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The first thought Ilyukhina had, after she got over the post-coma disorientation, was that the ship was an absolute mess. There was an open packet of ramen noodles floating through her line of sight. The storage hatch was open and the contents ransacked. One of her own packets of vodka was taped to the wall with a straw in it, half-drunk. The fact that they were in zero-G wasn't unexpected, if they’d stopped decellerating, but if there was a mess then that meant someone was awake, and why on Earth hadn’t they turned on the centrifugal gravity?
Groaning, Ilyukhina rolled out of her coma bed and grabbed the nearest rung of the ladder. The bed below hers- that would be below, if they had gravity- was empty, which just left Yao’s bunk above her to investigate.
Luckily, Yao was just waking up, right on schedule. She floated, loosely hanging onto the ladder, until the computer had run through the post-coma checks and pulled out all the life support equipment to set him free. Yao turned over and made eye contact with her; glanced past her to the floating mess, and raised an eyebrow.
“Haven’t seen Grace yet,” she offered. “He drank my vodka.”
“Never thought he’d be the sort of man to drink,” Yao commented, stretching slowly and reaching for the ladder over her head. Ilyukhina let him move past her and through the hatch first, making their way slowly upwards into the main areas of the ship.
It was, similarly, a mess. There were ropes strung across all the open spaces- useful in zero-G, but definitely a tripping hazard when the gravity was on. Most telling, though, was a whiteboard in the lab, which had a rambling list scrawled on it in Grace’s handwriting, with the ominous header who am I?
She and Yao shared a look.
“Computer, where is Dr. Ryland Grace?” Yao asked the air.
“Doctor Ryland Grace not located.”
“Not located?” Ilyukhina demanded. “Where did he go?”
“Last known location: main airlock”
Oh, crap. The evidence was painting an alarming picture- she could see it all now. Grace must have woken up with complications, possibly weeks or months before they did, and at least some amount of amnesia. He’d dug into the stash looking for clues, set up the ship so he wouldn’t have as much trouble maneuvering in zero-G, and gotten himself wasted on stolen vodka. It wasn't much of a leap to think that he’d thrown himself out the airlock, whether out of intention or stupidity.
“Did he take an EVA suit?” Yao asked, already moving towards the airlock as fast as the lack of gravity would allow. Ilyukhina followed suit, grabbing one of the many emergency first aid kits off the wall as they went, for all the good it would do them if Grace was already out in space.
“No. All Orlan suits accounted for.”
Yao swore in Japanese. Ilyukhina didn’t know enough of the language to remember the direct translation, but she was pretty sure it was on the same level of severity as fuck.
“Maybe he is hiding in airlock,” Ilyukhina suggested. “With more vodka, maybe.”
“I hope so,” Yao said grimly.
The main airlock was directly next to the command deck, just around the corner from their approach. They swung around the corner in tandem, grabbing onto the walls and ceilings to halt their momentum as they stared at what was supposed to be an airlock.
The thing was, airlocks only really worked if you had at least one side closed. But right now, both sets of doors were wide open, and there was a distinct lack of space-vacuum on the other side.
“Were there hallucinogens in coma drugs?” Ilyukhina wondered faintly. There was a hallway on the other side of the airlock- more like a tunnel, actually, the walls roughly cylindrical, though they were made up of many flat, triangular panels. It was at least a hundred meters long, and a bundle of electrical cables ran along one side, duct-taped in place, connecting to a series of lights along the ‘ceiling’ of the tunnel. They weren’t very bright, and the tunnel faded into darkness in places; there was more light in the far distance, at what seemed like the end of the tunnel, though Ilyukhina didn’t feel like trusting that.
“Well,” Yao said. “Grace must be down there.”
“‘There’ seems like a death trap,” Ilyukhina said, tilting her head at it. The tunnel didn’t make any sense, really. Any astronaut knew that pressure vessels needed as few sharp edges as possible- this thing was built almost entirely out of them. If they weren’t in zero-g, she might believe that they’d crash-landed on a planet and bored a tunnel into the ground, rather than believe that the tunnel could hold up to 1atm of pressure on its own.
“We’ll suit up,” Yao decided. “And seal the airlock.”
“One of us should stay behind,” Ilyukhina said, already reaching for the nearest Orlan. “I’ll go. Talk to Grace.”
Yao hesitated, then nodded. As mission commander, it made more sense for him to hang back and stay out of danger; then again, without Grace, they’d both be screwed.
“Be safe,” he said. “Close this side of the airlock as soon as you’re suited up. I’ll be on comms.”
