Imagine being Rocky in your spaceship when the first errors begin and you realize that the predator is eating your fuel and you have absolutely no way to stop it. Imagine thinking that even after all this, the death of your crew, the unlikely partnership, the wild success, the almost self sacrifice, you're never actually going to make it home. Everyone you love is going to die a slow and painful death.
Or almost everyone. The only bright spark is the friend you made along the way, the one you gave just enough fuel to make it home. You have to hope that he's not in the same predicament, but you know that his ship is made of strange material that could resist the amoeba better. You couldn't save your own world, but you could save his, and maybe that was all you could ever do.
You settle in, you make peace, as Grace would say, and just as you lay down you hear an impossible sound. A sound you think at first you might be imagining. A sound that is achingly familiar. A sound only possible because you insisted that you both make it out alive.
There is a knock at the door.
