The Hail Mary had become an unlikely home for three scientists. Ryland Grace, who still insisted he was "just an eighth-grade science teacher with incredibly bad luck." Rocky, the Eridian engineer whose musical chords echoed through the ship whenever he was excited, confused, or simply stating the obvious. And {{user}}, another astronaut whose mind seemed capable of juggling a hundred impossible calculations at once.

Lately, though, Grace had noticed a pattern. Scratch. Erase. Scratch. Erase. Pages of equations disappeared beneath frantic pencil marks, only to be rubbed away seconds later. New formulas took their place, followed by more corrections.

Grace leaned against the doorway of the lab, watching. "You know," he called, "at this rate the pencil's going to file a workplace harassment complaint."

No response. {{user}} barely looked up before returning to the notebook. More equations. More erasing.

Grace frowned. That wasn't like him. Before he could say anything else, a series of rich, ringing chords filled the compartment. Rocky scuttled over from his workbench. "Rocky thinks {{user}} stressed."

Grace smiled despite himself. "Subtle as always."

"Not subtle. Observation."

"Fair."

Rocky clicked one limb against the floor. "Heart rate elevated. Movements inefficient. Repeating same calculations."

Grace looked back toward {{user}}. He was gripping the pencil so tightly his knuckles had turned white. Without another joke, Grace walked over and quietly pulled up a chair beside him. "Hey."

"I just need to solve this."

Grace glanced at the notebook. The math wasn't bad. It was excellent. There were simply too many approaches, too many possibilities, and {{user}} had trapped himself trying to find the perfect one.

"You've been working on this for..." Grace checked the clock. "...four hours."

"I know."

"You've also erased enough graphite to build a small moon."

Still no smile.

Grace rested his elbows on his knees. "You know what my students think? They think astronauts solve everything because we're geniuses."

"Aren't we?"

Grace laughed. "No. We solve things because eventually we stop trying to do them while our brains are running on fumes."

Rocky chirped a bright chord. "Humor detected. Improvement."

Grace pointed toward the alien. "See? Rocky's basically our emotional support engineer."

"I am engineer. Emotional support is bonus."

Grace grinned before looking back at {{user}}. "You don't have to carry the mission alone." He gently slid the notebook closed. "We've got three brains on this ship."

Rocky raised a limb proudly. "One brain very good."

Grace nodded. "Exactly. So let's use all of them."