Alien Jungle (4 page)

PLANET NGC920-03

T
race’s boots sank into mossy loam. He stared at the fungus jungle, and awe overran his apprehension. Thick, black mushrooms stood as tall as trees, their trunks laced with orange and red vines. Toadstools piled one atop the other like gnarled, bright green rocks, and saw-toothed canes rattled and snapped.

“Look at this one.” Impani laughed and stepped toward a purple puffball that stood nearly to her chest. It pulsed rhythmically, growing with each beat.

Natica grinned and glanced around. “No wonder they wanted to farm this world.”

Trace ran his hand along a huge mushroom and gazed up at the gills beneath its cap. With his knife, he sliced a wedge from the trunk. An oily liquid dripped like blood. He watched it for a moment then stowed the wedge in a specimen container.

“We were supposed to drop into the colonists’ camp,” he told his team. “Impani, take a reading. See if you can locate a clearing.”

Impani held out her sonic resonator—and a group of reeds curled away as if cringing from the sound.

Natica laughed and pointed at them. “Did you see that?”

Anselmi took an abrupt step back with an odd expression on his too-pale face.

“Actually, we
are
in a clearing,” Impani murmured. “The vegetation is less dense here.”

“What’s that over there?” Wilde trotted toward a mossy knoll.

“Wilde, I think we should stay together,” Trace called. “At least until we figure this out.”

“It’s a pre-fab,” Wilde called back. He peeled away a section of moss to reveal a metal wall. “Some sort of storage shed.”

Impani pointed. “There’s another one.”

“
This
is the camp?” Natica asked. “It looks like it’s been abandoned for ages.”

Trace’s gut twisted. Where was everyone?

“Do you hear something?” Anselmi asked.

“Like what?” Trace asked.

Anselmi frowned, head cocked as if listening.

“All I hear is silence,” Impani said. “No birds. No insects.”

“Not the welcome we expected,” Natica said to Trace. “What do we do, now?”

He hesitated.
Time to be the leader
. At least, he could count on Impani and Natica to support him. “Search these buildings and see if any colonists are holed up inside. Keep your masks on. The original settlers reported illness.”

“Are you sure you can’t hear that?” Anselmi asked.

“Hear
what
?” Trace asked.

“Voices.”

“The colonists?”

“I don’t think so.”

Trace lifted his head as if it would help him to listen. He stared at the hazy white sky. Spores drifted on filament parachutes. “I don’t hear anything. Let’s move.”

They walked toward Wilde and the storage shed. Now that Impani had pointed them out, Trace saw several overgrown mounds. He pictured the camp—a single road with Quonset huts to either side. The buildings were so thickly covered with moss and mold it was as if the jungle itself had attacked them. As if the jungle had taken offense.

He approached a dense lump, seized a tangled mass of vines, and pulled them away by handfuls. The vines squirmed from his touch as if trying to reassert their hold on the object beneath. After a moment, he uncovered a headlight. “It’s an ATV.”

Wilde cleared the windshield and peered inside. “I wonder if it still runs.”

“It should. It has a battery life of about five billion years.”

“Why was it left in the middle of the paddock?” Anselmi asked. “Such a vehicle would be invaluable on a planet like this. Wouldn’t the colonists keep it parked in a maintenance garage?”

“You’re right. This is too creepy.” Impani glanced from person to person. “Something bad must’ve happened here.”

Wilde loomed over her shoulder and waggled his fingers. “Maybe they were attacked by
monsters
.”

“Enough,” Trace snapped. “Let’s spread out and search. Impani, adjust your resonator to pick up energy signatures.”

She shot him a resentful look. He jerked in surprise. His gaze followed her as she walked away.
What was that about?

Without a word, the rest of his team dispersed.

Trace sighed and moved down the road. The moss-covered ground silenced his footsteps and added to the eeriness of the ruined campsite. Had they arrived too late? He’d resigned himself to seeing his father again. He wasn’t prepared to find him dead.

He stopped beside a mound of thorny blue stalks. In fast motion, buds sprang along the stalks and opened into red flowers. A puff of powdery spore shot from each bloom.

He leaped back. What was his father doing on such a dangerous planet? He was older, already in his mid-forties, and certainly not an adventurer.

Unbidden, a memory of home overwrote his thoughts—the day his father lost part of his foot to a carnivorous plant. Trace was just a kid. He’d been cautioned about the plants and knew what to look for, but failed to notice the gray-green runners in the field they were clearing. His father ran to warn him. To Trace’s horror, the runners wrapped about his father’s leg and dragged him across the ground.

Thinking back, Trace realized how inhospitable his home world had been. The world his father conquered.

“We’ve got another equipment shed,” Wilde called from an open door. “Looks like underbrush broke in through the floor.”

“This one has plants growing in it, too.” Impani wiped a window with her forearm as she peered inside. “No people that I can see.”

“They must be somewhere,” Trace said. “Move to the next.”

Natica stepped from the side of a building. “Trace, take a look at this.”

He circumvented a large puffball in the center of the road and followed her down an alleyway between two huts. The ground was treacherous with stringy vines. Blue stalks sprouted flowers as they passed, peppering them with spores.

Natica knelt beside a meter-long gash in the building’s metal hide. Spots of mold surrounded the rift. They almost looked like fingerprints.

“Something tried to break in. And they knew where to find the seam.” She looked up at him. “Would an animal know to do that?”

He gazed into the hole. “What’s inside?”

“I think it’s a generator room.”

