HARRY WAS the first casualty, going down under a spray of paralysis needles riding a puff of gas from the tree he examined. Nancy, the mission botanist, sat on her heels prodding a legless mass of mobile lichen in an attempt to discern how the alien plant moved. Her assistant’s lanky body shielded her from the darts, went rigid, and fell toward the tree. Snakelike roots erupted from the ground to snare his torso.
Nancy clawed at the tendrils, but in moments a brown cocoon enveloped her friend, leaving only darting blue eyes bright with fear. She redoubled her efforts, but roots twisted around her ankles. She tore free and ran for help.
Adrenaline fueled her dash back to the landing site, back toward the screams. Giant flat-leafed things covered the ship’s hull. The Endeavor’s crew fought in pockets across the clearing.
Greg, the ship’s cook, defended the dining pavilion, swinging his meat cleaver and hurling insults at the giant salad components that cornered him. When the gutsy Philippine sank his blade squarely into what looked like a walking radish, white streamers shot out to harpoon the cook’s arm. Blood oozed from the tiny perforations, and the bulbous red creature pulled the cords tight, reeling the man toward a gaping maw that opened just below the cleaver.
Nancy dashed forward and wrapped her arms around the cook’s legs, pulling with all her might, and came away with a shoe in each hand. Greg stopped struggling, his legs hung limp, and the radish consumed the small man.
The clearing grew quiet except for the rustling of alien plants huddled over prone crewmembers. Nancy ran for the nearest crumpled form but three oversized walking sticks with thorny arms moved to intercept her. So Nancy Dickenson did something only a trained botanist might think of; she sprinted away in blind panic.
1. Run for Your Life
RED, A stupid planet with a stupid name. Nancy cursed as jungle vines and brambles tore at her. Blood seeped down to mix with the red already staining her hands and dripped to the loamy soil. Feeding the voracious jungle wasn’t a good idea, but it couldn’t be helped. She ran on, desperate to get away from their landing site, away from ground zero. Even as her heart raced, part of her wanted to turn back, to help the others. But she’d already failed them.
Her legs burned as she ran and screamed out her frustration in blistering curses. Planet Fred was supposed to be paradise, especially for a thirty-three-year-old botanist eager to discover new species. The surface temperature never exceeded one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, nor dipped below forty-three. Its oceans teamed with nutrient dense invertebrates and fish. And the sole intelligent species was a race of aquatic slugs so vain that the navy planned to trade mirrors to purchase huge mineral reserves.
But Nancy’s assignment to the poorly named world was a dream turned nightmare. While there were indeed thousands of undiscovered plants to study, too many had insatiable appetites. Poor Harry had been her closest friend aboard ship, the mission’s soil specialist, and so excited to explore the world his father discovered.
As a ranking officer in the Interstellar Astronomical Bureau and senior planetologist on the first expedition to this world, Commander Gregory Coppola lobbied hard for Fred’s unique designation. Harry always got a wistful twinkle in his eyes when Nancy asked why his father had pushed for the strange name. But he’d never shared the inside joke. And now he never would.
The memory of Harry’s eyes bright with fear spurred Nancy on. She darted around a woody clump that reached out with flexible trunks covered in thorns. This planet didn’t even have mammals; why were alien plants so hungry for human flesh? It was no wonder that the sea slug nation rose to the top of the evolutionary ladder—any land-based competition became plant food.
Nancy plunged through a thicket of whipping vines onto flat sand, a narrow beach that valiantly held the jungle at arm’s length. She should have pulled off her boots and sealed her field kit. But the images and screams drove her into the placid water with clawing overhand strokes—as if she could tunnel her way off this godforsaken planet. Fire raced along her arms as saltwater soaked into hundreds of cuts, then along her shoulders and legs as she struggled to make progress.
The current pulled left as she made for a tan smear sitting low on the water. Miraculously, Nancy managed to stroke straight for the little island despite the stiff current. She pulled herself onto the sandy spit through a haze of grief and pain, eyes darting left and right, searching—sugar-white sands, rock crests, not a speck of green. No plants. With a ragged sigh, she collapsed on the wet sand and the world faded.
Hours later Nancy Dickenson, champion of all things green, sat on her little bit of offshore archipelago, focusing years of study and training to plot revenge on the things she loved most. She scrubbed her arms, trying to clean off the more tenacious stains and blood. Red blotches rose on the back of her hands and pale forearms from the constant attention, but at least the melanin enhancers were keeping up. A quick look in the hand mirror from her pouch confirmed she wasn’t burning under the brutal, alien sun, but the med darkened the freckles around a pert nose and gave her short black hair a healthy showroom shine. The sheen highlighted a few annoying gray strands that had come out of nowhere over the past year. Nancy rubbed at a red stain on her right temple, attempting to wipe away the bit of dried blood that should have washed off on the swim.
A squelch halfway between the twisting of a balloon and mashed potatoes oozing from a clenched fist brought Nancy out of her brooding.
“Your move, sister,” the translator on her left wrist intoned in a pleasant—though somewhat mechanical—male voice.
