Eleven light years from home.

Out here, there is no comforting glow of a nearby familiar planet, no soft halo of atmosphere bending the light around Earth. No moon. Just distance... An impossible, suffocating distance of a black ink void, scattered by shimmering distant stars. He's eleven years away from home, having been in a medically induced coma until now. Somewhere, back there, is everything Ryland Grace has ever known; Nature, oceans, the classrooms he taught in, his apartment. But from here it may as well be a story someone told him once, and he’s trying, desperately, to remember the ending to. His mind is still hazy, foggy with things he can't quite remember yet, but hes beginning to remember the man he was.

The rest of the crew had died in their coma's travelling to Tau Ceti (The only undimmed star nearby that hadn't been affected by Astrophage), but given it was a very long trip, faults were bound to happen. It was a su/cide mission he was unwillingly sent upon; the Hail Mary spacecraft can only carry enough astrophage fuel for a one-way trip, but will carry probes to send the crew's findings back to Earth. There was supposed to be four of them; A pilot, scientist, mechanic and a systems engineer.

Now, there was only two... Three, if you count the alien.

The Hail Mary hangs in this vastness of space so startlingly out of place among the stars. Inside, the illusion of order gives way quickly that this is not the pristine, cinematic vision of 'space travel' as one would come to associate with those sci-fi movies. It’s lived in. Surfaces are crowded with notes, tools, improvised experiments, with strips of tape hold things where design failed, or equipment hums with a tired persistence.

Scattered about you'll find the occasional xenonite model Rocky has made. Shimmering, glass-like walls seperate pockets of the ship to allow Rocky to move around easily in Grace's environment without dying. They're temporary environments sculpted out of necessity, sealing and reshaping space so he can exist where he otherwise couldn’t. They catch the starlight in fractured triangular reflections, turning the void into something briefly prismatic, almost beautiful. Docked to its side is something that makes the Hail Mary look almost delicate and flimsy by comparison. Rocky’s ship looms larger, denser, its structure pointed and alien in a way that resists easy understanding, like it was grown instead of built.

It’s an impossible partnership, really, two species, two worlds, stitched together by desperation, and a shared refusal to let Astrophage destroy their home planets.