by Geoff Nelder
“Course I’m fucking awake. Have been for an hour, but I can’t reach the controls. Release our internal constraints at least.”
He wondered why she didn’t just tell the AI. Maybe her suit malfunctioning had affected her voice activation.
“AI, release internal restraints, si’l vous plait.”
“How many times, Gas, you’ve no need to be polite to the machine. It won’t take any notice.”
As if taunting her, their padded constraints became looser and the soft-spoken AI came into his ears. “Certainment mon ami.” He smiled and wondered if Delta heard it too.
Perhaps it was the cocktail of relaxants and boosters for the usual range of vaccinations given as if they were to drop in on an Amazon jungle, Gaston was away with the fairies. A light-headed euphoria washed over him, mostly psychological because of the sheer relief of being alive after reaching an exoplanet.
He worked on releasing more constraints while using the console to estimate their predicament. “Do you feel it, Delta? A welcome to Kepler-20h bonjour happy feeling?”
“I’ve a banging headache. I’m trying to contact the others…oh, there they are. Pod2 hearing you. Two survivors stuck up a tree in what looks like a jungle in Guatemala, did we do a U-turn in space?”
Gaston listened in to Em’s steady yet urgent voice.
“…on the ground, if you could call it that. More like swamp. Might be sinking. Penn’s puffing at the comms trying to establish if Suppose We landed somewhere. Could do with you guys getting here as soon as, before we drown. After that we’ll come and get your pod out of the tree.”
Delta grunted. “Another surreal joke?”
Gaston said, “No, Em means we climb down manually and rescue them tout suite before worrying about our own pod.”
The radio crackled. “Thanks, sweetie.”
What’s that, an endearment from Em to him? Mon Dieu, ah but she must be very worried about their predicament. “Come along, Delta, they’re in trouble. Can you take something extra for your migraine?”
“Daren’t, buddy, already full of a cocktail like all of us. Ah, I could inhale a few minutes of hundred percent oxygen, that should relieve some of the pain. I’m as free of this Michelin-Man contraption as I can be, so I’ll unstow the mini-ladder. If it doesn’t reach the ground we’ll climb the rest. Have you checked atmosphere? Would be good not to wear a full suit.”
“Green. There are likely to be micro-toxins. Half gravity, quel surprise. Could be a local anomaly. Oxygen at nineteen percent—oh dear, un pau bas, no it rises, then lowers; inert gases high, nitrogen lower than we’re used to. It shouldn’t vary, perhaps the sensors. Traces of … anyway, we can drop our helmets to the ground for later. Is our implant comms functional?”
“Yeah. Just found the forest floor is–wait for it–two twenty metres down. Ladder goes half that.”
“Half gravity trees, Delta, very tall, a predictable outcome, but no easier for our descent. Grapples?”
“On the store pods. We have those folding survival knives in the kit. One each, along with a ultra-light climbing rope we attach to each other. Even a parachute wouldn’t be useful in this dense foliage, except for its strings. As you say, we need to hurry in case they’re swimming soon.”
Being the gentleman, and nearest the hatch, Gaston stayed a moment surveying their new world. The lilac sky flickered through a canopy way up above them. In theory, that’s where the foliage should be densest, competing for sunlight, but you never knew on strange planets. Perhaps they’d not heard of photosynthesis and evolved a new way. Below, the foliage density should decrease with increasing darkness, but there might be hostile creatures, or vicious plants. A tendril of a translucent purple ivy-like plant approached his face. A heady scent filled his nostrils reminding him of jasmine and cedarwood.
“Bonjour mon ami, m’appelle Gaston, you?”
Delta butted in. “Stop talking to the plants, Doofus. We’ve got to get down.”
“Ah, but you never know. These might be sentient and in charge of our survival. Remember our hand guns are only to stop us dying in the last resort.”
He saw she’d deployed the ladder from a slit under the hatch. Luckily it plunged into the gloom unhindered by branches or anything with thorns. They carabiner-linked their tether. He shouldered a slim backpack. His helmet, with a localised beacon was dropped as was hers, and he scrambled over.
