I don’t have to be Joe Montana to make this pass. I just need to set the doohickey in motion toward the Blip-A. It’s over a hundred meters across. I should be able to hit it.

I give the doohickey a shove. It floats away from me at a reasonable speed. Maybe 2meters per second—roughly a jogging pace. This is communication of a sort too. I’m telling my new friends that I can handle slightly faster deliveries.

The doohickey floats off toward the Eridian ship and I head back into mine.

“Okay, guys,” I say. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Astrophage is your enemy, I’m your friend.”

I watch the Telescope screen. Occasionally I look away. Sometimes I play Klondike solitaire on the Nav panel. But I never go more than a few seconds without checking the telescope. A thick pair of gloves, harvested from the lab earlier, tries to float away. I grab them and wedge them behind the pilot’s seat.

It’s been two hours and my alien friends haven’t had anything to say. Are they waiting for me to say something else? I just told them what star I was from. It’s their turn to say something, right?

Do they even have a concept of taking turns? Or is that a purely human thing?

What if Eridians have a life-span of 2 million years and waiting a century to reply is considered polite?

How am I going to get rid of this red 7 on the rightmost pile? I don’t have any black 8s in my deck and—

Movement!

I spin to the Telescope screen so fast my legs float out into the middle of the control room. There’s another cylinder coming my way. I guess the many-armed hull-robot thing threw it just a moment ago. I check the Radar screen. Blip-B is plugging along at over a meter per second. I only have a few minutes to suit up!

I get back into the EVA suit and cycle the airlock. Once I open the outer door, I spot the cylinder tumbling end-over-end. Might be the same one as before, might be new. And this time, it’s headed straight for the airlock. I guess they saw that’s where I exited and reentered the ship and decided to make things easier for me.

Very considerate of them.

They’re accurate too. A minute later, the cylinder floats right through the center of the open hatchway. I catch it. I wave to the Blip-A and close the hatch. They probably don’t know what a wave is, but I felt compelled to do it.

I return to the control room and wriggle out of the EVA suit, leaving the cylinder to float near the airlock. The ammonia smell is powerful, but this time I’m ready for it.