Chapter Text
Grace hobbled back to where Rocky’s ball was. He had to fight back tears the whole way. He’d be doing that for a while. He heard Leclerc behind him asking if cameras were recording that. The answer: Oh hell yeah.
“Rocky?” Grace whispered.
“Yes?” His voice was really high-pitched and quiet. “I know. Is surprise. Take you time.”
“Great.” Ryland sighed. He looked around. He felt his shoulders relax for the first time in a hot minute.
After barely 5 seconds, Rocky squealed. “No!!! Never mind! Want to meet!!!! Want to say hello!! Is okay, question??” He didn’t even stop himself. It made Grace smile.
“Yeah! Yeah, it’s okay! Hold on, let me-”
Grace felt a tap on his shoulder. “Um-” It was Mark. He waved, keeping his eyes on Rocky’s ball. “Hey, everyone’s wondering. What is that? That… ball thing.”
“Oh, it’s the alien.” He shrugged, trying to keep a smile off his face.
“...ah.” Mark glanced at the others. Grace now realized they’d quieted down to hear as well. This guy must have some kind of authority, because he was able to shut up a whole dysfunctional group of scientists. Grace saw Lokken glance at Hatch. They didn’t believe him.
“I told you guys about him.” Grace furrowed his brows and looked from one to another. “Guys, I’m not crazy.” He heard Dmitri clear his throat. He sighed. It was understandable, but it still didn’t feel good. What worried him: they wouldn’t be acting like this if the stuff he sent back had come back correctly. Did the beetles not make it? A thousand questions followed that. Is the world too far gone now? What if it is?
Grace shifted the weight on his feet. He swallowed back some tears. You know what? Whatever had happened in the last 24 years was about to change. Because he was home. And he’d brought him. “Rocky, do your thing.”
Rocky had clearly been waiting for this. In one swift movement, he tore the padding from the inside of his ball, wadded it up, and stood on it. He was practically bouncing up and down, waving like a maniac.
There were… mixed reactions. Gasps from all around. Leclerc dropped his clipboard. Redell passed out right then and there. Lokken looked like she might. Hatch made a weird yelpish noise. Dmitri backed away and said something in Russian that sounded generally afraid. Mark mumbled something about spiders. The rest of the boat’s crew had similar such responses.
The look on Stratt’s face was priceless.
A moment of silence followed, so dense it probably had a chemical makeup. It was only broken after a minute or two by Lokken, practically breathless: “Grace… what… how… who is… what?!”
A few other folks followed up, asking similar not-really-questions. Grace took the opportunity to get things started off on the right foot. “So, everyone, this is Rocky,” his heart was practically beating out of his chest. If they screwed this up for Rocky, Grace would be probably eternally angry at them. “He’s… from 40 Eridani.”
“...hi,” breathed Hatch. He waved to Rocky and yelped again when Rocky waved back, this time angling his carapace to “face” him.
“And, Rocky, this is Dmitri Komorov, Dr. Lokken, Francois Leclerc, Rob Redell, Steve Hatch, and…” Grace pointed to a woman standing behind the rest. “Eva Stratt.”
“Oh.” Rocky drops his hand. “That is Stratt.”
“Yeah.”
“...Okay… Say hello later.” Grace caught the intensity in his voice. “Won’t do anything. Not like I can from here.” He motioned around to his bubble.
Grace muttered, “I wouldn’t stop you, bud,” not loud enough for her to hear.
“You…” Leclerc quivered. “You understand what it says?”
“Um, he, okay?” Grace acted like he was taken aback. Then smiled. “Nah, they’re hermaphrodites, call him whatever. But yes, I understand what he’s saying.”
“Huh.” Dmitri nodded. He looked, mouth still agape, from Rocky to me. “How… are you alive?”
Lokken pitched in too. “How do you know what it- what he’s saying?”
“Do you need a glass of water?” Asked Hatch, sitting on the floor.
“Does he need a glass of water?” From Watney.
A sudden surge of pain in Grace’s right leg made him buckle to the side. He caught himself on Rocky’s ball. “Uh- I think we all have questions. Questions that can be… answered later. Because I need to sit down if you don’t mind.” A few people rushed over to Grace, and he ushered Rocky along next to him.
Grace laughed with the others as he was led to the ramp between the smaller boat and the larger boat. He heard Leclerc saying hello to Rocky behind him:
“Hello!!” the Frenchman’s voice cracked awkwardly. Rocky waved at him and made a wooping sound, not actually saying “hello”, just mimicking human tone.
“Good to meet you, more humans!” Rocky exclaimed. Leclerc caught Grace looking back at them.
“What did he say?” Leclerc asked.
“He said, ‘good to meet you, more humans!’ ”
“...Oh!” He grinned. He looked like he’d been mentally flashbanged. So did everyone else.
Grace stuck back with Rocky to make sure he could get across alright. Rocky assured him he could do it and made his way slowly across the strip of steel. It bent treacherously under the dodecahedron, but he made it just fine.
Just as Grace was about to go over himself, someone cleared their throat behind him. He turned around to see Stratt, standing with her hands behind her back, not meeting his eyes.
“Nuclear wars have halted for you, Dr. Grace.”
With that, she turned and walked back to the control station of the smaller boat. Without anything else to say, Grace turned around, looked at Rocky, and stepped up to the bigger boat.
__________
Up on the other deck, there was, of course, a huge gathering of folks. Not just Grace and the Earth Crew, but now there was the addition of news broadcasters aplenty. Thankfully the giant crowd of his friends kept them away.
Even in that inner circle, it was pretty much just Grace sitting on a bench while the others fawned over Rocky. Grace didn’t mind, he really didn’t.
And there weren’t many professional-type questions yet. There were just a lotta jokes about the slow-aging effects of time dilation and how everyone was jealous of that, jokes about Rocky brainwashing Grace and laying eggs in his brain (which Rocky found surprisingly funny), and other such alien jokes (“If you want us to take you to our leader, she’s right back there” et cetera).
Grace was very happy about the lack of professionalism. If they’d immediately gone into all that, the atmosphere would not be nearly so happy. But, Grace guessed, there was a lot of Avoidant Optimism nowadays. They’d get to the bad stuff eventually. But for now, Grace’s main issue was his beard and how itchy it was.