Most of his life he’d been teased on his mere one metre sixty-five height and sixty kilograms weight. An average size for the early twenty-first century, but in the lower twenty percent in the twenty-sixth. He had the last laugh. His diminutive form gave him an edge for spaceflight and now for the agility required to ease through this jungle. Top down. Except…
Delta came too. All two metres tall of her, bringing ninety kilograms of ladder-stretching mass – ah that could mean the ladder would reach the ground?
No.
He sent out a warning. “Avoid the plants if you can. They might have toxic barbs, superglue sap, carnivorous flowers…”
“Yeah, thanks. Keeping my gloves on and my eye-protectors, but we’ll have to hug the trunks of these things before hitting the deck, I guess.”
Eye-protectors, you fool, Gaston. He fetched them out of his suit upper pocket. Were those ivy strands, lianas? Were anastomosing vines a universal botanical feature?
“End of unencumbered ladder coming up. It’s gone over a mix of peeling and smooth silvery bark of what on Earth could be a Eucalyptus. I’m risking letting a foot touch, then stand on it. We have to know reactions sometime.”
“Go for it, I’m right behind you.”
Comforting—not, though she’d have her pistol out acting as his protecting angel. His booted foot touched the branch. “Feels solid, just like a tree on Earth. I’ll try both feet. Good. I’ll test my weight on it. Mon Dieu!”
The branch sank under his feet then as if it surrendered, broke off at the trunk. As the amputated branch fell slowly down he remembered the half-g, but it hadn’t affected them otherwise. The branch met others on the way down and took them too.
He’d stepped lively back on to the ladder. “Delta, our ear implants - switch audio to external.”
A chorus of wailing screams waved through the air, as if they were at a Mumbai funeral. The banshee was accompanied by heady aromas as if figs were being crushed below.
“Delta, at any other time, I would return to the pod for a think, but our companions…”
“I’ve been relaying everything, vis too. They are still sinking. Estimate total submersion in sixty-three minutes. Already deployed flotation belt and homing beacon. Nothing from Suppose We.
“Downward then.”
Ironically, the falling branch had created a kind of well in the foliage, down which their ladder continued. He wondered if the forest had noted their plight and was helping. Or, if at the end of the ladder, the fallen branches had arranged themselves as vertical stakes, sharpened.
On his way down, he noted typical tropical rainforest adaptation. Waxy leaves with tapered drip tips, to expedite the removal of rainwater stopping mould growing and improve photosynthesis potential. The barks were translucent, saving energy since thick cells would be unnecessary without killing frosts to endure. Primary colours predominate in the blooms, many of which were parasitic living with roots in the tree, or epiphytic living on the tree but not from it. This could be a botanical aerial survey in Malaya.
Oops, his foot met clear air. “We’ve reached the end. I’ll need to use my cam on infrared to see what lurks beneath.” They were within an arm’s reach of a tree trunk, so he refused to panic just yet.
The temperature was a balmy twenty-six Celsius, but the humidity must be near saturation, so perspiration would have to be building up inside his suit. He’d hear sloshing in his boots soon. “Good, there are broken branches and a beaucoup leaf litter, but also bare ground… at least let us hope it is solid ground. All around thirty metres below. If we swing the ladder, we should be abl
e to dig our blades into the bark of the nearest tree and hold on. Any other suggestions, Delta?”
“I’ve been examining this trunk, since all else I can see is your thinning bald patch. There are flowers growing directly on it. Anything dodgy?”
“Typical tropical rain forest behaviour. Bark is so thin sunlight can reach buds. Cacao trees even have the flowers develop into pods on Earth. My hair is not thinning, it must be a reflection from my perspiration.”
“Got ya. Starting a pendulum swing now.”
The mathematical model of a pendulum with two weights on one string is complex. A kind of tricky Hooke’s Law. Gaston started the calculation in his head but hit the tree before he’d filled in the variables.
The blade in his right hand slid into the bark and further in, as did his hand, up to his elbow.
“Ah, slower! I need to extricate my arm.”
