trust those more than anyone else's. Including my own.”

Mel buzzes quietly at the compliment, almost hidden beneath Mary’s beeping from manual control being activated. Frank catches it though. He catches everything when it comes to Mel. 

The engines come to life with the press of a button as Frank refocuses on the task at hand, slowly pressing them into the outer atmosphere. His job on the joystick is to, as scientifically as possible, alternate between winging it and micro-mange every possible reading the ship is giving him. It’s a slow process as he gets them worked up to the right velocity, careful not to tip anything too anything else.

It’s a classic ‘turtle wins the race’ sort of situation. Also known as an 'it’s the smart astronaut that keeps themself from going splat on an alien planet.

Basically the same thing. 

Frank can’t be sure that wasn’t part of the original story, he didn’t pay a lot of attention during reading time in elementary school.

From this distance it looks like the Hail Mary is in free space, planet spread out beneath them, but it's the same logic as the ISS. Put something in that grey area between the planet and space and make it move incredibly (stupidly) fast. Their momentum will ensure that they’re always falling past the horizon and the distance gives an appropriately bird’s-eye view of everything without any chance of actually leaving orbit. Ideal in terms of science and survival. 

“Spin drives are off.” Frank confirms out loud, eyes locked on the Navigation panel. He gives it a minute for the numbers to start doing something they’re not supposed to, but they stay steady. “We are in stable orbit above the planet with a velocity of, drum roll please-”

Mel taps on her wall, somehow failing to recreate any beat any human has ever used when tasked with drum rolling.

“Twelve kilometers per second. Right what your numbers predicted.” Frank announces grandly, turning to grin at her.

“Of course it is.” Mel beams, not bothering to pretend that she’s working anymore.

“What happened to ‘my numbers might kill us?’” Frank asks Mel knowingly, raising an eyebrow. He knows she can see it. He doesn’t know the limits of her echolocation, but his face from three feet away certainly isn't it. 

“It was a joke. My numbers are perfect.” Mel trills, straightening up with what Frank would almost call cockiness.

Frank laughs as he turns back to the screens. “That’s my girl.”

The Telescope panel fills four of the cockpit screens with a live view of the planet outside, sprawled out in vibrant detail. Chaotic swirls of green fill the camera, twisting into one another like waves in a pool. Orange clouds cut through the green, whipped together by unknown weather patterns. The rich display covers the surface of the world itself, holding who knows how many scientific secrets beneath its shell.

So close and out of reach all at the same time.

Tau Ceti as a star gives off the same general luminance, frequencies, and intensity of light as Sol. It has the same pesky ‘falling into it would be pretty bad’ rule. In the blackness of space, it looks like the same cosmic waypoint any other trip through Earth's solar system would use. Sometimes Frank has to remind himself that it’s not actually his star.

Another planet though, that’s unmistakable. 

This isn’t his home, it’s the largest and most promising piece of a star-cluster-wide jigsaw puzzle. Somewhere beneath those swirling clouds and vibrant colors has to be the missing answer of how to save their worlds. 

“Complete!” Mel trills, dragging Frank back to the present as she presents her crystal-tipped gun-shaped…tool thing. He’s not sure what it does.

For half a second, Frank wonders if he's shown Mel too many clips of Earth culture before she thankfully points it at the nearest screen (a big win for it not being intended for him). The face of the flat tablet in her lap shifts smoothly. Where it used to sit level, now a centimeter-thick recreation of the planet rises out of the surface. “It works!”

“What is it?” Frank asks as he leans in snoopily, eyes running over the system.

“Visual light enters the device and translates to my screen so I can see it in contrast.” Mel explains, pointing between the two pieces. “Like your human eyes.”

Frank snorts at the 'human’ modifier. Mel likes to throw out comments about his ‘highly irregular light-detecting organs’ whenever the opportunity presents itself. Somehow mentioning that she has eyes too never seems to end the conversation. Frank is pretty sure Mel only says it at this point to listen to him grumble about scientific inaccuracies (it doesn't matter how often Mel uses them, Eridians have access to the same visuo-spatial organ as humans-)

“You made a camera.” Frank says, sidestepping her bait as he scoops up his forgotten laptop from the floor. “That’s incredible.”

“🎶🎵🎶🎶.” Mel echoes so Frank can label ‘camera’ in his program. “And these are old technologies, I built this from plans I already had. It’s not exciting.” Mel waves him off, fiddling with some of the knobs on the display screen. “What wavelengths of light do your human orbs see, question?”

“I know you know what they’re called.” Frank dead-pans as Mel snickers. “Between 380 nanometers and 740 nanometers.”

Thanks, middle school teacher fun facts. Who knew how helpful they'd be talking to an alien?

Mel fiddles with the screen for a moment before the lingering fuzziness solidifies into a crisp recreation of the planet, clouds marked in delicate overlapping patterns. It’s shockingly organic, especially for being practically embossed in metal. “There, now I’ll see what you see.”

“Incredible.” It is, regardless of how much Mel tries to play at modesty. 

Frank can only imagine how spoiled he’d sound trying to describe any of the things Mel makes so casually to people back on Earth. How did they communicate visual images to each other? Oh, Mel made a wireless kinetic tablet that reacts to electromagnetic wavelengths out of the spare parts that she brought over from her ship, no big deal. There are engineering students who would gnaw through the hull of this ship to get their hands on something like that for their dissertation.

Mel traces the display for a moment, taking it in with the same quiet awe as Frank. “So this is our planet.”

“There she is.”

They watch it in silence for a moment, side by side in their different environments. Mel's cockpit habitat is the sparsest of the bunch with bare walls and a damning lack of projects tucked around the floor. Anyone who knows Mel would know this isn't a space she spends her time in often. Still, exceptions can be made for a moment like this.

They’re here. They’re getting closer to an answer, piece by piece.

Mel stretches her legs out (something that Frank is more than a little jealous of since hitting anything around him has some serious consequences vis a vis survival), leaning up against the wall closest to him. "Is it nice for you and your special orbs?"

“Yeah.” Frank agrees softly as he looks at Mel, tracing the curving line of her antennae for a moment. “There's nothing like it.”

Mel snorts. “Colors again?”

It's been hard work trying to stop referencing things around the ship using colors. His brain logically understands that Mel can't see them even as his mouth runs away from him. It’s too fundamental, there are some differences that just can’t be communicated fully. "I wish you could see it."

“Maybe I'll make you describe it to me one of these days.” Mel says quietly.

"Just tell me when." Frank promises. He vaguely remembers a fragmented memory of faking one of his book reports in middle school. Frank had gotten a D on the assignment and almost worse, a one-on-one lecture from the teacher where she practically told him to fake it better in the future. He needs to do better than that for Mel. She deserves a book report that's at least upper B's.

“What now, question?” 

“Now I go on an EVA to collect the Astrophage from Mary's hull mount.” Frank explains from his comfy seat, making no move towards the door. Mel pauses for a beat, camera running over the screens like she's missing something. Frank takes pity on her confusion and clears things up. “I don’t want to go.”

"Don't want to go..." Mel echoes in confusion.

“Exactly, I mean it takes so much work to suit up-”

“Oh, Frank is lazy.” Mel nods seriously as she catches on, wings buzzing in a steady low pattern. “I bet humans don’t even need to rest as often as you do, you just want extra time in bed. Earth sent me their sleepiest scientist to save the world-”

Frank’s head falls back as he laughs from somewhere deep in his chest, bright and genuine. It took a while to start distinguishing Mel's words from her tone, and longer to separate which tone means what. The more fluent Frank gets, the easier he can pick out the small switches in octave or barely perceptible gaps between her words. Mel changes the lilt of her words and Frank can hear the tongue-in-cheek laughter of it all. 

Like right now as she mocks his very normal and healthy day-night cycle.

“I’m going, I’m going.” Frank groans, shoving himself out of the pilot’s seat. “You’ve convinced me that saving multiple worlds is more important than my union-mandated breaks.”

“I’m onto you.” Mel shakes her head at him with faux-disapproval. “Won’t let you get away with it on my watch.”

“Of course not, now are you coming to keep me company as I get suited up or what?”

“Yes yes yes.” Mel says, scrambling for the tunnel down to the airlock. She’s always excited to look at his suit design in motion now that she has one of her own. It’s that engineering competitiveness that makes her so good at what she does.

Frank laughs, trailing after her with a grin.

- - -

EVAs are becoming an old hat at this point. Tau Ceti needs to start throwing something new at them or Frank might just start thinking he’s good at his job. 

There.

With things sufficiently jinxed, Frank can expect his interstellar space travel to spice itself up accordingly.

The airlock Frank has been bumping around in (as Mel laughs at his increasingly reckless zero G acrobatic feats) finally finishes cycling, letting Frank slip out onto the hull. Frank tethers himself along the ship towards the center of the crew compartments. That's where the ship diagram shows the External Collection Unit is stored, just waiting to be deployed.

Tau Ceti-E fills his visor as he moves, gorgeous and humbling and somehow almost nostalgic.

Frank had grown up rewatching the movies in his family’s DVD collection until he could quote every line by heart. If it was somewhere on the shelves of their wood-paneled basement, Frank would bury himself in it. The sci-fi ones always fascinated him the most though. ET, Stargate, Contact. Frank would watch them over and over again until they’d be burned to the inside of his eyelids.

And now here Frank is, standing in and on the greatest act of science humanity has ever undertaken. A sci-fi adventurer brought to life, just like he’d daydreamed on those old carpeted floors in front of the TV. If only Jodie Foster could see him now.

“You’re not moving.” Mel tells him through the helmet radio, watching his progress from the cockpit. “Are you okay?” 

Frank’s feet touch the ground again at the sound of Mel’s voice, a smile already tugging at his cheeks as he pulls his eyes away from the sight to start crossing the hull again. “I’m safe, just…looking at the planet. It’s pretty.”

Mel hums, not agreeing or disagreeing. “What’s the importance of pretty?”

Oh man, philosophers would love Mel. There are so many answers to that question. Scientific and literal and metaphorical- “It makes me happy.” 

Frank knows that won’t be enough for her as soon as he says it, picturing the way Mel has to be shaking her head at him in the cockpit.

“You should find doing work pretty then.” Mel says with a teasing lilt. 

Frank snorts, shaking his head as he attaches himself to the next railing. “That’s not really the same-”

“Pretty close.”

“I see what you did there.”

“Thank you. I am very funny.”

“Still, pretty things are important to humans.” Frank says as he spots a box on the hull twenty feet away. Bingo.

“Stars are important, tools are important. Pretty isn’t important.” Mel laughs.

Frank vaguely remembers reading a study saying that being surrounded by pretty things is a mood improvement. Somewhere in their little monkey brains, having the most fruit and collecting good dish towels gives humans the same dose of dopamine. The Hail Mary is perfectly functional, working at the highest level of efficiency. It’s also plain, rooms competing with various flavors of off-white walls and cool metallic lab equipment. 

Mel isn’t plain though.

Her soft cheeks blush pink under Frank's compliments and her wings buzz with an almost iridescent sheen under the lab lights. Mel's arms, covered in black and yellow stripes that alternate in an almost  hypnotic pattern. And her eyes, rich brown and impossible to shake from Frank’s memory, staring into and through him like the sweetest cut he's ever felt. Mel as a whole is bright and vibrant and alive, floating through the ship like a streak of golden sunlight trapped in physical form. 

Frank thinks she’s pretty.

“Cultural differences.” He says finally, listening to Mel grumble on her side of the line. Frank laughs to himself, knowing that he does the same thing when Mel says it. It’s their agreed-upon phrase for when something is too specific to translate properly. Doesn’t mean either of them like being told they won’t get it.