“Copy,” she said absently, and continued scrambling into the suit. She’d trained for this; it was the work of minutes to get herself sealed in and run through the checks, and to then manually close the airlock door behind her. She questioned whether Grace, if he was out there, needed that airflow, and then dismissed it; the volume of the tunnel was great enough that he’d be breathing fine for a while, more than long enough for her to get out there and assess the situation.
Trailing a tether behind her, Ilyukhina pushed off lightly into the tunnel, correcting herself gently whenever she drifted close to the walls. When her momentum ran out, she used the electrical cables as a handhold, pulling herself hand-over-hand towards her destination.
She was able to make out the scene before her well before she was in hearing range, as strange as that was to think in an EVA suit, and it was baffling. Grace was there, floating upside-down to her current orientation with a laptop in front of him, glancing periodically between the screen and the wall behind him. His lips were moving, though Ilyukhina couldn’t hear him; even with the atmosphere, the suit muffled any sound she might pick up. It wasn't designed for environments where sound would be an issue; no mics, no speakers. Just a radio, which Grace definitely didn’t have a receiver for.
He was also out there with no EVA suit, which he probably thought was perfectly safe given that the airlock had been completely open, but the tunnel walls were just begging to buckle on them, and Ilyukhina hadn’t gotten through cosmonaut training without learning to not take stupid chances.
When she was maybe ten meters away, Grace turned his head as if reacting to a noise, and then finally looked at her. He visibly startled, flipping over and proceeding to bounce around the tunnel walls until he got a grip on a makeshift handhold made from a rope and duct-tape. She couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he looked shocked, incredulous; there was no recognition in his eyes.
“Well, I found Grace. Looks healthy enough, physically,” Ilyukhina. She waved as non-threateningly as she could. Who knew what Grace’s mental state was right now?
He waved back, glancing between her, the laptop, and the wall. It was clear, but cloudy, and a lot of the light from the spotlights reflected back off of it, making it difficult to see through the glare. Grace continued to speak, and she continued to not hear him.
“And mentally?” Yao asked.
“Well, he’s talking to the wall, so hard to say. Not aggressive, though,” she said. “Might be crazy for going out here without a suit.”
In fact, Grace was currently making a gesture at his neck, miming removing a helmet. Which would make things easier, admittedly, but was definitely against mission guidelines.
Then again, the mission guidelines included committing suicide at the end. So maybe it wasn't the craziest thing in the world to take a few risks.
“Get over here,” Ilyukhina said to Grace, making the most obvious ‘come here’ gesture she could. Hesitantly, he floated over, flailing a bit, and she caught him and bumped her helmet up against his head.
“There. Hear me?” she said.
“Oh my god you’re alive,” Grace blurted out; the sound vibrated through his skull and directly into her helmet, making communication possible. “I thought you were dead. Or brain-dead, anyway. The computer wouldn’t wake you up. Are you real?”
This was not, she told herself firmly, the time to joke. “I’m real,” she replied. “When did you wake up?”
“About, uh. How many…?” he glanced to the side, to the wall again, and then back to her. “Right, ten days. Been going a little nuts out here.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Ilyuhkhina said. “I see now. You go into coma ten days before us, also wake up ten days sooner.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Huh. Why?”
“Why wake sooner? Or why did you go into coma sooner?”
“Uh, the second one.”
Ilyukhina frowned. “You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember anything,” Grace said. “Well. I remember teaching? The Petrova Line, astrophage, all that? I figured I’m out here to fix it but I don’t know why.”
“Be careful what you tell him,” Yao said. “If I remember right, amnesiacs can be unstable.”
“Yes, yes, I got it,” Ilyukhina said, forgetting Grace was still listening.
“Who was that?”
“Commander Yao,” she said. “You don’t remember us, either?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, that’s no good,” she said. “Olesya Ilyukhina, engineer. On the radio is Commander Yao Li-Jie, pilot. You are our scientist, Dr. Ryland Grace, expert on astrophage.”
“Huh,” Grace said. “Yeah, that’s what I thought- no, what do you mean I’m stupid? You’re stupid!”
“Who are you talking to?” Ilyukhina asked carefully.
Grace froze. “Uh, right. You can’t see-? Oh, the lights, right. The lights. And you can’t hear, because of the suit. It’d be easier if you took it off, you know, you probably just look like a giant blob to him.”
“To who?” Ilyukhina said.
“To, uh. To Rocky,” Grace said. Tugging on her suit-encapsulated hand, he dragged her closer to the wall, where the shadow of her body finally made it possible to see through.
There, on the other side, was an alien.
Shakily, Ilyukhina activated the radio. “Yao, get out the vodka. I don’t know whether to drown our sorrows or celebrate, but we’ve just made second contact."