Chapter Text
Their ship sits there, next to my ship, and I wait. They have to see me now. They must have been looking at the Astrophage arc.
I don’t know what they’re going to do about my being here though. If they’re hostile, they’ll point their engines at me and fire, and then I’ll be vaporized. But I’d almost rather they do that than just run away. I don’t want to be hopeless again.
They don’t do anything for a while. I tell myself I’ll wait another 216 seconds before sending the message I’ve planned. Maybe, even if they don’t do anything because of my ship showing up, they’ll do something when the cylinder makes contact with their hull.
About 72 seconds into my wait, their engines flash for about half a second, and the ship starts moving a bit. That was it. Just a light. Then off. They barely changed their velocity at all, so they’re not trying to run, or to go to another part of the system for research purposes. They must have done it to acknowledge that I’m here.
They said hello! They’re willing to talk!
I need to say hello in return. I flick my engines on for the same amount of time they did. Then I wait.
They respond with three short flashes, a long one, and one more short one. Is that some special message? If it is, I have no way of knowing what it means. I can repeat it back though.
After I do that, I wait a few seconds to see if they’ll send any more flashes, then I fire my engines again and bring our relative velocities to zero again, positioning myself three spans away, like before. Now that our velocities are the same, I can send them my message.
I move the robot into position so it’s across from the center of their ship. I don’t know where their robot is, so throwing at the center minimizes the maximum distance it would have to move to get into position to catch the cylinder. At the last moment, I decide to send the cylinder off at the same speed they brought their ship to the first time they flashed their engines. That speed might have some significance to them.
The cylinder floats toward their ship, and I wait anxiously. I remind myself that they want to talk to me. If they want to talk, they have no reason not to accept my message. Unless they’re scared of it.
But I showed them I want to talk too. I haven’t given them any reason to think I want to hurt them, so hopefully they won’t think that.
My ship is so much bigger than theirs though. Is that intimidating? What if the message they sent when they flashed their light a few times was their planetary signal for, “Please don’t hurt us?”
Well, if it is, then I sent, “Please don’t hurt us,” back to them, and although they must know I can’t know what it means, my accidentally implying that I won’t hurt them if they don’t hurt me may have a psychological effect on them and make them feel better about talking to me.
As I think this, part of their ship suddenly swings outward. There’s a figure inside with four limbs and one round thing. It floats out of the ship and turns the round thing from side to side.
It doesn’t look like a robot. Wait, is that a living person? I feel a wave of panic, not for myself, but for them. Space is dangerous. What if they die? What if their light sensing equipment gets damaged and they can’t hear anything? It must be terrifying to be in space in such a small, body fitting container, not hearing anything from beyond yourself. It’s bad enough being on a spaceship and not hearing outside the walls. To go out there and hear nothing except from the light sensing readout? I could never do that.
The alien makes their way across the ship, attaching themself to the ship at various points with a cord. It’s fascinating to see them move. They only use the two arms next to the round thing. The other ones float uselessly. I think those ones may be optimized for standing, although standing on only two arms sounds very precarious. Something could knock you over. Three arms on the ground, and two to hold things, is best.
I remind myself never to tell them that, once we can communicate. I can’t afford to offend these people.
They catch the cylinder, then return to their ship. I watch them carefully as they enter their ship. Now, I just have to wait.
Nothing happens for a while. That’s not surprising. It’ll probably take them time to make a response. Then something happens that I didn’t expect. Their ship breaks in two and starts to spin. I think it’s a centrifuge. That’s clever.
My ship can’t turn into a centrifuge, but I can still spin it to show I’m paying attention to them. I make sure all the important stuff is stowed away so it won’t get hurt, and spin my ship. The force feels weird from where I sit.
I do some math related to their rotation rate. The area of the ship the alien entered is the smaller area. Based on the rotation rate and the length of the radius, it seems like it would have roughly half of Erid’s gravity inside. That’s different than the three quarters of Erid’s gravity that I experienced following them earlier. So, which one is their normal gravity?
Well, which one would they have a motivation to change from normal? Adjusting their resting gravity value down from normal would make it easier to move around their ship in some ways, but harder in others, because they wouldn’t be used to it. On the other hand, adjusting their gravity upwards on the way here would get them here faster. So, I think their natural gravity is the smaller value, and they were just in a hurry to get here. Not surprising. Astrophage isn’t a problem you can ignore.