Frank finally reaches the External Collection Unit on top of what he thinks is the screen room. It’s a fat rectangular box around the size of a laptop with a series of trays that can be pulled out from the sides to face both Tau Ceti-E and Tau Ceti (way off in the distance of space). The idea is to collect the Astrophage coming and going from the planet to see if there are any differences that can explain why the star isn’t dimming like everywhere else. 

“Okay, I’m here. How’s our positioning looking?” Frank asks, looking around instinctively like he might find an ‘open ECU’ goal post somewhere out here. The fast expanse of space stares back unimpressed. Can’t blame a guy for trying.

“Mary says we’re set to intersect with the line for a minute and a half on our current orbit, starting in approximately thirty seconds.” Mel relays. Perfect, that's plenty of time for their purposes. “Mary is also saying that we need to have tunes.” 

“Oh yeah?” Frank asks with a growing smile as he opens the trays.

“Very insistent on it.”

 “Well, let’s not let her down.”

Something indie (that Frank isn’t sure he’s ever heard before) starts pumping through the radio as the singer croons warmly over a guitar. Mel’s music knowledge is quickly outpacing Frank’s as she listens while he sleeps, pulling up new audios with Mary’s help. Not that Frank would ever admit that his taste was rather…limited back home. Sue him, his music comes straight from his parents. If they weren't listening to it in the eighties, it wasn't on in the car.

“This is a good one.” Frank says, only somewhat lying. It is a nice song. It just also happens to be the first time he’s hearing it. 

Mel hums proudly, voice rising and falling wordlessly with the melody. Frank can almost picture the way that she's bobbing along with the beat, excitement building with the tempo. A synced timer on his suit’s wrist panel ticks down as the chorus approaches. It will mark each second until they enter, and exit, the Petrova line so he knows how long to keep the trays open. Frank just needs to wait for the beep that tells him it's done. 

He's basically a microorganism Uber driver right now.

The chorus swells, Mel’s voice intertwining with the singer's, and Frank lets his eyes drift shut as their ship crosses into the Petrova line.

Frank can almost feel the Astrophage passing over him on their pilgrimage to Tau Ceti-E, a cool breeze splitting around the trunk of a tree. The shining pink glow of their infrared light fills his mind, multiplying into a glimmering brightness that presses against his eyelids. There’s an impossible timelessness to this moment like Frank is surrounded by old friends. Years of his life have been shaped by these little organisms and now he gets to meet them in their home for a change. 

Frank is happy he’s here in a strange way, this wonderful confusing little moment in time. He's glad he gets to see it, and he’s glad he gets to share it with Mel. Frank can't think of anyone else he'd like to spend the end of the world with.

In what feels like the blink of an eye, his wrist buzzes quietly, marking the invisible point in space that means that they’ve passed out of the Petrova line. Frank slowly opens his eyes again, song still crooning as he comes back to himself. Frank closes up the ECU trays carefully, safe and sound for the trip inside.

"You got it?” Mel asks, crackling through the helmet like a physical presence.

“Of course I did, you ever doubt me?” 

“Nope.”

Frank grins, feeling his ego grow three sizes. He tethers the box to his waist as his eyes trail along a particularly vivid streak of orange on the planet below. “Hey, what should we name it?” 

“Name what? The planet?” Mel laughs softly like Frank is joking. “Have you forgotten that it already has a name?”

“Yeah, but it’s not a good name. It barely counts. We should rename it.”

“Why? The planet isn’t important, the stuff on the planet is what matters.”

“On Earth, when you do something first you get to name it.” Frank says, shifting his tethers between two rails. He smiles as he says it, even as something deeper resonates in his chest. “Us being here deserves to be commemorated.”

The Tau Ceti system is inhabited by microorganisms and, far as either of them can tell, not much else. Mel and Frank could very well be the only intelligent life to ever lay eyes on this planet. This is as unique a visit for the system as it is for them. Frank wants that to be remembered. They were here, both of them.

Mel hums in response but she seems to catch the thread of something more in Frank’s words and doesn't argue with his admittedly silly request. “What do you think it should be?” 

“You were here before me.” Frank defers quietly. It feels important that it comes from her.

“Hmm.” Mel buzzes, shifting around her side of the radio. “How about Medium Rough Textured Circle Planet.” 

Frank chokes, surprising himself with his own laughter. “Wha- where did that come from?” 

“You said name it. I did.”

“I did say that. Technically.” Frank agrees, floating over the surface of the hull like an invisible boogie board. He’s not quite sure that he communicated the naming tone he was going for. To be fair, it seems to be a human concept to go on naming sprees like this in the first place. He thinks for a moment. “You have a sister, right?”

“...Yes.”

“What’s her name again?" Frank asks softly.

Mel lets out a rumbling wave of coos, soaked in grief and longing. When the notes finally end, she sighs, somewhere between a breath and a question. “...I need your name for her.”

Frank pauses outside the airlock as he takes one last look at the soon-to-not-be-named Tau Ceti-E. Names drift through his mind lazily, from reality tv shows all the way through Sunday school, until- “Becca.” 

Frank remembers that one. Rebecca was a matriarch, loving and central, with a name that meant to bind people together. Something about it just feels right. 

“I like it.” Mel says with a warmth that means she’s smiling on her side of the call.

“Good.” Frank breathes, staring at the world for a beat. “Hi Becca.”

Their planet has a name. Now it’s time to see if it has an answer to their Astrophage problem.

- - -

Mel presses against the way for the best possible view of the lab as her body thrums with an anxious anticipation. Literally. Frank fights the urge to look around for a hive of bees tucked somewhere in the rafters as a melodic buzzing fills the corners of the room. He keeps his attention to himself for once, eyes on the prize.

The collector sits innocently between them, settled on the table now that Frank has spun up the centrifuge to bring the lab equipment online. The sampler is ready, Frank’s hands are shaking, and they’re ready to science the shit out of some space organisms. 

Let’s do this thing. 

There are four trays in the collection unit, two on both sides of the box facing in opposite directions. Gotta love astronautical engineering redundancies. Frank holds his breath as he opens the first tray, one that was facing Tau Ceti. It whooshes out of him in easy relief. “The panel is black.”

“Frank, stop using colors.” Mel snaps impatiently.

Frank snorts at Mel’s correction. Fair enough. “It's our name for the darkest dark. It’s a sign that there’s a lot of Astrophage, we got a good sample.”

“Amaze amaze amaze!” Mel cheers, voice bouncing off the walls as her wings manage to buzz even faster. He hasn't seen Mel fly fully, but she has no trouble boosting herself up the tunnel between the dormitory and the lab, pushing herself between handholds with ease. She looks a little like that now, wings beating like she's trying to lift off.

Frank carefully scrapes the Astrophage off of the tray into a petri dish (well-labelled as from Tau Ceti, he has some lab discipline after all), before rotating the box and repeating the process on a panel facing planet Becca. It’s strangely invigorating to get into the zone, even when the specifics are somewhat dry. The science is him, it’s why he’s here. Time to make that worth it.

First up is population measurements: how many Astrophage are moving in both directions on the line?

With samples from both directions, Frank carefully transfers the petri dishes' contents to small metal plates. Astrophage hold a steady temperature at 96.415 degrees Celsius no matter what happens to them. That doesn’t mean that the things around them are immune to heat transfer. The plates will absorb the ambient heat coming off of the Astrophage and difference in temperature will let Frank take a quick inventory of the populations without manual counting. Thank god. Manual counting is difficult when the subject likes to wiggle around the dish.

And also when there's (lowest estimate) thousands of them.

Mel shuffles around her habitat impatiently, clearly dying for news, but she lets him work. That’s the beauty of working with someone who understands being ‘in the zone’. Sometimes the answer is talking it out, sometimes the answer is getting very quiet and very productive. It’s part of what gives them such good synergy.

With experiment one set up, Frank scraps the other tray facing Tau Ceti and gets to work checking the Astrophage directly. That's the nice part of an asexually reproducing species, he really only needs one sample to get the jist of what they're all doing.

“What is that, question?” Mel asks, peeking over his shoulder curiously.

Frank shifts slightly so she can catch a better view. “It’s a microscope. It lets me see things that are very very small, like cells.”

“Amaze.” Mel breathes with wide eyes, leaning in with a curious tilt. He can only imagine the engineering ideas she's getting. 

Lining the slide up with the lens, Frank finds that the Astrophage are just as fascinating as he remembers from the first time he saw them. And he does mean just like the first time. These have the same internal structure (thank you sacrificial Astrophage), response to stimuli (barely any), and elemental make-up (so much water). As far as Frank can tell, nothing distinguishes this group of Astrophage from the ones around Sol. 

That’s very, very good news. Different strains could mean totally different reactions to whatever is keeping the species in check here. Frank moves back over to the population samples- 

“Huh.”

“What, question?” Mel asks as soon as Frank breaks 'quiet time'.

“The populations from both trays are the same.” Frank says, blinking at the thermal gun as he points it at both plates again. Same value, both times.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Mel says, frowning at the experiment like it’s doing this to spite them. “Astrophage goes to the planet to breed, there should be double returning to Tau Ceti for every one of them going to Becca.”

“Exactly.” Frank agrees as he slumps back to frown at their misbehaving samples. 

The populations match, the Astrophage coming from Tau Ceti are identical. The last clue they have is the sample coming from Becca. Frank swipes a small slide's worth of Astrophage leaving planet Becca, tucking it under the microscope. He presses his face to the lens and…blinks.

Then blinks again to be sure.

Tucked among the rather imposingly blown up Astrophage are all sorts of shapes. Moving shapes. Clear cells and something that resembles a bacteria and dozens of amoeba-like structures threaded between dozens of similar little shapes, big and small and fat and skinny. This isn’t Astrophage, this is bigger, this is-

“Life. There’s life on Becca.” Frank breathes, lifting his head to look at Mel. The view from the scope is projected onto one of the lab screens, letting Mel see it in all its tiny glory.

“Oh.” Mel breathes.

This is-

This is astronomical. 

“Becca has life, an ecosystem.” Frank says, chewing on the words as he says them. The green clouds of the atmosphere - a common appearance with the presence of methane. Methane produced by lifeforms on Becca because this planet has an active biosphere. There's more life in the galaxy.

Talk about getting to know the neighbors.

“Life is the reason for the difference in population!” Mel says, voice rising in sharp excited chirps.

Frank blinks, dragging himself past the confirmation of exactly how incorrect Earth’s assumptions of life are to think about this more immediately. Something in this system is keeping the Astrophage population down. There’s nothing about Tau Ceti that should act any differently to Sol which means the planet at the end of the line has to be unique. The one that they just found out is teeming with life. 

Mel beats him to it. “Astrophage has a predator.”

Holy shit.

Astrophage has a predator.

“Mel!” Frank says with wide eyes as something bright builds in his chest. Becca isn’t just another infected planet, this has to be where Astrophage came from originally. Everything spread out from the Tau Ceti system, not the reverse. Somewhere down there, there’s an answer to their stars dimming. 

"If we find it-”

“-we can take it home-”

“Save Earth, save Erid!” Mel is practically incandescent as she speaks, hands fluttering around like she’s not sure what to do with herself. This is what she's been waiting for. This meant something, everything it took to get here meant something. 

Giddiness bubbles up in Frank’s chest, overwhelming his shocked disbelief. "Holy shit! Mel!"

He can't find anything more coherent to say, but Mel seems to understand plenty anyway, pressing against the xenonite excitedly like she wants to ring every ounce of closeness she can from this moment. Frank understands the feeling more than he cares to admit, fighting an urge to tug Mel through the wall in a wild spinning hug. He stomps that daydream back down where it belongs, and settles for knocking his fist against the wall. 

“What is this, question?” Mel blinks, bouncing on her toes excitedly as she looks at it curiously.

“Put your hand there.” Frank says, pointing at his knuckles still pressed to the xenonite. “And then you say fist bump! It’s a human celebration when we get very good news.”

