Chapter 7
Chapter 7 — "Another Ship"
TL;DR: Grace detects a second spacecraft holding station near the Hail Mary, exchanges first signals via flashed lights, and catches a small xenon cylinder fired across the gulf between them.
Summary: The Hail Mary's instruments register an unexpected object in formation with it — a second ship, asymmetric and mechanical, parked and waiting. Adrenaline overrides the grief. Grace tries radio: silence. He tries flashing exterior lights in patterns; the other ship flashes back. After hours of escalating signal exchange he watches a small cylinder pop out of the alien craft and drift toward him. He suits up, steps out into the void on a tether, and intercepts it. Inside the cylinder are diagrams etched in metal: two stars connected by a Petrova-Line-style arc, a clear depiction that the aliens know about Astrophage too. They came here for the same reason he did. He is not, after all, alone.
Key scenes:
- The first instrument ping showing a second ship in formation, off the Hail Mary's starboard
- Grace flashing the exterior lights in an escalating handshake pattern from inside the ship
- A cylinder ejected across the black gap between vessels
- Grace EVA, suited and tethered, catching the cylinder mid-drift
- Etched diagrams revealed inside — two suns + a Petrova arc
Characters present: Ryland Grace, the AI/Computer, the unseen alien crew (still inside their ship)
Locations / settings:
- The exterior of the Hail Mary, inky black space, no horizon, distant Tau Ceti as a single warm pinpoint
- The alien vessel — silhouette only — irregular in shape, smaller than the Hail Mary, cobbled-looking
Visual motifs: two ship silhouettes in black, a thin tether line tracing a long shallow arc (Will Staehle gesture echo), a small bright cylinder mid-flight as a hard white shape, etched diagrams in cool metallic gray with gold annotations, vast negative space
Emotional tone: stunned, electric, hopeful, careful
Confidence: high — the first-contact cylinder exchange is detailed in every recap.