I wait impatiently for something else to happen. I’m just grateful that so far, they seem to want to talk. They probably think I know things that I don’t know. They’ll at least talk to me until they find out I haven’t made progress.
That means I have until then to either get them to like me, or find something valuable that I have and they don’t that I can offer them.
At last, their ship stops spinning and pulls back together. I stop the spin of my ship and wait. Soon, the door to their ship opens, and the alien throws the cylinder back at me. I hope there’s something new inside, that they haven’t just decided to return my stuff and then leave me here. The cylinder floats towards me, faster than I sent it to them. They want me to know it’s okay to send things back and forth faster.
When I get it inside, I check it carefully. The cylinder contains traces of oxygen. Is their atmosphere oxygen? If so, that’s scary. Oxygen is a dangerous, highly reactive element.
I examine what they’ve sent me. My first impression is that they’ve just sent me back the star map model, but then I see that something’s changed. They’ve added a connecting line between Tau Ceti and Sol. That’s probably where they’re from.
Okay, if they’re from Sol, I’ll call them solarians.
There’s no Astrophage arc attached to their star, which doesn’t make sense to me. Why are they here if they don’t have the same problem? Then I realize there was also a small amount of liquid in the container, and it occurs to me that that liquid was probably solid in their environment, because why would they have sent such a small amount of liquid? I think that liquid was the Astrophage arc model.
Okay. Good. They want me to know where they’re from too. That’s a friendly response, right? It’s like exchanging names.
Now comes the next step in our conversation. I need to find a way to communicate with them more easily. If I create a tunnel with two parts, and a xenonite wall in the middle so we don’t die in each other’s atmospheres, we’ll be able to perceive each other directly. But before I do that, I have to tell them I want to do that. Otherwise, my ship approaching them with a tunnel might scare them.
So I make a model of our two ships connected. It takes me a long time, because of course I can only perceive one side of they’re ship now, the side closest to me. And I don’t have a clear memory of what the other side looks like, because I can’t perceive it now. But I have a rough idea based on what I do see, so I model the ships carefully.
Then I place the connected models in the cylinder, put it outside, and send it back to their ship. I aim it at the door, so it’ll be easy for them to grab it. Soon, they open the door and let it float in to their airlock. After catching it, the alien raises one of their arms and waves it back and forth.
I think that means thank you, which is good. It’s another sign that they want to keep talking.
I wait excitedly for what they will do next. I don’t have to wait long. The alien goes outside again. They don’t throw me anything. Instead, they make their way towards the other part of their ship and then they…make a hole in it? Why? What on Erid are they doing?
They take the piece of hull covering that they’ve removed from their ship, and they throw it in my direction. Oh. They want me to know more about their ship. This must be their way of saying, “Here’s more information about my ship, in case it will help you make your tunnel.”
When I catch the sample with the robot, I wave to say thank you. Then, to my surprise, they wave back. Okay, so maybe it doesn’t mean thank you. I wave again, not knowing what it means, and then they go back into their ship.
The sample is helpful. It tells me something very important. Their ship walls are very thin and fragile.
This kind of material would never be able to hold in my atmosphere. What kind of atmosphere do they have over there? I’ll find out soon enough.
It takes me over two hours to make the tunnel and plan out my maneuver to connect our ships. I need a xenonite wall between their side and mine, but I don’t know which kind of xenonite is best. Finally, I decided to just try all of them. I arrange pieces of different types of xenonite in a hexagonal pattern for the wall between the two tunnel parts. Then I bring my tunnel outside the ship, and I approach.
When the robot arms touch their ship, I feel an instant awareness of the structure. It’s a lot of new information. I tune it out as I pull the ship towards my tunnel and get it set into place, then I settle back and get a good listen.
Oh no, the solarian I've seen outside is the only solarian in the ship. They only sent one person? Why? Weren’t they afraid that person would get sick or hurt on the way?
Maybe they’re a solitary, territorial species. I hope not. It will be easier to convince them to help me if they’re capable of making friends.
The solarian enters their airlock, still wearing their suit with it’s light sensors. They observe the tunnel for a minute. Then I hear the hiss of their air entering their side, and my hearing of them and their ship becomes more clear. Soon the hissing stops, and they open the airlock door.
I float into the tunnel to meet them, carrying my models. Well, this is it. Here I am with an alien, the one person who can save my species. I wave.