Mel copies his position, careful to line up their knuckles accurately. They're going to do this, they're going to save their homes. “Fist my bump!” Mel echos with her own wide smile, eyes bright.

Nope, that’s not-

Frank coughs, choking on his spit. “That’s not- we’ll keep working on it.”

He turns his attention back to the microscope, only a little desperate for a distraction. The slide sits there innocently, full of universe-saving organisms. Looks like it's time to find their new friends. 

Frank cracks his knuckles (a move that Mel mimics in quiet confusion) and gets to work.

- - -

“I hate you, tiny space bugs.” Frank groans, microscope abandoned next to him.

The depths of his despair can not be measured. That’s why he’s resorted to using such scientifically inaccurate terms for their missing microorganisms. Look at what he’s been reduced to. 

“No predator?” Mel asks knowingly, comfortably leaning up against her side of the habitat. Frank appreciates the company even though it has to be boring. He likes having a second set of eyes on everything, even if she’s just looking at him.

“No predator.” Frank agrees, leaning back in his seat to stare at their failed experiment grumpily. 

He had taken a portion of the Astrophage leaving Becca (along with all of their little microscopic friends) and set it up in a simulation of the planet’s atmosphere. Matching gas ratios, temperature moderation, even the pressure is even carefully maintained at one-tenth of Earth. It should be a perfect match for the upper atmosphere of Becca where any predators would be happily chowing down on their Astrophage dinner. 

Frank would have been able to isolate and breed the predator once their experiment population boomed, but he’s not that lucky.

The Astrophage have remained stubbornly alive.

“Maybe the measurement is bad.” Mel offers kindly, tilting her head at Frank like he might not have considered making a good experiment. He can’t find it in him to be offended, Frank would love for this to be as simple as forgetting to turn a valve a quarter twist more.

Unfortunately, they’re taking the Astrophage population the same way they took the ones on the plates: heat tracking. If the heat given off from the Astrophage population dropped, it would show in the overall heat signature of the box. There’s been no shift. Nada. Frank even dragged a sample back under the microscope to check for any visual population blooms. Nothing.

“There’s no change in population, everything looks and measures the same.” Frank huffs, scrubbing a hand through his hair (that he's sure must be wild at this point from the motion).

Mel frowns as she thinks, leg bouncing underneath her. “Maybe the environment needs to be cooler, the predator could be a picky eater?"

“Like you?” Frank says, unable to stop himself.

“Not funny. Rude. Bad alien.”

Frank laughs, tension crackling off of his shoulders for a moment. “I’m sorry. You eat normally. And constantly.”

“Not better.” Mel dead-pans as well as a music-based species can. Frank seems to give her reasons to practice it. 

He smothers a smile as he turns to look over their stubborn samples again. “And our mysterious predator has to eat Astrophage so heat can’t be an obstacle for them.”

It’s an irritating problem - like seeing the gravity of a planet impacting all of the celestial bodies around it, but not being able to find the world itself. There’s life on Becca. They can see the impact of something killing Astrophage. It has to be related. And yet, their mysterious friend refuses to show themself.

“A predator is the only explanation for what we’re seeing.” Mel says, shaking her head finally with an irritated expression. “They must live farther down in Becca’s atmosphere, maybe we’re too high to pick them up.”

Frank nods along with Mel’s thought process. “If you were an Astrophage predator looking for your next meal, where would you live?” The answer presents itself almost immediately. “The breeding altitude. Wherever the carbon dioxide on Becca is finally high enough to trigger the Astrophage's next life phase.”

“So we find the altitude and we find the predator.” 

“We just have to figure out where that is.” Frank hums, drumming his fingers on the table. Some amount of atmospheric pressure and carbon dioxide content triggers the Astrophage to breed - they just need to figure out the altitude.

“Use the Petrovascope.” Mel tells him simply, pointing towards the cockpit, with a curious smile.

“God, you're a genius.” 

When an Astrophage reproduces, it wants to navigate back to Tau Ceti. And to power its journey they’ll release IR light. Wherever the Astrophage are breeding in the atmosphere, there should be a band of IR light visible through the scope. Find the right altitude, find their mysterious friends. Clambering up to the cockpit with Mel in close pursuit, Frank gets to work adjusting the scope's sensitivity. There's plenty of light in the space around them so it takes a few moments to filter for what he's looking for in the atmosphere. Finally Frank gets it fine-tuned, focusing in on a cluster of light based in the clouds splattered towards the horizon.

“You can get the altitude from this?” Mel asks, camera already translating the image.

Frank nods, opening the calculator app on his computer. “With a little bit of trigonometry, and then a whole lot more trigonometry - yes.”

“I don’t know this word.”

“It means long math.”

“You love math.” Mel frowns like Frank just said something completely ridiculous.

“Sometimes humans have favorite math.” Frank explains, remembering his old Trig class. Ugh. “This is not my favorite.”

“You’ll do it anyway.” Mel tells him, not bothering to pretend like it’s an actual question.

“Yes, I will.” Frank grins as he turns back to his trustworthy laptop. 

Knowing the axes of the ship, the angle of the ship relative to the orbit, the distance to a cluster of Astrophage breeding on the horizon gives Frank everything he needs to get into the math. Now he just has to do it. A few calculations (and three Mary-google searches to make sure he’s using the functions correctly) later, Frank is looking at their answer. “The breeding altitude is 91.2 kilometers from the surface and it’s less than 200 meters wide.”

Shit, that’s small. 

“If there are predators, they would be there.” Mel says. “How close can Mary get to orbit, question?”

Frank winces. That’s where the bad news comes in. “No closer than a hundred kilometers.”  

“That’s eight point eight kilometers away from the breeding zone.” Mel frowns, frustration carved into her features even as she (mostly) keeps it from her voice. “There’s no chance getting closer?”

"Not if we want to make it back out again." Frank sighs. Aluminum can do lots of things, but miracles are still out of reach. Getting too close to the planet would be a one-way trip. 

Who knew that this trip would be more about the decimal places than all the digits before it. On a stellar scale, they’re practically already on the planet’s surface. Unfortunately, that’s not actually the case.

The Hail Mary can't handle the heat of entering an atmosphere. She didn't even leave Earth in the first place - Mary was built in space. Blip-A is days away from them now and even if they retrieved it, the ship is so much heavier than the Hail Mary. It would never make it back out with the sample. The answer to their species’ greatest threat could be sitting just a few kilometers away and the two of them can’t reach it. 

Frank can feel himself getting frustrated. They just need a sample, a few living bodies of whatever keeps Astrophage in check. “Maybe, if we thrust away from the planet continuously, we could lower ourselves in…”

“No good.” Mel cuts in before he can get too excited, having already thought about it. “The engines give off enough IR light that it'll ionize the atmosphere. We would superheat our own ship. While we're still in it.”

“Right.” Frank deflates, grimacing at the mental image.

He vaguely remembers sitting in on the spin drive experiments that the team had demonstrated for various world leaders. Robby might run the world, but that didn't stop people from wanting to poke their nose in. The engine team had proudly showed off the before and after as the engine melted a metric ton of metal in approximately zero point six seconds. Setting something like that off in Becca’s atmosphere would be catastrophic to the ship, not to mention any hopes of collecting a living sample.

The goal is to capture something alive after all. They just need to shove a hand into the atmosphere-

Wait.

Frank snaps his head to look at Mel, leg bouncing against his seat support as the picture in his solidifies into something real. “How do you make xenonite, the broad steps?”

“Mix two liquids, let them bond. They become xenonite.” Mel explains, gesturing towards the lab where she keeps most of her equipment. 

“How much do you have? I would need,” Frank roughs out some math in his head. “Approximately 0.4 cubic meters.”

“Yes, I have that. Why? What are you thinking?” Mel asks eagerly as she leans in.

Frank grins at her. “I have an idea. Do Eridians have fishing?”

- - -

The hangar is full of a little bit of everyone, unofficial representatives of every team on the Shandong mingling cheerfully.

Everyone is dressed in their very best, ranging from business casual all the way to deck flight suits. It’s a loose dress code. There’s not much reason in making a fuss about it, everyone is far more interested in the snack tables than each other. Craft services must make up a more sizable portion of Robby’s budget than Frank would have expected based on the massive range of options that always seems to appear at these things. 

The cost of another party can be forgiven though, it’s a big day after all.

A massive projector pointed at the largest flattest wall in the room shows a live newsfeed of the launchpad for Hail Mary. A part of it at least. 

The risk of a failed launch with the completed ship is too great, setting aside the complexity of trying to push something that large into space in the first place, so the project decided not to bother with it at all. The ship was broken down into smaller building segments, each to be launched into space and built in orbit. Twelve of the eighteen planned launches have gone off without a hitch so far, but today is arguably the most important as they launch the crew compartments.

Ellis kicks back on the couch at the front of the room, pointing at the screen. “You assholes better not break our house.”

Frank snorts. “We’ll email the ISS astronauts to wipe their feet when they’re done with their safety checks.”

McKay laughs from the middle cushion, shooting him a grin from where she's spread out comfortably. They’ve gotten relatively close over the last few months of Astrophage training sessions. Thankfully teaching seems to be much easier when he's doing it with people who already have doctorates and possess a normal attention span. 

It's probably been harder for Frank to adjust to McKay not needing a microscope tutorial every time they use one than it has for her to get used to him wondering if he should be giving out worksheets on what they're covering.

Frank smothers that urge, for the most part.

He still includes more experiment time than is strictly necessary. Incremental progress.

Apparently his teaching isn’t too bad because McKay and Diaz both invited him to join the couch sitters to watch the launch today. He politely declined, hovering by one of the arms instead. The two couches set up in front of the screen whenever they have one of these launches are firmly reserved for the primary and secondary flight crews. 

Good seating might literally be the least the rest of them can do for the sacrifice that they’re making.

The news broadcast continues filling time before the launch time, explaining the process of building the ship in space and the multiple crews settled on the ISS to work in shifts on the Hail Mary’s assembly.

Frank idly wonders how many of the astronauts building the ship didn’t pass the interview process. None of these are particular big fields, knowing names isn’t that irregular.

Ugh, how awkward.

The hanger is a quiet rolling wave of conversation as people mingle and wait. Santos slips in one of the side entrances and beelines for Frank with a pointed roll of her eyes. Sometimes that’s the only way to shake off the Teams Meeting energy. As soon as she gets close, Frank passes her the mango flavored seltzer he grabbed when it looked like they were going to run out. He’s nice like that.

Santos repays his kindness with a groan from the depths of her soul and the quiet hiss of the can opening as she chugs enough to enter non-boardroom time.

“Is Robby coming down for this?” McKay asks, pulling Frank’s attention back to the couch to find more than a few people already staring at him.

Frank fights the urge to turn around and look for whoever they’re looking at. Why would Frank know? “Uh, probably not. If he spends too much time down here, he might think of us as people.”

Santos snorts into her drink. If anyone has a shot at understanding Robby like Frank, it’s her. Robby likes to add her to their meetings occasionally when he (wants to torment Frank) get multiple opinions on a new feature or design choice. Robby isn’t the type to get too close to people on the project though. It doesn’t help his process or whatever he wants to call it.

The group shrugs his absence off easily and Shen nods at Frank. “We’ll just enjoy you here in his stead.”

“Me? Why would I represent Robby?” Frank asks with a confused smile. From the sharp increase of pointed looks everyone is shooting each other, he just said something dumb. "What?"

“You actually think that?” Santos snorts, squinting at him like she’s trying to tell if he’s joking.

“Of course.” Frank says, frowning as no one agrees with him. ““I have the same doctorate as like half the people in this room.” Frank points at Santos. “You literally just came from a meeting with him.”

“Yeah? And how’d you know that?” Santos shoots back with a raised eyebrow. 

Ellis shakes her head like Frank is being intentionally obtuse. “You’re his number two. Robby doesn’t have any of us join him in even half the meetings and projects you're on.”

