A weekly show and tell for everyone

(NOTE: Rocky uses it/its pronouns for Grace in this fic. I'm doing a thing with the story where Eridians use the same pronouns for people and objects.

The world devolves into absolute chaos. The force changes directions again, and I am ripped away from my handholds, slamming into the wall harder than before. There's absolutely agony as my carapace cracks from the force, and I feel blood pooling at the wound. I curl defensively into a ball as I'm tossed around the dome. There's no further damage, but each impact makes my body scream with pain. It takes a few moments before I am able to grab onto the handholds again, forcing myself to a stop.

And it's just then that Grace's chair breaks. The support holding it up snaps, and it is thrown forward on top of Grace. Through the pain in my carapace and the cacophony of the ship I can hear its bones being pressed by the force of the chair. Its ribs are trapped, unable to expand more than the barest amount.

It's going to die.

I have only a moment to process all of this before my body is moving, hurtling down to my tunnel.

There are sensible and tactical reasons why Grace should survive instead of me. I don't know how to pilot this ship, I don't understand how any of its thinking machines work or how I could even interface with them when we can't survive in the same environment. Without a pilot we will crash into the planet, and even if we don't I would be stranded in space with no way back to my vessel.

Beyond that, Grace is a scientist, and I'm only an engineer. We have a sample now, but even if I could pick it up I wouldn't know how to examine it, wouldn't know how to learn how these life forms work. Grace's ship is full of scientific equipment that only it knows how to use, and Grace will be able to understand and draw conclusions that I cannot.

There are a lot of reasons that Grace should survive. And as I hurtled toward the dormitory, toward the airlock that would bring me into its side of the ship, I didn't think of a single one of them. Because when I heard it fall, when I heard it trapped under the seat and the air being crushed out of it, there was only ever one thing I could possibly do. I lost 22 crew mates, 22 good, brave, smart people in that terrible trip from my world to Tau Ceti. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't watch my friend die again.

I hurtle through the dormitory, clambering into the airlock. There's a moment, just a second, where I hesitate with my hand on the controls for the second door. I'm not going to survive this. I don't know what being in Grace's atmosphere will do to my body, but probably nothing that I can recover from. It will probably hurt. I am afraid to die.

I pull down handle and throw open the door.

There's very little temperature variance on Erid. Grace has told me about seasons on Earth, how the year fluctuates from "warm" to "cold". Erid has no seasons, the thick atmosphere traps too much heat inside. It makes no difference what part is closest to the sun, whether a side faces toward or away, the entire planet is a mostly consistent temperature all the way across.

Which is to say that when Grace's atmosphere washes over me, I don't even really register it as "cold" initially. It is a temperature so far below anything that my body evolved to recognise that my nerves can't make sense of it. I make it several steps through the dormitory before they settle on interpreting the sensation as agony. It's so cold that it paradoxically feels like I'm burning.

Except the radiator, which I realise as I stumble through the panel to the control room might actually be burning. There's definitely something that's happening there, the air I breath in feels wrong, and thick. Oxygen, I think. Terrible idea to have that on a spaceship.

I can barely make sense of the control room. I'm trying to listen but my entire carapace is an unending scream of pain. I need to focus. If I can't find Grace then I'm going to die here for nothing, and both our planets will die for it.

There, I can hear it, still trapped under the chair. I don't know if its breathing at all anymore. I push away all the distractions -the pain, the hull groaning around us, the fear, and all the rest of it- and focus on this. I rip through the straps fastening Grace to the chair, and with all the strength I have left in me I pull it off of its limp form. I hear Grace inhale sharply. It quickly devolves into spluttering noises, but it's alive.

It's alive.

I drop the chair down next to us. I think Grace is saying something, but the world is starting to fade around me. I'm so, so tired. Maybe this can just be like going to sleep, I think. Sleep is frightening, but it's a familiar kind of fear. Maybe I can just imagine that I will wake up somewhere when my body has rested. I'm not standing anymore, I'm not sure when that happened. I think Grace is saying something, but it's very far away.

I would really like to reach out and take its hand. It would be nice to fall asleep holding someone's hand again. But my body is too hot, and I don't want to hurt it. Humans are so delicate.

"Save... Earth..." I say, as the dark closes in on me, "Save... Erid..." I want to say more, but the words are too far away now. Everything is so far away now. Even the pain feels like a distant memory.