I often get strangely specific numbers from Rocky on things that should be rough estimates. It took me a while to figure out, but I finally did. He actually is coming up with rough, round numbers. But they’re in his units and in base six. It’s actually easier for him to convert those values to base-ten Earth seconds than it is for him to think directly in Earth seconds.

If I converted those values back to Eridian seconds and looked at the numbers in base six, I bet they’d be some round number. But I’m too lazy. Why un-convert data he already converted? I’ve never seen him be wrong on arithmetic.

Meanwhile, I have to divide by 60 twice on a calculator just to convert from one of my own planet’s units to another of my own planet’s units. He’ll sleep for a minimum of three and a half hours and a maximum of almost twelve hours.

“I understand,” I say. I head back toward the airlock.

“You observe, question?” Rocky asks.

He watched me sleep, so it’s only fair he offer to let me watch him. I’m sure Earth scientists would jump all over the place to learn anything about what an Eridian sleeping looks like. But I finally have time to do some deep analysis of xenonite and I’m just dying to know how xenon bonds with other elements. If I can get any of my lab equipment to work in zero g, that is.

“Not necessary.”

“You observe, question?” he asks again.

“No.”

“Observe.”

“You want me to observe you sleep?”

“Yes. Want want want.”

Through unspoken agreement, a tripled word means extreme emphasis.

“Why?”

“I sleep better if you observe.”

“Why?”

He waves a few arms, trying to find a way to phrase it. “Eridians do that.”

Eridians watch one another sleep. It’s a thing. I should be more culturally sensitive, but he threw shade when I talked to myself. “Eridians are unusual.”

“Observe. I sleep better.”

I don’t want to watch a dog-sized spider not move for several hours. There’s a crew in there, right? Have one of them do it. I point to his ship. “Have some other Eridian observe you.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I am only Eridian here.”

My mouth hangs open. “You’re the only person on that huge ship?!”

He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “♫♩♪♫♩♪♫ ♫♪ ♩♪♫ ♫♪♫♪♩ ♫♪♩♪ ♫♩ ♪ ♫♩♪ ♫ ♩♪♫♩♪ ♫♩♪ ♫.”

Complete nonsense. Did my kludged-together translation software fail? I check it out. No, it’s working fine. I examine the waveforms. They seem similar to the ones I’d seen before. But they’re lower. Come to think of it, that whole sentence seemed lower in pitch than anything Rocky has ever said before. I select the whole segment in the software’s recording history and bump it up an octave. The octave is a universal thing, not specific to humans. It means doubling the frequency of every note.