“I’m just a scientist.” Frank tries, knowing full well none of them are going to drop it.

“No, I’m a scientist.” Samira pipes up suddenly from the far side of the couch. “And I don’t know when you have meetings or who they’re with. I bet you could tell us what everyone here was working on today.”

Frank could.

That doesn’t mean anything though, Frank isn’t- that’s just functional. Robby is juggling more than any one person could possibly keep up with. Sometimes he offloads small tasks and Frank makes sure that they autopilot their way to completion. That doesn’t make him some sort of leader, that’s Robby. Robby is the one in charge, Frank is just…Frank.

“I’m just a back-up, I’m basically a google calendar with the ability to grab an extra coffee.” Frank protests with a frown.

Shen gives him a long assessing look, before smiling to himself and turning back to the screen with a finality. “You’re the first officer.”

Something about Shen’s announcement seems to settle it for the group as they turn back to watching the pre-launch coverage. A few shaking heads and laughing smiles follow the announcement, shared quietly between people as they return to normal. Frank feels strangely outside of the moment. He’s not some kind of bigshot leader, he’s the assistant manager of a Walmart making sure that the receipt paper is refilled. Frank's stomach churns at the thought of putting his name down on some of the choices Robby makes.

Three of those sit on the couch in front of him, invisible timers ticking down over their heads.

“You good? Realizing that you should have bargained for a higher raise?” Santos asks, shooting him a small look over the edge of her drink. Her voice is as dry as ever, but her eyes are worried, watching him a little too close for comfort.

“Shut up.” Frank rolls his eyes, shaking off his own mood.

It’s not that serious. Robby needs someone to give a scientific perspective when he's meeting with various leaders and Frank is an easy choice to bring along, having been around longer than half the people in this room. He lets the tension slip out of his shoulders as he tucks all of that to the side. All that really matters is getting this project off the ground. So to speak. If this helps people relax a little, so be it. Frank knows the truth.

The broadcast finally shifts to the launchpad as a countdown appears on screen. Here they go.

System primed and payload carefully secured, the world holds its breath as the timer finally hits zero and the rockets fire. A massive burst of fire and dust build on the pad as the ship lifts, pushing off the Earth slowly. It clears the tower and keeps pushing upwards, steadily building up speed, as the crews on the couches cheer.

“The tower is clear!” McKay cheers, tilting her head back to drain her drink. The rest of the couches join her, toasting and chugging their various beverages happily.

“Don’t you want to give it another second? Maybe let it enter the atmosphere?” Santos asks with a frown. Frank joins her, squinting at the premature celebrations. Astronauts are like sailors, fifty percent of what they do is for luck. The other fifty percent of what they do is disavowing luck as a concept entirely.

“Astronauts party when the tower is clear.” Ellis says with her drink raised pointedly.

Shen doesn’t say anything, but he takes a sip of his iced coffee as he glances at them with a smirk.

Frank and Santos glance at each other. Astronaut culture straddles the line of talking to a friend who lived abroad for a year. The epic highs and lows of what that does to someone's personality. They're not missing out on the party now though. Frank and Santos shrug, toasting Ellis (and each other) before slamming their drinks. 

The rocket arcs safely out of the atmosphere as the attention of the room falls away towards their own celebration, happy and overflowing.

- - -

Some ideas are so brilliant they look simple. Elegant in a way that makes the effort that went into them almost invisible.

This plan isn't like one of those.

It's exactly as stupid as it looks. The facts just don't seem to allow for any other possibilities.

Astrophage breed in Becca’s upper atmosphere, approximately ninety-one kilometers from the surface. The Hail Mary can’t get within a hundred kilometers of Becca without burning up, either from forced entry or their engines ionizing everything around them. So they need to shove a nine kilometer hand into the atmosphere and scoop up some star-saving Astrophage-eating predators without getting their ship anywhere near it.

Well, not hand. Chain.

They’re about to perform a fishing miracle. Frank is pretty sure he learned about one of those in Sunday school, but he keeps that thought to himself. No need to upset the big man when he's about to tempt fate so stupidly.

The real trick is that to stay in orbit the Hail Mary has to keep moving at least 12.6 kilometers per second. Anything slower means they’ll fall into the planet’s gravity. A nine kilometer chain being pulled along at anything close to that speed would burn up in their wake though, destroying any hope of a living sample.

So they have to go slower. 

Things that have a momentum of 12.6 kilometers per second tend to keep going that fast unless something acts on them. If Frank rotates the ship to face the other way, they can fire the engines against their own momentum and slow themselves down. It’s like when a kid runs the wrong way on one of those moving walkways in the airport. They’re not standing still, but they’re cancelling one force out with another so that they’re barely moving. 

Frank is essentially trying to have his orbital cake and eat it too.

It will look insane, and the Hail Mary isn’t remotely rated for that kind of use, but in theory the math checks out. 

Holding the ship at a thirty degree angle and firing into Becca’s atmosphere to slow down isn’t nothing and Frank is pretty sure they’re going to do some serious damage to the biodiversity in the outer atmosphere. 

Regardless, every time Frank runs the numbers, they say that it should keep the ship right where he wants it and the chain should be safe at those speeds. The ship’s lateral velocity should be just over a hundred meters per second, something that won't be hard to handle in the thin resistance of the upper atmosphere. There will only be a two degree drag, keeping the chain safe and sound outside of the more…active end of the ship. 

Now they just need the chain.

Frank fires up the lab’s 3D printer, watching it get to work on a mold for a single chain link, as Mel watches with unfiltered fascination. He’s not sure it’s the engineer in her or if Mel just likes human objects, but she watches closely as it moves like she's trying to memorize it. Frank wouldn't put it past her to have her own version in three hours with a far superior printing plate and three other function-fixing updates worked into her first model. She's creative like that.

“This is a good idea, right?” Mel asks, leg bouncing under her as they wait for the mold. “We’re sure that this will work?”

They’ve gone through everything else they can think of. If there’s a better idea out there, neither of them are coming up with it. Frank gives Mel his most trust-inspiring shrug. “It should.”

"I wish you were more confident.” 

“Some people say too much confidence is a bad thing.” Frank says, turning around from the printer to grin at her directly.

“Some people sound boring.” Mel huffs, leaning back in her seat. 

Frank wishes he could give her something more solid, but everything they’re doing is a guess. The numbers look good - it's thin but Frank holds onto that fact with a white-knuckled hope. The printer lets out a grating beep as it spits out a completed aluminum negative mold of a single chain. Frank drops the fillable print in the lab airlock for Mel's expert perusal. “Will this work for your xenonite mixing?”

Mel pulls it out on her side, juggling it back and forth between her hands like she was too impatient to wait for it to become a normal temperature before she picked it up (Frank knows the feeling very well). “Yes! Make as many of these as you can. The more I have, the more links I can pour at a time.”

“Will do, Captain.” Frank says, spinning back to the printer to start adding the orders to the queue. 

“What’s this word?”

Frank blinks, turning to glance at Mel. He forgot they haven't really had this conversation yet. “It's the leader of the ship. The one who makes choices for everyone.” 

“Oh.” Mel clicks, clearly recognizing the concept (thankfully). “You’re our captain.”

Frank laughs like Mel is making a joke, but her face doesn't crack into a familiar smile. Frank blinks, throat drying suddenly at the responsibility. "What? I'm not-"

“You figured out how to let us talk. You came up with the plans that got us this far.” Mel says, gesturing around them. "You listen when I speak, even when you already know the topic. Even when it's not important." Mel smiles to herself at that. Frank can't imagine Mel saying something that isn't important. “You always know what we need. What I need. You're our captain.

Frank swallows around the lump in his throat as Mel watches him carefully, wings buzzing quietly. “Oh."

Mel trusts him. To look out for her, to see them through this to the other side. He hasn't had someone rely on him like that in...he's not sure how long. Maybe ever. There was a distance whenever he was in charge on Earth. Anyone with the right qualifications could run a classroom or play project manager, he just happened to be the one doing it right then.

Out here, Mel trusts him. She sees something in Frank that makes her want to lean on him after years of keeping herself going all alone.

It's a heady responsibility.

"Okay.” Frank clearing his throat as his voice gives out the first time. "I’ll- I'll be our captain." I'll keep you safe. 

“Good.” Mel nods sharply like Frank can’t see the soft pink flush building on her cheeks. "I mean, you already were. But um, good."

Frank turns back to the printer, watching it whirl away with a fresh batch of molds as he fights back a smile. Guess it’s time for him to learn how to be that person for her.

- - -

Life becomes very...productive after that.

Frank makes new molds out of all the aluminum he can get his hands on, stretching the printer to its max, as Mel mixes xenonite and pops links out of their casings like a machine. Thankfully it’s an exponential process with Mel being able to make an extra link per set for every new mold Frank can get her. There's nothing else to do until they can execute the solar system's most harebrained scheme so the links become their whole life.

They need nine kilometers of chain, made up of links that are only five centimeters apiece.

That comes out to them needing two hundred thousand links.

Something he's learned in the past few days: two hundred thousand of anything is not a subtle number. Frank feels like he'd know that even if the links hadn't invaded every square inch of his life, but it's nice to have it confirmed. 

Any container that can hold more than a fistful of them has been drafted into the effort of keeping them somewhat contained in the lab. Buckets and plastic bins and concave anythings stuff every spare corner. Frank enlisted one of the EVA helmets a few hours ago and it's been one of his better choices (balancing links directly on top of the expensive lab equipment had been declared a failure after one of them had fallen into a gap and Frank had lost an hour chasing it down again).

And when there are no more links left to print, they enter phase two: connecting all of them.

They set up a schedule for themselves to keep from going insane, working long hours every day to push through it. On the upside, it leaves them plenty of time to talk.

Some might say too much time.

“Do you have the concept of banking?” Frank asks absentmindedly, stretching to drag a link-filled jumpsuit closer to him. “Like if I say credit card, do you already have the concept of unlimited cashback on select purchases?”

Mel drops her hands for a moment to look at Frank directly. “What are you even talking about?”

“What do you mean?” Frank asks, already half-laughing as he wakes up from his chain-coma to realize what a stupid question that was. They haven't brought up half of those concepts before (why would they) so not only was that the most insane icebreaker Frank has ever asked, it didn’t even translate fully. Doesn’t mean he’s taking it back now. “It’s important to collect cultural data.” 

“Pick more interesting cultural data, what-” Mel laughs incredulously. “Did  the molds give you aluminum poisoning or something?”

“It’s crucial for how I understand Eridian culture. Here, let me explain investment banking so you have some context-” 

The next three hours of conversation gets a ten out of ten for good cultural exchange regardless of what Mel says. Very informative about Eridian’s complete lack of context for capitalism. Turns out they don’t have credit cards, who would have thought? Not every conversation is so improvisational (or nonsensical) though. Other days see them bouncing off of each other on much more winding paths, somewhere between introspective and thinking aloud.

“What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t on this mission?” Mel asks, leaning up against the xenonite next to Frank. Her hands connect link after link with steady ease even as her head lifts to face him. It's a pretty neat party trick.

“What do you mean?” Frank asks as his own hands slow. “Like if I wasn’t on this mission or if there had never been any Astrophage?”

“If there had never been any Astrophage.”

He’d be teaching, Frank knows that for sure.

He liked his work, his students. Frank probably would have been one of those tenure teachers that kids came back to visit years down the line, still posted up in the same maximalist science room. Safe, happy. A little bored.

A quiet gap appears in his mind as he pictures it. A dark apartment and the absence of the dog he'd passed off on Yoyo were the only things to greet him at the end of his day. Without Astrophage, there wouldn’t have been any shared looks with Santos or post-meeting complaints with Robby. There wouldn’t have been any Mel to reawaken that feeling of scientific wonder in his chest again.

Life would have been good, and small.