“Okay, while you do that, I’ll climb down enough to gently throw a strap around the trunk.”
At least his hand was cool, moist and being tickled. It was as if the tree was a giant cucumber, but with lively seeds. In spite of a released odour of wet dog, Gaston had to control himself to stop laughing then D’accord. He convulsed with hysterical laughter.
“Gaston?” Delta called him several times to break through his incongruous hilarity. She climbed more around than on his shoulders, careful not to push his right arm deeper into the tree and around to the other side, clipping a carabiner onto his belt. It was attached to hers.
“I’m working my way around the trunk to connect to you from the other side so we can climb down like a lumberjack. You know those tree climbing competitions?”
“Oui, but be ever so careful or your hand too will—ah!”
Delta slipped. She used the free carabiner as a kind of hook, but it merely sloshed into the tree. No holding power. She fell more, preventing a catastrophic plunge by flailing gloved fingers and boots into the bark like a demented animal. It was no use. Her upper body fell backwards and down. Gaston followed as they were linked. They fell slowly but accelerating and wordlessly, saving their breath for the inevitable expletives on impact.
Delta landed on her back, falling into leaf litter and half-rotted branches plus those that had fallen earlier. Gaston fell equally slowly and tried twisting to avoid landing on his colleague, but he had no means for lateral motion. If Delta had felt buried in soft mulch before, she was interred more by the force of Gaston. He rolled off her as soon as he recovered his breath. She half bounced back up like a floating block re-emerging with isostatic buoyancy.
They both laughed like school children at their survival.
Delta spluttered, “Half gee!”
A grinning Gaston waved his right arm. “Look, no glove. The tree has taken it.”
His partner stopped laughing and frowned. “And your hand.”
“Qu’est—”
They’d landed between two huge buttress roots, like triangles into the ground supporting the lanky tree above. She gently pushed Gaston off her and rolled back his sleeve.
“It’s gotten your hand and wrist. Looks like it would’ve eaten your arm up higher if you were in there longer.”
Shock sent icy spiders up his spine but he managed to say, “I have to retrieve my hand.”
“Ah, could be tricky, my little garçon. It’s way up there.”
He stood uncertainly in the unstable undergrowth and examined the trunk then looked up. “I feel my hand is still alive.”
“It’s a common illusion with amputees.”
He struggled to remove his pack. “Even so. I want it returned, my hand.” He looked at her with pleading eyes.
“You’re kidding. You can’t climb up, so you want me to somehow climb up a tower that’s as strong as a peeled banana?”
“Non, no. pardon, I merely desire you to keep out of the way.”
“What?”
He took his pistol aimed it high to above the area of significant damage from their scrambling. A diagonal slice with the laser beam made the top of the tree slide slowly down. Branches collided with those of nearby trees, raining down on the astronauts until they stepped further back. Then much more than stepping to avoid the probably toxic fallout. Just in time because their escape pod fell too with a loud crump and a great avalanche of leaves. After the pulpy and metallic precipitation, Gaston took a careful aim again to what should have been a metre lower than the first cut with another diagonal. The section fell and landed on top of the mound of soft splinters in front of them. Many fragments flew up and took their time floating down emitting an aroma reminding Gaston of apricots.
Delta stepped forward with her own pistol and carved incisions until she was able to retrieve her colleague’s wet hand. She used a cooling pad and samples bag from the pod then held up his hand.
“Not too bad, Gaston, a surgical AI might be able to restore it. I wondered if the tree was eating it, but—”
“It didn’t have time. Saving it for later.”
“We should clean the gunk off it, and your stump. Wonder why you’re not gushing arterial blood?”
Gaston collapsed, delayed shock. He wanted to say not to remove the tree sap in case it was efficacious, but the way it bit his hand off it could just as well be corrosive. He’d no energy to argue either way. He lay back in the mush and looked up at the gargantuan trees. A lilac sky struggled to show beyond the lacey leaf canopy so high it could be a cloud. He narrowed his eyes in an effort to focus on a faint pink sun. It wasn’t setting, just one of two for this system. Or was it a moon?