“Then that solves it. The door must have jammed, and the colonists opened a seam to get in.”

“I don’t think so,” Natica said. “If it were colonists, they’d use a cutting torch or at the least a crowbar. There’s no sign of either.”

“You’re letting your imagination get the better of you.”

“See for yourself. This metal’s been ripped.”

“Come on. Let’s go.” He reached to help her to her feet.

She didn’t move. “Oh-oh, I’m stuck.” Thin vines laced both her legs to the ground. She squirmed and clawed the wall, trying to stand. “Help me!”

“Hold on.” Trace took out his knife.

Just then, an explosion threw him to his hands and knees. His ears rang. He looked back. The puffball had ruptured. It spewed a moist, cottony mass several meters into the air. Thick haze clouded the paddock.

Beyond it, something moved.

Trace squinted to see through the fog—and made out a figure. It appeared to be wearing the jungle. Like some sort of camouflage. Humanoid. At least, with arms and legs. The original Scouting team was wrong.

Maybe the colonists
had
been attacked.

Trace’s mouth went dry. First contact protocol shot through his mind.
Get up slowly. Make no threatening gestures
. He tried to stand.

He couldn’t lift his arm.

A thin orange cord slithered about his wrist. He pulled, and it tightened. Painfully. He clawed at it, but it sank so deeply into his glove, he couldn’t get his fingers underneath. He glanced toward the humanoid.

It moved nearer.

Trace’s eyes widened. What was he going to do? He was vulnerable, unable to get up, unable even to reach his gun.

“What are you looking at?” Natica asked.

“Don’t move,” Trace told her.

Then Wilde stepped into the gap between the buildings. “Did you see that explosion?”

“Behind you!” Trace yelled.

Wilde spun about, stat-gun in hand. “There it goes!” He ran in pursuit.

“He left us.” Natica gasped.

Trace’s arm throbbed. “I dropped the knife.”

“Where?” She leaned backward, blindly searching the ground. Vines struck at her hand like cobras. “Got it.”

“Free yourself first.”

She hacked at the vines that pinned her legs.

Trace groaned and tried to shift his position. His fingers were numb. Another vine looped over his boot, and he kicked it away. “What’s taking so long?”

“They’re like wire.”

A vine touched Trace’s shoulder and reached toward his neck. Anger tinged his fear. He wasn’t going to die like this. “Then dig up the roots!”

Natica plunged the knife into the ground and dug, spraying Trace with dirt. The roots were surprisingly threadlike. She got to her feet with severed vines trailing from her skinsuit. “Let me help you.”

Trace gasped in agony. “Stay clear. Just toss me the knife.”

She threw it within his reach then backed away. Trace plowed into the mossy soil and uprooted the vine holding him. He yanked a length loose, gained his feet, and wrenched the plant from his arm.

Pain. He moaned and wriggled his fingers. Natica leaned against the building, rubbing her calves and breathing hard.

Wilde sprinted toward them through the lifting haze. “The thing disappeared.”

“Did you get a good look at it?” Trace asked, panting.

“Not exactly.”

“It was a plant.” Anselmi stepped around the corner of the building. “A conglomerate of mold and plants.”

“Plants don’t run.” Impani hurried forward and put her arm about Natica’s shoulders. “What happened?”

Natica shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Then a sound reached them—the first sound they’d heard. It reminded Trace of wind rushing through pine boughs. For a moment, no one spoke.

“Was that the plant thing?” Wilde asked.

Anselmi nodded. “It might be calling others.”

Natica stared at him. “What others?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.” Trace tried to keep apprehension from his voice. “That sound might have come from the colonists.”

“Exactly.” Impani held out her resonator. “I located an energy spike.”

Trace let out his breath. “Lead the way.”

<<>>

I
mpani closed her mouth with a snap and turned sharply.
Lead the way
. How patronizing. She stormed out from between the buildings then down the middle of the paddock. Purple chunks of puffball littered the road.

Natica caught up to her. “Would you mind slowing down?”

“Does this planet seem abnormally violent?” Impani asked. “Or is it just my mood?”

“Who are you mad at now?”

“Trace, of course. Do you believe how he’s acting? The high-and-mighty team leader.”

“He’s preoccupied, worried about his dad. Or not.”

Impani slowed to look at her. “Do I hear a disclaimer in that statement?”

Natica screwed up her face. “I told him I thought an animal had ripped open that hut. He wouldn’t even consider that I might be right, just told me I was imagining things.”

Impani glanced back at the boys. Wilde spoke animatedly with Anselmi, one hand on his holster. Trace walked a few paces behind as if herding them. “I think power has gone to his head.”

“Something sure has,” said Natica.

Impani’s resonator chirruped. She held it to the light. “Another energy pulse. Faint but persistent. It must be coming from over that rise.”

“That’s not a rise,” Natica said. “It’s a bio-dome. Look, there are more. They’re too evenly spaced to be natural.”

Impani nodded. Steep hills scalloped the area before them, barely discernable from the surrounding vegetation. She smirked. “Let’s get there first.”

They reached the nearest dome. Impani imagined that the walls had once been transparent. Now rings of mold spotted their exterior. Curly lichen hung in clumps from the top.

She picked up a fallen signpost and cleared the words with her fingers. “Science lab thirteen. Doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

Just then, a shushing sound settled around them, followed by another from a different direction.

“What was that?” Natica whispered.

Impani shook her head. She swallowed hard to stop her throat from quivering.

At last, the boys caught up.

“You may be right about other mold monsters,” Natica told Anselmi.