“Teaching, maybe. That’s what I was doing before I ended up, you know,” Frank gestures at the ship around them. Talking about other paths, other lives he could have lived burns as the words come out. Frank swallows the rest of his quiet revelation about his old life. He's still not sure how to feel about it. “Who knows with me, I was always a bit of a runner. Could have ended up at the circus in the right situation.” Frank says with a half-laugh, humor falling short of the words themselves. 

Mel doesn’t say anything, letting Frank think for a moment.

He shifts it back to her instead, skin crawling as he thinks about some of the past. “What about you, what were you doing before all this?”

Now it’s Mel’s turn to go quiet for a moment, stewing on the past as her hands slowly stop work along her chain. 

“I don’t know.” Mel admits quietly. “My sister got a mate a few months before I left. He was good, they- it was part of why I signed up.”

Frank blinks, trying to puzzle out what’s lingering under her words. Her tone doesn’t sound particularly heroic, like she took on the mission to save their lives. She sounds…small, scared to look at the reason in the eyes. “What do you mean?”

“My sister and I have always been close, I’ve always had her.” Mel’s fingers twist together tightly as she almost mumbles, “...I didn’t even know Becca was looking-” She cuts herself off, face going tense for a moment before she presses her shoulders back, stuffing whatever that was back down. “When Eridians mate, they find a new home. Somewhere they can grow, together. Becca started moving on with her own life. I signed up because…because I thought I should do something with mine too.” 

Frank swallows, mouth dry, as his chest aches painfully. It's clear how much Mel loves her sister whenever she comes up, and there is a shadow of loss that haunts the lack of other names regularly marking her stories. To feel like she’s losing Becca, the person who above everyone else should be impossibly and permanently hers- who hasn’t made a massive change after a major upheaval? Bad decisions are par for the course with heartbreak. 

Frank got frosted tips when his college girlfriend dumped him. Mel signed up for a mission that cost her sixteen years of her life. 

Life loves to surprise, even when it’s to tragic effect.

Frank shakes his head, unable to find the words to encapsulate everything he wants to say. “I’m so sorry.”

Mel gives him a wobbling bitter smile, emotion still running thick after all this time. “He made her happy, I…how could I argue with that?”

Frank can almost see Mel’s heart, bruised and still stubbornly stuck to her sleeve. Wanting more for her sister even when it aches. Mel is a good person like that, selfless. Frank can’t really relate. “Pretty easily I'd imagine, I would have thrown a fit.”

Mel chokes on a laugh, surprise and delight spread across her face.

“I was never particularly mature during a break-up though.” Frank shrugs, performatively careless as he watches Mel closely.

She shakes her head at him fondly even as she fidgets with the chain in her lap. “I don’t have your practice.”

“No one ever…?” Frank asks before he can stop himself.

“No one ever clicked.” Mel says, head fixed on her lap as she side-steps private truths as carefully as Frank did. For as much as she's shared, he knows that more stays sealed behind her teeth, refusing to escape.

Frank can’t imagine a version of Mel that doesn’t draw everyone around her in endlessly. She speaks and it’s like the lights have finally come on, filling his ship with a wonder that Frank thought he’d lost in academia. Meeting her is one of the greatest chances he’s ever been given, even knowing that this is a one way trip. Even knowing that it’s the end of the world. 

This is the path where he gets to know Mel. Silver linings.

“Humans have lots of sayings about love.” Frank says with a small smile as he remembers his mom’s advice after Abby and him finally called it. “It doesn't work on a timeline, no matter how much we want it to. Sometimes it takes people years to find love…and then it just takes a moment to know.”

Frank’s words feel too big for the moment, strangely vulnerable, brushing against something the shadow of something tender buried in his chest. 

Mel smiles softly, looking up at Frank with an impossible to describe expression, thoughtfulness lined in every corner of her face. “...Who knew you were such a poet?” 

“Me? Oh, no.” Frank says as his neck flushes furiously bright. “I think I stole that from my mom. And I’m pretty sure she got it from a movie. Or a fortune cookie.”

“What are those?” 

“What’s a movie? Have I not- how did we miss these?” Frank says, grateful for the change of pace as he shoves the chain off his lap to grab his laptop. This is crucial Earth exposure, he can’t believe they haven’t done this properly yet. “It’s like the screening room recordings, but they have a story.”

“Oh!” Mel buzzes, pressing closer to the wall. “So recordings with a story are all…”

“Movies? Some. Movies are what we call the long ones and shows are what we call the short ones.” Frank explains, hands freezing over the search bar for a moment, paralyzed by choice. What’s a good first watch for an alien with little to no context about life on Earth in practice? Slice-of-life isn’t likely to make much sense, and fantasy opens up a whole can of worms about what Earth is actually like. 

A glance at Mel waiting patiently clears up his question of where to start in an instant. 

Frank grins as he gets the show set up, almost feeling like he’s at a sleepover as he pulls out one of his childhood favorites. He leans back against the wall, hand hovering over the play button, as he looks at Mel with a hopeful smile. “Ready?”

“Ready.” Mel nods excitedly, focusing her camera carefully on the screen. She pulls something out of him that he wasn’t sure existed anymore. The lab is warm and alive around them, no room for old ghosts or what-ifs. 

Frank watches Mel for a moment, heart pounding too hard to make sense for the moment. Finally he hits play, tucking that feeling away as his hands pick up the chain and a new link again as the opening narration begins.

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…”

- - -

Slowly they manage to convert most of their loose links into segments of completed chain at the small cost of their sanity. 

It was a hard fought battle to make this much progress. It's even harder to keep things organized. The last thing they need is an impossible to solve case of ‘earbuds in pocket’ but with this many chains coiled up all over the place it's more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’. The lab is at capacity and then some - chains shoved in, around, and over every free surface available. And a couple that aren't free. 

Sorry incredibly expensive microscope, you're a staging area now.

Even with their best efforts, it’s quickly becoming a hostile environment to navigate. Asked Frank's bruised ego (and shin) how he knows.

Mel holds up a completed length of chain high enough to catch Frank’s attention, surveying it thoughtfully. “We don’t really need this anymore.”

“Did I miss the part where we got the sample?” Frank snorts, patting himself down like he forgot he has some star-saving microorganisms in his pockets.

“Hush.” Mel says, groaning at Frank’s sass. “I mean we don’t need to keep it stored in here. We need all of this outside. Why not move it now and free up the space?”

That’s...not a bad idea. 

At least it might stop Frank from getting humbled trying to navigate while sleepy. 

So Mel makes short work of building a hull mount for them. It helps that she’s been planning its design since Frank’s initial ‘hear me out’ weeks ago. The mount will attach to the hull and hold a series of spools, each containing five hundred meters of the chain. They’ll deploy one at a time to minimize the chances of hitching. It’s brilliant. It also needs to be attached by hand which is a common theme with everything nowadays.

On the upside, it lets Frank really work on his physical comedy as he juggles tools and xenonite creations along the hull into the right position. Abbot and Castello who, there's a new clown in town. He’s careful to make sure that the attachments are firmly locked into place though. Do it right once and never bother with that shit again. Or however the saying goes.

“Why is it taking so long?” Mel asks, voice crackling in his ear. “Did you get lost?”

Frank laughs, leaning away from the most recent spool attachment to rest in his tether. He’ll never argue against Mel stealing his attention away from real work. The glow coming off of Becca is just as mesmerizing the fourteenth time as the first, lighting up his peripherals with a distracting gleam. “What happened to me being the captain?”

“I get to tell you when you’re slow.” Mel hums, voice low and sending a tingle down Frank’s spine.

With his EVA time ticking up steadily, Frank has come full circle on the Orlan suits. How could he not love his little home away from home? Besides Mel talks to him whenever he’s out here, somehow closer and farther away than ever. It almost feels like she’s out here with him (something that he’s pretty sure would give him an aneurysm in practice).

“Come on.” Frank eggs her on, smiling as he pictures the exasperation on her face. “Who else can say they’ve ever done this?”

“Anyone. If they’re lying.”

“So no one on Erid would be jealous of what you’re looking at when you get back? I bet you’re going to be harassed by every Eridian scientist, engineer, and nosy dweeb out there.”

Mel is pointedly silent for a beat as Frank takes in his victory. Called it. “Not the point.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Is that what you’re going to do when you go home?” Mel asks curiously. “Interviews?”

When he goes home. When he sees Earth again. Frank slows to a stop, squeezing his hand around the tether bar in front of him tightly. Mel still doesn’t know that he’s not going back to Earth and every day he doesn’t tell her it catches in his throat just a little more.

“Who’s to say?” Frank says, forcing his voice to lift back into something like normal. “I just let the moment guide me, I’m spontaneous like that.”

Mel doesn’t laugh how Frank hopes she will, or tease him for calling himself spontaneous when he triple-checks the math on everything (just in case). She doesn't say anything, going silent on the other side of the line.

Frank shifts in place, frowning when she doesn't respond. “Mel?”

“I’m here.” Mel says, notes soft as they curl around something unsure. Frank floats off the side of the ship, waiting for her to say something, anything. Somehow being out here is colder without her voice in his ear, ice snaking up his spine.

“Why…why don’t you talk about Earth?” Mel asks, something deep in Frank’s chest cracking at the hesitation in her words. “You tell me stories and teach me things, but you don’t talk about the future. About what you’ll do when you get back.”

There it is.

The big question.

Frank hadn't been sure what to expect from this moment, but he supposes the small gift of not looking at Mel when he says it is the best he could have hoped for. He slowly turns to stare at Becca, tracing along the edges a vivid streak of green in the clouds. “Mel, I’m…I’m not going home.” 

“What?” Mel breathes, soft with disbelief.

Frank doesn't know what to say, what the right words are. He goes with the most factual. “Earth is cooler than Erid, much cooler. We put everything into making the fuel to get here in the first place. We…we couldn’t afford to wait to make enough to come home too.”

The line is silent for a moment before-

“Come inside.” 

“What?” Frank hasn't heard her speak like that before.

“Inside. Now.” Mel orders, voice sharp and upset. 

Frank's chest squeezes tight as he climbs back over the hull towards the airlock, a crawling restlessness sinking into his skin with every motion. Before he knows it, he's already back at the door. He closes the airlock, waiting as his heart beats in time with the rapid mechanical pumping. It seems to cycle faster than Frank has ever seen it move before, time sprinting as he begs it to slow.

Only a few seconds pass before Frank is pulling himself out of his EVA suit, flexing his hand around the latch for the inner airlock door.

He isn't sure what he's stepping into. He doesn't really want to find out.

Mel is waiting on the other side as the door swings open, staring at Frank from her habitat with a dark expression. A buzzy thrum vibrates through her vocal chords, sending a wave of goosebumps down Frank's arms. This feels...unpredictable. He can't remember truly being unsure around Mel like this since their first meeting. Maybe not even then. They've always gotten along so easily, shifting to fit one another like instinct. 

This isn't instinct. This is anger.

“Frank. Explain.” Mel orders, words clipped short. 

The ship is quiet, waiting as impatiently as Mel for answers Frank isn't sure he can really give.

“I…” Frank rubs his hands on his pants as an uncomfortable clamminess prickles over his skin. "Half of our planet will be dead in thirty years. Humans, animals, plants- everything." He swallows, feeling something thick build up in his throat, even as Mel softens slightly at the gravity of his words. “The trip here cost Earth thirteen years.”

He wavers in the doorway for a moment before picking his way closer to Mel's habitat. Frank isn't sure if he wants to crawl inside with her and apologize or run the other direction so he doesn't have to see her look at him like that. He comes to a stop just a few feet away, feet glued to the ground like he can't force himself any closer. 

