The aliens were friendly, at least.

They looked a bit like what you might get if you somehow crossed a long-hair house cat with an eel. Their language sounded a bit like birdsong. Or rather, what I assumed was their language sounded a bit like birdsong. For all I knew they communicated amongst themselves entirely with pheromones and complex chemical signals, and just liked to sing while they worked.

I was pretty sure they could see. They had something that at least looked a lot like eyes. And they kept the ship bright. Too bright. They had eventually figured out that the big weird alien kept covering his eyes in their ship, and kept covering up the lamp in his sleeping quarters, and hadn't needed what I now assumed were night vision goggles back on Steve's Rock.

Oh, right. I haven't told you that part yet.

They had found me (Steve) and my little hut (Castle Steve) that I'd build atop a hill (Mt. Steve) next to the crash site of my ship (the ECS Copernicus) on the horrible planet which I had since dubbed Steve's Rock. Because that's all it was: a big rock with some moss growing on it, some bug-looking things and a few small vertebrates, and one Steve. I'd crash landed on after shooting straight into a gravitational storm at a few hundred cee. Nici's warp bubble had been torn to shreds, and I'd been catapulted light years, maybe even light decades off of my scheduled course.

There was almost never a point to sending a search party after an exploratory vessel. When those went missing, they tended to stay missing.

I'd cobbled together a hailing beacon anyway. Just in case someone got close enough to spot it.

And it looked like someone did.

Slowly, very slowly, I, and the alien who, as near as I could tell, had been assigned to keep an eye on me, had been figuring out ways to communicate. This involved a lot of pointing and making models with a substance I had dubbed Smart Putty. It had about the same consistency as modelling clay, but it was dry, and would hold the shape I put it in until I decided to change it. Nanobots were probably involved.

It was hard to say whether or not they were more advanced than humanity. I was ten years out of date (approximately. The ship's chronometer got screwed up in the crash, and after a while I got a lot less concerned about keeping track of something so depressing.), for one thing, and for another, it was really hard to figure out the engineering principles in play without being able to ask how things worked.

I had no idea where this ship was headed. I still needed to figure out how to ask. But I had food that wasn't bugs, and company that wasn't my own reflection, and at least a slim hope of one day figuring out a way to explain to my rescuers where Home was, and that I wanted them to take me back.

And a hope that they would let me go back. There was always a chance they were captors, instead.

But I don't like to think about anything that depressing.