Eridan's back isn't turned to the door, but nonetheless he doesn't immediately notice that anyone's spying on him. He's got some weird documents on the astronomy of this general sector of the universe on his communicator, and they're kind of interesting. Just because he can't actually see the stars, thanks to the lack of windows on the ship, doesn't mean he can't learn about them anyway.

Some part of him thinks, never know when you'll need them to guide you, but he's not really sure why he'd ever think he'd need to sail some foreign planet's seas. Or skies. He's not really feeling a mutiny.

He happens to glance up after a few minutes of being shallowly interested in his reading - it's already failing to keep in his head - and he notices Nepeta watching him. He never felt another troll during that assimilation, he thinks, so he doubts she's here to hunt him down after getting tangled up in his head along with all the others, but there's still a kind of anxiousness there.

They didn't get Feferi and they didn't get Nepeta, but he remembers distinctly hating the hivemind for even thinking about it. He can even sort of recall why.

"Oh, hey," he says, trying for casual but ending with something more subdued.