"We couldn't wait, it…every single day was crucial.” Frank says, stomach twisting at the memory of the long hours he spent in the lab. Searching for anything that would let them shave off a few days, hours, minutes from the impatient wait for enough fuel. Even with Samira's mediating measures, speed was of the essence in every motion the Astrophage team made. The call about how much fuel they needed had been made before Frank was on the project, but he'd quietly rerun the math every few weeks just in case.

Just to see if somehow, somewhere, something had miraculously changed.

It never did.

“There wasn’t enough time to wait.” Frank's memories falter here, still too fragmented to close the gap. But he knows the final piece of the puzzle even if he can't remember it. “I-I knew it was a one-way trip, when I signed up.”

Mel presses her lips together tightly, jaw tightening. "So you came here just to- die?"

She says it like it's revolting. Like the thought of Frank dying out here would be awful.

“I have Astrophage-powered probes. I’ll send them back to Earth with my data and- and whatever else we find out here.” Frank says, stumbling over his words as he tries to figure out how to make it sound right. "Humanity will take it from there."

“You said you would go home.” Mel says, voice snapping tight. Her fingers dig into the meat of her arm and Frank wishes there was a way for him to reach through the wall and pull them away before she hurts herself.

“I don’t know if I said that exactly-”

(Frank knows he didn’t, not directly. He was careful about that. It was a coward's way out, but it was all he could stomach.)

“You lied.” Mel accuses, voice thick with anger and something heavier. She paces back and forth in her habitat, energy churning as she slips from emotion to emotion, hands flexing restlessly. Frank watches her with his heart in his throat. “You can wait here at Tau Ceti. They can send another ship.” 

They can't. They wouldn't, even if Frank's food could stretch that far which it certainly can't. Frank’s walls crumble at the gentle wobbling pulling at the ends of her words though, a fraying piece of grief she can't quite smother fully. 

This isn't a burden he ever wanted to give to her. 

Frank steps closer to the wall, dipping his head to catch her eye. They both know what the motion means even if it's more metaphorical than anything - Frank wants Mel's attention. All of it. Mel pauses for a moment, refusing to step any closer. His sweet broken-hearted girl. She shouldn't have to say goodbye to any more crew members. Still something terrible in Frank is grateful that she might remember him, that he might mean enough to her to mourn.

“Mel, it's okay.” Frank tells her quietly, giving her a soft bittersweet smile. “I-I’ve made my peace with it.”

“What does this mean, question?” Mel asks immediately, as insistent as she is desperate.

“It means that I’ve accepted it. I understand why it has to be this way.” Frank promises. He tries to arrange his face in something that looks convincing. He can be sure of this for her, he can mean it if this helps her.

Mel's expression finally cracks, heavy tears beading up in her eyes. "I don't."

She slumps, sinking back against the wall between them until she hits the floor, as the tears finally escape. They drip down her cheeks, darkening the fabric of jumpsuit in damning bursts.

Frank closes the last bit of distance between him and the wall to kneel next to her on the floor. His hand finds the wall instinctively. 

Tap. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

Mel lets out something that sounds like a hiccup at his tapping, refusing to turn her head. That's fine. He doesn't need her to look at him. He just needs to know that she's listening.

“Do you remember how we met?” Frank asks as he twists to lean back against the wall too, staring back at the airlock almost fondly. “It feels like a different person, imagining a me who doesn't know you. It wasn’t that long ago though in the grand scheme of things. A couple months. Practically a college relationship."

He snorts quietly at his own comparison. Mel's breathing sounds a little easier, smoother each time as he speaks

"The first interstellar meeting ever and it was me, tapping away at the xenonite in your tunnel. Wondering how I was the guy that the universe picked for this.” Frank lets out a quiet breath of his own, feeling a strange calm settle over his shoulders. He turns away from the airlock to look at Mel again. “I've never met anyone like you, Mel. No human or alien or- anyone. If everything was just to lead me here, to you, for this one meeting…it was worth it. It was all worth it.”

Frank feels like he can feel his heart outside of his chest right now, words hanging in the air.

Mel shudders, turning her head to give Frank a wobbly bittersweet smile. Her eyes are open, staring at Frank with awful clarity. “...You were worth it too.”

“Thanks, Mel.” Frank whispers. The room settles in around them, quiet except for the ambient humming of the life support system. What an absurd little room to hold what Frank would consider the most important memories of his life. 

Mel’s eyes are piercing, like always, taking him in so completely he doesn’t know how to breathe. “How much fuel do you need?”

“Two million kilograms." Frank swallows, feeling his throat tighten. It’s a massive amount of Astrophage, Sol and Tau Ceti aren't particularly close to each other in a traveling sense. Why would she ask-

“I can give it.” 

"Wh-what?" Frank breathes.

"My ship was designed to make it back from Tau Ceti. I have enough for both of us, I can give." Mel repeats herself, watching him closely.

Frank can't imagine what his face is doing right now. She can’t mean, he doesn’t get to go- “Mel- it’s, it's a lot of fuel. Two million kilograms. Two times ten to the sixth power.”

Mel nods, leaning in as something burns in her eyes. "I-I watched my crew die." Her voice breaks almost immediately and Frank's lungs go tight, scared to breathe too loudly. When she speaks again it's softer, more pleading. "I couldn't- I couldn't fix it. I couldn't do anything for them except keep going. Then I met you. I got to know you, care for you. And now you'll die, and I can fix it. Please, let me do this for you."

Frank opens and closes his mouth for a moment, heart pounding dangerously as he shakes his head. "The time it will cost you-"

"I'll go home two years slower." Mel refutes immediately. "We both know Erid can spare it, we have decades compared to Earth." When Frank doesn’t immediately say anything, she doubles down, staring at him desperately. "Frank, you can go home."

There's a longing in her words when she says home like she's saying the name of something treasured, like the idea of Frank making it out of here is worth any cost.

Frank blinks at her, unable to keep up. He knew the cost of going when he took this mission. Somewhere in his mind is the memory of how he made that choice for the greater good. Frank was ready to be the one who sent the data back, who found a way to send Mel home with the answer and know that he gave her something that saved her life.

He was ready to die for it.

And now he doesn’t have to. That future he’d never get to see is being offered to him again. He can have it. Earth. Whatever and whoever is left. Home.

Frank breathes unsteadily as that she's saying truly sinks in, an incredulous smile spreading across his face. Frank can go home. He gets to live. "Oh my god. I-, Mel!"

Mel grins, brightening impossibly as Frank gasps in relief, head falling forwards between his knees for a moment. It's impossible to contain as something heavy finally lets go and he can breathe easily for the first time in who knows how long.

Frank lifts his head to look at Mel again directly, shaking his head as he looks for the words. "I'll never be able to say it enough, but thank you, Mel. Truly."

"Just live." Mel says, tilts her head forward to press up against the wall between them. "That's all I want."

Frank swallows thickly, nodding once. How else can he respond to a request like that? He leans in, doing the same on his side to press their foreheads together. It's intimate, as close as the universe will let them get. Their breathing falls into sync without a conscious thought, a single breath shared between them. Frank could live in this moment for the rest of his life and not have enough of it.

Mel pulls back slightly to look at Frank, giving him a questioning smile as something pops into her mind."What about what you said before? About making peace?" 

“All that stuff is bullshit, that’s- that's just something people say.” Frank admits as he straightens up.

Mel snorts, slapping a hand over her mouth to stop herself. Frank laughs at her laughter, and then the absurdity of this moment, and then from the crushing relief of being able to live. Mel joins him, snorts and giggles and chest-heaving laughter bubbling up uncontrollably to fill the room around them. 

He's going to live. 

He’s going to live.

Shit. 

Looks like it's time to start figuring out how to do that.

- - -

Frank’s leg bounces against the pilot’s seat leg. He refuses to kick something important because of his own inability to sit still.

The chain's hull mount has been secured (triple checked), the spools have been set into their holders (triple checked), and the chain has been threaded through the whole system, carefully tipped with a custom sampler. It goes without saying that it was triple checked. Thoroughly. Mel refuses to leave anything to chance and Frank is feeling pretty invested in surviving himself, so they run through everything until they trust the green lights the computer has been giving them the whole time.

Now it’s time to do it.

“How you feeling?” Frank asks, tabbing through the Navigation and Altitude Control panels.

“Good.” Mel nods unconvincingly, buzzing quietly as she looks between him and the screens. 

“Yeah, me too.” Frank hums. His hands started shaking an hour ago and he hadn’t been able to make them stop. One of those unmentioned side effects of space travel, the constant fight between mundanity and mind-melting nerves.

The Altitude panel shows their velocity over Becca at twelve kilometers per second. Great, they’re not falling into the planet. Now they just need to reduce their velocity to almost nothing and continue to not be falling into the planet. No biggie. They’ve already flipped the ship so that when they fire the engines, they’ll be pushing against their own momentum.

Frank really hopes his math is right.

“Ready?” Frank asks, glancing at Mel for one last out. 

“Punch it, Captain.” Mel says with a small smile, doing her best Star Trek impression. He knew showing her clips of it would pay off, her impression was pretty good. Something small unknots in Frank’s chest.

“Punching it in three…two…one-”

As soon as the spin drives are powered up, they’re hit with the force of gravity going from zero to one and a half G’s in a second. Frank winces at the sharp change, hearing Mel wheeze for a moment, but they both manage to hold themselves together. The thrust immediately starts to counteract their momentum, slowing them rapidly. Frank glances at the Radar panel to see that they’re losing altitude. Expected, but still not something he likes to see. He adjusts the angle of the ship slightly higher by a fracture of a degree. They’re not trying to leave the atmosphere, just find the sweet spot where thrusting away allows them to move laterally over the planet. 

A fraction of a degree is far too much of a change as the panel suddenly shows them gaining altitude. 

Frank groans and readjusts the nose back down, hunting for that infinitesimal sweet spot. There is too much at play to calculate this maneuver fully from orbit, despite how much as Frank would have liked to. It’s a game of patience as Frank slowly narrows in, shifting them degree by degree into the right place. Eventually they come to rest at a wild thirty degree angle, slinging through the upper atmosphere with a recklessness that even the most far-out engineering team back on Earth never expected. 

Ah, science. It doesn’t matter how much planning goes into it, no one will ever predict every use-case a tool is put through.

“Tell me when to drop the sampler.” Mel says, hovering over a button on her screen. 

“Not yet.” Frank shakes his head, watching their altitude carefully. He wants to make sure that they can maintain this rate for a second. Tabbing through panels, Frank glances at the external cameras for a second, before freezing and doubling back- “Huh.”

The planet is glowing. 

The heat of the engines is finally angled downwards enough to start ionizing the atmosphere. The Hail Mary is dumping hundreds of thousands of times more energy into the sky around them than from all of Tau Ceti. The air by their engines is bright burning red as the carbon dioxide that draws the Astrophage to this planet is forcefully separated into particulate carbon and free oxygen. It might be too hot for the oxygen to even rebond into O2, suspended in a state of excitement too great for new bonds to form.

“What, question?” Mel demands, straightening immediately as her camera focuses on the numbers she can’t quite make sense of on her own.

“The engines are heating up the atmosphere.” Frank says as he forces his eyes back to the Navigation page. The sooner they finish this and get out of here, the better. “I planned for it, our angle is good, it’s just…a lot.”

“How do you know?” 

“Our eyes can see heat.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Mel trills, expression more than a little outraged, like Frank was purposefully hiding this fact from her.

“It’s related to visual light. Honestly I thought you might have already known about it.” Frank says, knowing that Mel hears the teasing edge to his words. That’s what she gets for mocking their shared visuo-spacial organ. “The point is we’re making the atmosphere very hot right now.”

“Is it dangerous?” Mel asks, knuckles squeezing rhythmically around the edges of her tablet.

“I don’t know.” Frank says honestly. 

“I don’t like when you don’t know.” Mel coos in a low voice.

