News of Sol's return to full brightness

Sixteen years after Ryland Grace made his home on Erid, the news he had waited a lifetime for finally arrived. Rocky, his oldest and closest friend, brought word from the Astronomy hive: Sol, Earth's sun, had returned to its full pre-Astrophage brightness. The data, analyzed by a thrum of forty-two astronomers, was conclusive. The Taumoeba solution deployed via the beetles had worked. Earth was saved.

The News and Its Confirmation

Rocky met Grace in their usual meeting room, a small chamber with a clear xenonite divider separating Grace's Earth-like environment from Erid's natural atmosphere. He was unusually excited, wiggling and jiggling in a way Grace had almost never seen. The Astronomy hive had just confirmed that Sol's luminosity had returned to one hundred percent of its pre-Astrophage level. The data had been analyzed by a thrum of forty-two astronomers and checked out completely. Grace could barely breathe. He started to tremble. The realization that his entire life's mission had succeeded, that the billions of people on Earth had been saved, overwhelmed him. He sobbed, his face leaking as Rocky called it, a reaction he had not shown in a long time. Rocky, ever the practical friend, asked if this was a fist-bump situation. Grace pressed his knuckles to the xenonite and declared it a monumentally epic one.

The Implications for Earth

Rocky calculated that, accounting for the time it took the beetles to reach Earth and the travel time for light from Sol to reach Erid, the solution had been implemented in less than one Earth year. Grace was left to wonder about the state of the world he had left behind. He thought about how bad it might have gotten, whether humanity had worked together to survive or descended into wars and famine. The fact that the beetles had been collected, his data read, and a solution implemented that involved a probe going to Venus meant there was still advanced infrastructure on Earth. He chose to believe that humanity had pulled together, as they had when they built the Hail Mary itself.

Grace's Choice and Reflection

With Earth saved, Rocky asked the question that had hung in the air for sixteen years: would Grace go home now, or would he stay? The Eridians had long ago offered to refuel the Hail Mary and stock it with food, but Grace had never taken them up on it. The journey was long and lonely, and until that moment he had not even known if Earth was still habitable. He admitted he was old and the trip was long. Rocky, speaking from a selfish perspective, said he hoped Grace would stay. Grace was overcome with emotion, saying the news made his whole life have meaning. He still could not fully process it. He had to leave for his next commitment, but promised they would talk more later. Rocky had to get home too, as Adrian was going to sleep soon and he had to be there to watch. As they parted, Rocky paused to ask if Grace ever wondered about other life out there. Grace acknowledged that the panspermia theory was hard to dispute, and that if two stars as close to Tau Ceti as Sol and 40 Eridani both ended up with life, it might be far more common in the galaxy than they thought. Rocky asked if they would find more intelligent species. Grace replied that they had found each other, and that was something.

A New Purpose

Grace hobbled along the perimeter of his dome, leaning on his cane. He was not a young man anymore, and Erid's high gravity had accelerated the degeneration of his bones. He was approximately fifty-three years old, though seventy-one Earth years had passed since his birth. He made his way to his favorite meeting space, a large chamber where one-fifth of the room was his Earth environment and the other side held thirty young Eridians, each no more than thirty Earth years old. He settled into a comfortable chair in front of an Earth-like organ keyboard, cracked his knuckles, and began his class. He played a chord to get their attention and asked who could tell him the speed of light. Twelve kids raised their claws. Grace, the former junior high school science teacher, was still teaching.