And that means the object I’m tracking is also on an escape vector. You know what objects in a solar system don’t do? They don’t escape the star’s gravity. Anything going fast enough to escape did so billions of years ago. Whatever this is, it’s no normal asteroid.

“Yes yes yes yes…” I say. I kick the spin drives on and head toward the contact. “I’m comin’, buddy. Hold tight.”

When I’m within 500 kilometers, I finally get some resolution on the object. All I see is a highly pixelated triangle. It’s four times as long as it is wide. It’s not much information, but it’s enough. It’s the Blip-A. I know the profile well.

I have a bag of Ilyukhina’s vodka handy for just such an occasion. I take a sip from the zip-straw. I cough and wheeze. Dang, she liked her liquor rough.

Rocky’s ship sits 50 meters off my starboard side. I came up really carefully—I don’t want to cross an entire solar system just to accidentally vaporize him with my engines. I’ve matched velocities to within a few centimeters per second.

It’s been almost three months since we parted. From the outside, the Blip-A looks the same as it always has. But something is definitely wrong.

I’ve tried everything to communicate. Radio. Flashes of spin-drive light. Nothing gets a response.

I get a sinking feeling. What if Rocky’s dead? He was all alone in there. What if all heck broke loose while he was in a sleep cycle? Eridians don’t wake up until their bodies are ready. What if the life-support system went offline while he was asleep and he just… never woke up?

What if he died of radiation sickness? All that Astrophage that was protecting him from radiation turned into methane and Taumoeba. Eridians are very susceptible to radiation. It might have happened so fast he didn’t have a chance to react.

I shake my head.

No. He’s Rocky. He’s smart. He’d have backup plans. A separate life-support system that he sleeps in, I bet. And he’d account for radiation—it killed his entire crew.

But why no response?

He can’t see. He doesn’t have windows. He’d have to actively look outside with the Blip-A’s sensory equipment to know I’m there at all. Why would he do that? He thinks he’s hopelessly derelict in space.

EVA time.

I climb into the Orlan for what seems like the millionth time and cycle through the airlock. I have a nice long tether anchored to the airlock interior itself.