“That makes two of us.” Frank huffs, continuing to adjust the ship. One of his core traits is a stubbornness that could rival Robby’s though so if there’s any version of this that just needs a will, he'll find the way. He switches to the Navigation panel, carefully looking over the values. “We’re holding steady at a velocity of…127.5 meters per second, right where I predicted.”

“Time to drop the sampler, question?” Mel asks, wiggling in place.

“Hit it.”

“Hitting it!”

The sampler, a twenty centimeter sphere that hooks into the base of the chain, is a classic Mel creation. There are a dozen small holes ringing it which all point to its hollow core. A pressure sensor inside will mark when they reach the right altitude and seal itself off by misaligning the hole for the inner and outer chambers, protecting whatever is inside with its own air and pressure. She added some other stuff that Frank hadn’t thought of too. A thermometer to understand the environment they survive in, a heater to keep them comfortable. Probably a couch for ambiance. 

Little details to keep their soon to be passengers as happy and healthy as possible.

Life is so picky, it’s shocking that it finds a way.

There is a muffled clicking audible from the inside of the ship as each tediously assembled spool unwinds completely before ejecting from the side of the ship to ensure room for the next. 

“Spool six away…” Mel narrates smoothly as she watches the display on her tablet.

Frank shifts in his seat, eyes bouncing between the screens in front of him and Mel. It’s much less fun to be on the ‘be patient’ side of number management.

“Spool twelve away. Sampler signals are good, it’s sensing air now.”

“Spool eighteen away, the air density is increasing.”

The external camera can’t pick up on any of that as the sampler sinks into the hazy swirling clouds below them, so they’re flying blind aside from Mel’s readings. Frank forces himself to take a long slow breath. 

“Spool twenty is unwinding, the sampler is hovering near the Astrophage breeding altitude…”

Frank squeezes his hands tight around the armrests.

“Sampler is closed! The seal is good and the heater is on, success!”

“Fuck yes!” Frank cheers, rolling out his shoulders for a second. If there’s anything in the air on Becca, they’ve got it. Now they need to get it on the ship. “Looks like I’m up.” 

The increased gravity of being in orbit isn’t so bad as Frank makes his way down to the airlock carefully. The real headache is the thirty degree angle the floors are at, tugging Frank off balance with every step. The EVA suits, ship, and airlock weren’t designed with the expectation of needing to complete an EVA under gravity, but it’s the only way to get the sampler back onto the ship. 

There was no way to design a respooler for something of this scale or to climb the sample back up the chain (both things Mel explored thoroughly), but they need to collect it before they escape the atmosphere or the sampler will be vaporized in their wake as they accelerate.

So here Frank is to complete Option C.

Suited up and airlock system cycled, Frank pulls the outer door open. The same breathlessness as the first time he did this steals over him as he hesitates in the doorway.

“Be careful.” Mel hums nervously in his ear.

“Will do.” Frank says, finding the courage to swing himself outside. He attaches himself to the tethers out of habit even though he’s not sure a zero-g rated cord could catch him if he slipped. It’s the thought that counts. He half-walks half-repels his way along the hull, careful to keep from slipping. The EVA suit is punishingly heavy, clunky now that he’s in gravity with it.

Apparently no one optimized the zero gravity suit for a gravity environment.

Frank's eyes can’t help drifting as he crosses the ship, catching on the glow in the air beyond the end of the ship. A burning red rim glows around the edges of the engines, just a small hint at the cataclysmic power being expended. Frank made sure that there would be enough material between him and the reflective light coming off of the atmosphere when he planned this, but seeing it in person is…shocking. 

And a reason to walk faster.

He finally reaches the hull mount, settling himself in next to it. It doesn’t seem like much, a large xenonite box (now empty of spools) holding the end of the chain in a secure support box, but having sat next to Mel as it was designed he knows there’s a simple elegance to getting the job done. Frank pulls the winch off of his belt pocket, jamming it between the anchor plate for the chain box and the chain itself.

“Activating the winch.” Frank narrates as he hits the button to turn it on. The winch clicks into motion, pulling a link up into its internal mechanism. Frank can’t see its inner structure, but Mel explained that without welding or sealing the links in place, it’s just a small twist and ejection to detach a single link from the chain. As the first link is ‘processed’ it’s shot out of the system, falling into Becca’s cloudy atmosphere. Then the next is pulled in and shot out, then the next, then the next. It's simple and genius, just like everything she makes. 

“The winch is working perfectly.” Frank reports, watching dozens of hours of work disappear off the side of the ship. 

“Good.” Mel coos. “When the winch reaches two hundred links, increase the speed.”

The system is completing probably two links a second, a respectable clip considering how long it took them to put it together. Still at that speed it would take them almost thirty hours to raise the chain and neither of them are interested in lingering under Becca’s hospitality for that long. Frank guesstimates when they’ve reached two hundred links (picks a random point on the chain and calls it close), increasing the speed steadily between its four levels. It hits the highest rate and chugs along easily, shooting out detached links too fast for Frank to count.

He keeps his hand on the lever though. The sampler can’t hit the winch which means that now Frank is in for a high-stakes round of his favorite game: stay focused.

“The winch is at maximum speed.”

“The sampler radio signal is getting stronger, get ready.”

“I am ready.”

“Get more ready.”

“I’m the most ready- shit, there it is.” Frank says as a small xenonite ball appears in the distance. He slows the winch, taking the last couple hundred links at a careful climb. The sampler inches closer and closer until Frank can finally it off completely just a few links short. He snaps a tether to the sampler chain and hooks it to his belt before disconnecting it from the ship. He’s not taking any chances. Frank isn’t sure he could untense his fingers if he tried.

“I got the sampler.” Frank says as he turns back towards the airlock.

“Amaze amaze amaze! Inside now.” Mel cheers, a nervous undercurrent tinting her voice. “Mary is upset at the heat.”

Frank grimaces. “I’m on my way-”

A loud groan interrupts him, echoing across the ship in a shuddering whine. Frank’s chest squeezes tight as he stumbles, knees hitting the hull hard as he tries to catch himself. 

“Mel, what was that?” Frank asks, heart hammering. He doesn't like his ship making unauthorized noises.

“I don’t know.” Mel buzzes nervously, a sharp beeping clear through the radio. “The ship is tilting forward. ”

Frank’s head jolts up at that. That’s not good. That’s very, very not good. Losing their angle means the thrust isn’t going in the right place, and losing their thrust means-

The horizon of Becca slowly tilts into view in front of Frank, coming up to greet him as the ship shudders again in a groaning whine.

“Shit.” Frank breathes, dragging himself to his feet as he scrambles for the airlock. Mary isn’t maintaining her angle anymore. They’re leaning forward, they're losing altitude. “Shit, shit, shit.” Frank chants to himself under his breath. Emphasis is important with these kinds of things.

“Frank!”

“I’m-I’m coming.” Frank promises, making his way across the flattest portions of the hull without tethering. There’s no time to make safe connections and redundancies. He just has to put his feet in the right place and hope.

“Come inside fast fast fast!” Mel chants in his ear frantically, worry seeping through her words clearly.

The ship rattles, vibrating like an animal locking eyes with the predator stalking it. A shuddering groan reverberates through the ship, Frank pauses for a second to figure out how to cross the next portion, and then-

Everything goes dark.

Frank blinks, opening his eyes again heavily. He’s laying on his stomach, staring at a smooth aluminum floor.

That’s not right, that’s- the hull?

Frank shakes his head (immediately regretting that action as a wave of nausea hits him), wincing as he pushes himself back up to his knees. He’s in an EVA suit, on the hull. He was standing, Frank should be standing. Shit, his head hurts. Frank flexes his hand for a moment, trying to force himself back into the moment. Something’s missing. What is it?

Then his ears pop, sound crashing back over him like a wave.

“Frank! Frank, can you hear me? Please respond, Frank-”

Frank’s hand comes up to cradle the back of his head, even as he forces himself back up to his feet. “I’m-I’m here, I’m okay.” 

“You went dark for a few seconds. What happened?” Mel asks, voice tighter than Frank has ever heard it before.

That’s what Frank wants to know.

A small look around gives him the answer. And a new problem.

Some of the external ship equipment seems to have rattled loose, knocking across the surface of the hull wildly. It must have taken Frank out as it bounced and rattled over the surface. It also seems to have severed the weak fabric tie connecting the sampler to him, trapping it under a trunk-sized piece of equipment wedged against a tricky part of the hull it shouldn’t be anywhere near.

“I got hit with, fuck, something. It came loose with the ship. The sampler is stuck under whatever it is.” Frank says, stumbling over to it. The weight of gravity is punishing as Frank jams his shoulder into the lodged piece of equipment, trying to force it up enough to pull the sampler out from under it. It doesn't budge. He repeats the motion, planting one of his feet into the hull and pushing hard, feeling his back ache pointedly.

Nothing.

He tries again and again, pushing against the weight. Every shove feels like a lifetime and Frank can’t stop expecting to find the surface of Becca rushing up to greet him every time he glances up. 

“Come inside. We-we can try again later.” Mel begs, voice wobbling.

Frank’s chest hurts. “I think this is it, Mel, I…I don’t think we're getting another shot.” 

Mel doesn’t respond which is almost just as bad. They both know it’s true. Frank needs to get their sampler.

Slam, push. Nothing.

Slam, push. Nothing.

Slam, push. Nothing.

As they drift closer to Becca, the weight of gravity increases, dragging at Frank’s limbs incessantly. He’s only getting more tired. He's on more than one timer right now.

Slam, push. Nothing.

Slam, push. Nothing.

Slam, push. Frank groans as he jams his arm under the box, scrambling for the edge of the sampler chain. Come on, come on. There’s a half-second of give and Frank knows better than to waste it. He rips the sampler free, gasping as he lets the wreckage drop against the hull. 

“Got it! I got it!” Frank shouts, crawling for the airlock in an uncoordinated scramble. Dignity has been firmly left behind, this is about survival. The ship jolts under him again as Frank swings himself around into the airlock. He slams the cycle lever with a heavy fist, slumping back against the wall as the pumps get to work.

“Frank?” Mel asks, voice scared and begging.

“I got it, sampler secured.” Frank gasps, pulling himself back up to his feet. He did it, he’s got it. Now he just needs to get them back into space. Frank waits carefully, eyes glued to the cycle screen marking the airlock’s progress.

Come on, come on.

As soon as the light blinks green, Frank is ripping his way out of the suit and sprinting for the cockpit.

Heat too high. Mary tells him sharply, voice echoing strangely as it comes out of multiple speakers in hearing range. Heat too high.

Shit. 

Frank scrambles up the ladder to the control room, relaxing slightly as he sees Mel. The next thing he sees are the screens, all of which seem intent on screaming some sort of information, and he appropriately retenses. 

Mel hovers at the edge of her habitat, antennae tucked back against her head and shoulders hunched up as she flinches away from the automated system alerts. “The screens are making a lot of noise! Not-not sure what they mean, they’re- loud.” 

“Mary, silence.” Frank snaps as she echos another round of heat warnings. That’s one problem solved. Now for the rest. The ship gives out another loud groan, from somewhere Frank suspects shouldn’t be making that noise. Well, he doesn’t have to guess. “Mel, can you tell where that noise is coming from?”

“Everywhere, all over.” Mel says, tilting her head slightly to listen better. “It's loudest by the port dormitory.”

Mary spent years traveling at Astrophage-powered speeds, she’s built for acceleration. What could be pulling her apart now?

A great question for when they’re out of the atmosphere.

“I think we might have overstayed our welcome.” Frank says as he opens the Spin Drive panel. The ship can accelerate at up to two G’s when push comes to shove. Frank is feeling particularly shoved right now. “Time to go.”

Full power for ten minutes, that’s all they need to increase their velocity back to twelve kilometers per second. Once they’re back in stable orbit they can figure out what happened. Frank throws the engines to full and bracing for the punch from the thrust, feeling the ship lurch forward suddenly. 