A face eclipsed the disc.
“Gas, I’m giving you a shot. We need to rescue the other pod. This’ll help you get through your trauma so we can both be of help.”
He knew she was right and didn’t flinch when she jabbed a multi-fuse syringe in his left arm. He closed his eyes for a moment to allow his blood to pump the extra get-up-and-go hormones. His traumatised eyes must open now. Right above him in a fork of the translucent branches a creature stared at him. At least Gaston assumed the orange tubes swivelling with black spots on the ends were eyes. No bigger than his own detached clenched fist, the presumed head darted back and forth behind leaves.
“Delta, have you seen the cute creature in the tree?”
She stopped packing his hand into a padded bag and glanced upwards. “Nope, it’s probably the drugs.”
“Non, it really was there. Ah, why are you putting my hand back in the pod, I want to take it with me. I was thinking of surgical-taping it onto the stump with the regrowth hormone gel—”
“We don’t have any, but they might on one of the supply pods, which we’ve yet to find. Leaving it in the pod would keep it cold and safe. No? Up to you, buddy, but we must get going.”
They recovered and clipped their helmets to their belts. Only after plodding after her for several minutes through the forest mulch, skidding, sliding and careful not to lose another limb in a fallen giant courgette, did Gaston look back for the creature. He thought he heard squeaking, but it could’ve been one of the many noises in the cacophony created by their squelching progress.
“Do you think, Delta, that stones will be rare on this planet?”
The woman was in greater danger than Gaston, being heavier and sinking more in the soft floor. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s the same in the tropical rainforests on Earth. Amazon tribes value stones because the bedrock is often tens of metres below the surface. Ah, careful of that red shrub, it has thorns.”
It was both wondrous in a goose-pimples way and frighteningly dangerous in a butterflies-the-size-of-seagulls way. Fragments of the giant compost heap that made up the forest floor rose up, in ones, twos then dozens. The leaves, some as big as his face, flapped, sluggishly flying around them.
He found it difficult keeping up with his colleague. “Delta, are they butterflies or birds, or perhaps on this planet there’s another category of creature. Argh.” He slipped, finding balance all the harder wi
thout his right hand to push against the huge buttresses of nearby trees. “Also, in this thinner atmosphere, they’d need more muscles than our flying creatures. Merde, I go down again.”
“Gaston. Concentrate on the mission.” The laser pistol in one hand and one of the more solid branches in the other, she smashed her way through the undergrowth. “No need for machetes in this jungle.”
“I think observations of the local wildlife is rather pertinent to our mission, Mademoiselle.”
“Okay, as long as you keep up. Whoa, what is that smell?”
Gaston staggered to a halt behind her. It was as if they’d stumbled into an invisible wall of rotten eggs. With his nose closing as much as it could he peered ahead. “Is that a yellow mist? Hydrogen sulphide. Perhaps we’re disturbing anaerobic decomposition gases and—”
Her voice came over nasally through her now ungloved hand. “Never mind the chemistry lecture, isn’t it dangerous? What should we do?”
“Our noses detect it easily at far lower concentrations than hazardous levels. On the other hand…” He couldn’t help glancing at where his right hand should be. “…our olfactory senses become quickly saturated so—”
“Is it fucking safe?”
“It’s only three hundred more metres to their pod, so it should be acceptable, probably.”
They rushed on. Gaston peered ahead. All the shades of green slanted, some criss-crossing, from the ground forever upwards. The light was dimmer at ground level than when he lifted his eyes. Now past the malodorous area, a kind of phosphorous glow drifted around like a will o’ the wisp. A metallic whiff hung in the air when the luminescence ventured close enough.
After another minute of trampling, Delta turned to say something, but her eyebrows danced upwards. “Why are you wearing your helmet?”
Gaston was about to reply when they both heard a whistle. They picked up speed once redirecting twenty degrees to the right.
Delta dabbed at her wrist. “Maybe our nav systems are affected by the stronger magnetic fields here. Might need to recalibrate.”
A few minutes later the eerie verdant gloom ahead brightened.