Subcutaneous muscles rippled as her four-foot-long opponent slid away from the slimy X it made on the tic-tac-toe board in the sand. She had no idea how the translation device knew the slug’s gender. Harry said the males were more pea-green than the pus-yellow females. But he was dead now, and Nancy couldn’t tell the difference. A glob of sickly mucus splatted against her already filthy shirt.
“Ugh, that’s disgusting, Reemer.”
The wrist translator turned her sentiment into flatulent sounds punctuated with a rolling splat for the slug’s name. Nancy scraped the offensive projectile off her shirt, leaving a glistening patch. The glob hanging from her bangs refracted the setting sun like nauseating jewelry. A hissing squeal vibrated from the slug.
“My apologies. Unavoidable ejection,” the translator dutifully droned, but the device laid snickering laughter over his polite words.
Nancy glared at her companion, marked an O in the center of the board, and drew a line from corner to corner.
“That’s the name of the game, tic-tac-toe. You lose—again.”
Her device tried valiantly to keep up with the slobbering, sputtering obscenities that streamed from the little alien. The glistening slime covering Reemer turned milky white as pustules on his thick hide ruptured in agitation.
“You cheated!” he accused. “You must have cheated again.”
Nancy sighed and summoned patience. “No, I told you there can be three symbols on the diagonal. Like this.”
She ran her finger along first one diagonal, then the other. Curiously, the little creatures saw the world in right angles. Her hours with Reemer confirmed that he even traveled using only perpendicular movements, often heading off at a ninety-degree angle and zigzagging to his destination instead of traveling in a straight line. Reemer sat on his tail end, eyestalks following the motion of her hand, but it was no use. Some connection just didn’t fire in whatever the species used for a brain.
Nancy erased the board with a slap, then swatted at a sharp sting on her arm. The tiny seedling chomping on her disintegrated with a satisfying high-pitched squeal. Their little island was devoid of dangerous plant life, discounting the moss coating several boulders. Laying down on those would probably result in losing a layer of skin. But the wind occasionally brought in drifting seedlings every bit as voracious as their mainland parents. What a world.
Her swim through the crystal-clear waters to the little offshore island couldn’t have been far, but she’d collapsed in exhaustion from the effort and adrenaline crash, then woke to the glimmering eye stalks of some new horror and almost had a heart attack. Reemer had been good-natured about her nearly skewering him before she realized he wasn’t a voracious plant.
The research site was far behind thanks to the island itself, which drifted with the warm coastal current instead of staying put like a sensible land mass. Now, miles of hostile territory stood between her and the ship. If other survivors sent out a distress signal, the navy might already be on its way. She couldn’t afford to drift away from potential rescue.
“Sorry,” Nancy said, referring to the abrupt ending of the game. “Reemer, you must know the jungle. How hard would it be to get back to my base camp?”
“Easy! Islands circle back around,” squelched the alien, his tiny mouth forming a childlike O as he stared at the erased board.
“Perfect. How long?” Nancy felt the ghost of a smile tug her lips.
Reemer studied the passing shoreline for a moment. “Nine months.” The translator again pumped echoing laughter behind his words.
“We’ll starve!” And miss any chance of rescue.
Nancy scowled as the slug hissed like a flatulent balloon. He thought this was funny.
“Not starve. Fun trip. I’ll catch fish.”
“I’m sick of—”
But her companion shot across the narrow beach, straight into the water. Pale green mucus glistened on the sand where he’d been. Their navy briefing had mentioned the intelligent slugs. The Squinch moved fast for an invertebrate race, much faster than terrestrial slugs.
Ten minutes later, the water rippled as a green shimmer with a billowing black end made its way ashore. Water sheeted off Reemer, and the dark segment on his tail resolved into a large flatfish. Its wing-like fins flapped weakly, revealing a white underbelly like the skates back home. The fish was stuck fast to a ropey appendage protruding from the alien’s hind end. A vein along the obscene looking thing pulsed once, and the fish grew still. Barbs along the end of Reemer’s hunting whip retracted, and the arrowhead slid from the fish’s flesh as the appendage snaked back beneath him, and Reemer gave a little shiver of delight.
“Food,” he announced.
The fish was bigger than the slug, with fat, meaty wings. Nancy retrieved what looked like a silver pistol grip without a barrel from her field bag. She used the sample cutter to carve off strips, but the little laser wasn’t suited to cooking. At her request, Reemer ducked back into the sea and returned with a leafy plant. She wrapped the seaweed around the fish and did her best to visualize sushi.
The alien’s dining style was…different. Reemer moved over to the carcass and promptly threw up. The noxious mass of goo teamed with wriggling white specks. Nancy’s dining fantasy vanished. The sushi roll clawed at her innards, but she couldn’t look away. Reemer blew out an opaque bubble and slapped it into the putrid mess. It spread over the fish carcass, pushing through the puke. Unless she was badly mistaken, the Squinch just coughed up his stomach to digest the fish.
An eternity later, Reemer slurped his organ back inside and proceeded to suck up his meal with one eyestalk tilted back to watch her. Nancy clamped a hand over an involuntary gag and stumbled to the water.
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