It's not hard enough.

They're not getting enough force from the engines.

Mary is on the right trajectory to push back out of the atmosphere, clearly getting some thrust, but it’s not enough for how much energy they should be putting out. There’s a yawing lateral drift to their momentum, fighting Frank for every inch as he wrestles the joystick to keep them on track. 

“Something’s wrong. She’s pulling against me.” Frank says, goosebumps rippling over his skin. 

“The hull is bending.” Mel relays carefully, head cocked as she takes in whatever information is bouncing back to her. “In the big room below the dormitories.”

Frank frowns. There is no rooms below the dormitories- 

Oh.

The fuel tanks.

There’s no reason Mel’s echolocation would be limited to the habitable portions of the ship. If there’s a loud enough noise and a traceable atmosphere for the noise to reverberate through to her, she’ll catch it. That’s incredible. And a very bad place to have things doing something they’re not supposed to. 

“Shit. Okay.” Frank breathes, flexing his hand around the joystick rattling under his hand.

Mel reacts to whatever stuttering jump Frank’s heart does, turning her head back to him nervously. “Do we turn the engines off?”

“We can’t.” Frank winces, eyes bouncing between the window, the navigation screens, and Mel. The numbers are still ticking up, for all that the engines are struggling. They are gaining altitude. “We’re too low. If we shut off the engines, we’ll fall into the planet.”

“Then we hope?” Mel asks quietly.

“We hope.” Frank nods, sweat prickling his hairline as he watches their angle and velocity slowly, slowly increase. He feels like he’s gonna rattle out of his skin at every groan from the hull, nerves barely holding on. Every experience since waking up on a spaceship alone in space has been stressful to a whole new level, but this manages to take the cake. 

Mel is braced in her habitat, watching Frank for any hints about how they’re doing. She’s counting on him to pull this off. Somehow.

Frank is determined to justify her faith in him. 

Minutes tick by painfully, scraping over Frank’s senses one by one, until the Navigation panel confirms that they’ve crossed the threshold of Becca’s atmosphere. Frank turns off the engines as soon as the velocity is good, hands still tight on the controls.

“Twelve kilometers per second, engines are off.” Frank says, watching the screen for any new problems. It looks good. “I- I think we did it.”

Mel tentatively relaxes from her braced position next to him, looking around for any sign of trouble. 

Frank gives her a disbelieving smile, not sure how to breathe. Holy shit. Talk about spicing up an EVA. With the engines off, they’ll be able to figure out what happened, sort out the problem. Maybe there was a blockage somewhere? He fights back an adrenaline-high fueled laugh as his head drops back into the headrest- 

His head dropped back into the seat. 

Frank straightens immediately. His butt stays in the seat even as he shifts around. 

“We still have gravity.” Mel says, voicing the realization echoing through Frank’s mind.

“We do.” Frank says as he stares at the Navigation panel. The engines are off, their velocity is good. Everything is stable. 

“We shouldn’t.” Mel trills, not actually asking.

“No, we shouldn’t.” Frank says, pulling up more pages to scan through the numbers. All one thousand and nine spin drives are set to off. Inert. No thrust to create gravity. 

“Too close to Becca?” Mel offers, drumming her fingers on the wall nervously.

Frank shakes his head instinctively, wracking his mind. This doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense. “We’re in orbit. We’ve cleared the atmosphere.” There’s no gravity in space without thrust - where is it? Frank lifts his head and lets it drop again. “Ouch.”

That was harder than before.

Gravity is increasing.

“This doesn’t make sense. The engines are off, right?” Mel asks as she braces herself slightly against the tugging sensation pulling her into the wall.

“I checked, they should all be off.” Frank says, rechecking the page with a rising confusion. All of them are still off. Did the display malfunction? Rechecking their velocity on the Navigation page is just as perplexing: it’s higher than the last time he looked, and still increasing. “We’re speeding up.”

Frank tabs through screens, looking for anything to explain this, as he braces his foot against the base of the pilot’s seat to steady himself. His arms ache slightly at the effort to hold them up, tabbing through the pages with increasing panic. Navigation (no), Life Support (no), Radar (nothing), Petrovascope- 

Structure. 

Frank has ignored this panel during his other cockpit adventures; there's never been much in a page that shows the ship’s generalized outline. Now though the panel paints a completely different story with a bright red box layered over the port fuel tank. Mel heard bending, and the system thinks there’s an issue there - is it a hull breach? The tanks aren’t pressurized like the crew compartments and the two halves are kept separate from one another to allow for the centrifuge. If there was a breach, they wouldn’t know about it right away.

Frank switches to external cameras, air freezing in his lungs.

There’s a twenty meter gash in the fuel tanks. The ship melted. 

Fuck. 

Of course it melted.

Astrophage maintains its temperature regardless of what they do to it, it’s the perfect insulator. The shell of it between the interior and exterior of the ship protecting them from radiation also acts as the galaxy’s most enviable cooling system. The trade-off is that the heat has to get to the Astrophage first. And if the external hull gets too hot, like from an idiot ionizing the whole fucking atmosphere, the Astrophage won’t have time to redirect the heat before it causes structural damage.

“The heat in the atmosphere melted a hole in the fuel tanks.” Frank tells Mel as he fiddles with the camera view to zoom in on a small flickering at the corner of the gash. The ship is sparking? Frank’s stomach drops out from underneath him. No, not sparking. “Shit- the Astrophage are exposed, they’re migrating to Becca!”

Mel braces herself against the wall to stay upright as she grimaces. “Bad bad bad!”

That’s one word for it.

When the hull breached, trillions of Astrophage in those tanks became exposed to open space with a clear view of Becca. Not just a carbon dioxide rich world, but their home planet. The place they evolved to breed. Every wave of Astrophage that sees the planet migrates towards it through the hole, exposing even more Astrophage to the sight. The light they release as they travel push the Astrophage still in the tanks a little more each time they absorb it, increasing the Hail Mary’s spin incrementally. 

It’s a bad position to be in. One that could turn deadly at any moment.

“Jettison the bay.” Mel chirps with a tense expression.

The gravity is punishing as Frank raises his arm to the screen. The reaction is certainly getting worse. There’s no time for Frank to cross reference between the external cameras and the diagram. He picks the most likely offender. “I’m ejecting…the bad fuel bay.” Frank forces out, gritting his teeth to get the words out correctly. 

“Good good good!” Mel nods as she curls up to weather the increasing force a little better, her wings are pinned tight to her back.

Frank flexes as he carefully lines his hand up with the button, arm shaking.

Jettison.

The ship immediately speeds up, accelerating uncontrollably as it whips them to the left.

Mel tumbles in her habitat, hitting the wall with a sharp thump. Something sticky and wet appears on the wall as she hits it, making Frank’s stomach drop in an instant.

“Mel!” Frank screams, voice high and desperate, even as the new force feels like it’s ripping the air out of his lungs. Blackness spots into Frank's vision and he’s positive that they must have crossed over six G’s in a matter of seconds.

Mel lifts her head slightly to look at him, hand pressed against the wall next to her for the smallest ounce of stability. “Th-the thrust- it’s-”

Frank can’t respond, mouth moving without sound. One of the other fuel bays has to be damaged, it’s the only answer. Frank can’t measure which one it is. There were two bays next to the last one. Fifty-fifty shot. 

Frank heaves his arm up to slap the button for the one on the outside.

Please.

The ship jolts, groaning low and piercing, for a moment as the bay is cut loose. Then it whips in a new direction. Instead of being ripped to the left, now they’re being dragged forward towards the nose of the ship. 

Mel lets out a shuddering yelp as one of her wings is trapped under her, crushed against a new wall. 

“Mmm-” Frank gasps, unable to force the word out. Mel. He watches her as closely as he can, even as his limbs are dragged forward towards the screens. 

Excessive Centrifugal Force Warning.

The bays must have ejected from the ship at an angle. When the spin drives use force, it’s directed along the line axis of the ship. Directional. This- they’re being spun like a top through space at an uncontrolled rate of gravity. They need to find a way to cancel the spinning.

If Frank can find a way to activate the centrifuge-

His only warning is a metallic snapping, before his seat gives out, rocketing forward into the screens with a violent shudder. 

Oh.

A starburst of liquid hot pain shudders into existence, seeping through his body like a poison. 

Frank’s vision blurs as the air is forced from his lungs, gravity pinning the chair to him like a concrete block. Something sticky drips down his face thickly, smearing against the screen in front of him. The worst of it seems to be lower though, a grinding sensation in his lower back ricocheting through his spine persistently. The chair just seems to press into him harder, preventing him from pulling any air back into his lungs. 

He can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t do anything as his vision slowly darkens.

Mel hunches in the blurring corner of Frank’s vision, curled up in a ball against the sudden forces. They’re both trapped, trying to breathe through something nobody was ever built to endure.

A thought floats through Frank’s mind with a cold finality. 

This is it.

For Earth, for Erid. Waiting for them to find a miracle and send it back to them. For Mel and him. Whipped around up here at the mercy of gravity until it kills them. The flickering light of the glitching screen in front of him smears across his vision, blurring as Frank fights to keep his eyes on Mel. He can catch the shape of her face, watching him as closely as he’s watching her.

He should have kept her safe. Should have kept her far away from this mess. Mel shouldn’t be here, suffering from his miscalculations.

He’s sorry, Mel.

He’s so fucking sorry.

Frank doesn’t realize that he’s reaching for her with a bloodied hand until it drops, muscles giving out under the strain.

Mel lets out a bleating scream that Frank can’t make sense of as it echoes through his mind.

The world slowly blurs around him, incoherency beating at the edges of his vision. It distantly sounds like the ship is ripping itself in half, a strange hissing sound joining the cacophony. Frank tries to blink, forcing himself to keep his eyes open for as long as he can, even as the world drifts in and out of focus. He’s not done yet, she still needs him…please.

Please.

Tears suddenly well up in Frank’s eyes, dripping down his cheeks uncontrollably. That doesn’t make sense...is he…crying? 

A small automated beep comes out of a screen next to Frank. What…?

From somewhere in the depths of Frank’s mind, a small realization comes to life. The tears aren’t an emotional reaction.

They’re physical. 

Something is hurting his nose - burning actually. Something hot and caustic. Frank can’t hold his mind steady enough to put it together. What- what’s-

Blink.

Somehow Frank isn’t being crushed into the console anymore, air finally finding its way to his lungs again. He breathes, desperate and automatic, even as the burning just seems to get worse, rattling through his chest.

Blink.

Frank isn’t in his seat at all anymore. Sensations pulse through his body strangely like their wires were cut in one fell swoop and his mind is trying to keep them attached through sheer determination. His back aches. His nose burns. His head spins. 

There’s something else. Another sensation, a heat in his forearm. 

Frank doesn’t have the wherewithal to figure out what it is. He can’t make sense of the world around him, blurring in hazy flashing lights and broken sensations.

Blink.

A clicking noise bounces off the walls, too loud and keening to be real. Something about it isn’t right. It shouldn’t be that loud, that crisp. The med bay with Mary’s robot arm comes into focus overhead as Frank’s eyes roll in his head. 

How did he get here? 

Critical injuries. Beginning medical processing.

Mary reaches for him with her claw, lifting him into his pod bed and lowering an air mask onto his face. 

Frank’s mind is a blur of colors and shapes and disconnected facts, but it’s screaming at him with an urgency. Something is wrong here, something is very very wrong. A blurry shape hovers over him as wisps of something black and acidic curling in the air around her.

Is that…?

She shouldn’t be here, it’s not- no, no she can’t-

“You’re okay.” Mel promises, voice crackling as she watches him with far too soft an expression. “You’re gonna be okay.”

But she’s not.

Frank shakes his head, tears still dripping down his cheeks as he stares at her, a pit opening in his stomach.