“I’ll be fine, I always am,” Bren confidently said as they entered the command room.
“Wouldn’t want to ruin that hair of his anyways,” Pov joked without missing a beat. “There’s a lot of water down there and signs of plant life, so be sure to bring a stun gun just in case. I’ve included on each of your handhelds a map of the terrain as clear as I could get but there are red storms going on, so the image isn’t that clear. We’ll be landing a few hundred miles from any of that activity though,” he turned to them, or more to Bren with a stern face.
“If you give me the usual ‘don’t let anything happen to her’ spiel again I might just have to get my helmet to muffle your voice,” Bren cut him off impatiently. Pov’s eyes clicked between the two explorers for just a moment before he shrugged and agreed, turning back to his screen.
“Go ahead and head down to the lock-room, we’ll be landing in five, good luck today,” he said, his eyes reflecting off the screen and meeting with Juniper’s for just a moment.
***
The plant life of the world was bizarrely bright and soft. The gravity wasn’t terribly unlike the artificial gravity of the ship, yet when she stepped onto what might have been grass or moss on earth it felt like she was stepping onto a very soft mattress. The terrain was a rusty colored pink and gold, the water almost green in soft contrast. Glancing skyward, she admired the two suns, one substantially closer- but because of the distance they looked comparable in size.
A perfect distance for heat, comparable gravity, the air didn’t matter - they could fix that with enclosed environments for living.
“I always feel like we’re Adam and Eve when we first step onto new worlds,” Bren said softly, his gaze trailing over the scenery before pausing for a moment on Juniper’s face. They held eye contact for a moment, something warm blossoming between them, before Juniper unloaded her pack. She gathered samples of the ground plants while Bren used his pack to analyze the soil and atmosphere of the planet. It was hard finding a bit of soil that wasn’t overtaken by the soft moss that covered the ground.
“Soil is extremely acidic, you could grow tomatoes here without even trying,” he observed, marking down his findings. He continued to talk about his findings before pausing to look up to see why Juniper was quiet. She was about three hundred feet away from him, leaning down and closely studying something. “What do you have there?” he asked, curiously heading over to her.
She seemed entranced, below her line of sight was something small and furry, rolling around in circles and figure eights. It didn’t have legs, but moved more like a clock that had a fluffy inchworm as one of its hands. Something didn’t seem right.
“June, get away from that!” Bren shouted suddenly, breaking into a run towards her. She looked up at him, a surprised look on her face for just a moment before the fuzzy thing wrapped around her arm and pulled her into the ground. She yelped in surprise, trying to grasp at anything to get a hold, but was pulled under, the fuzzy ground retracting above her. Bren was too slow to save her.
He plunged his hand in the hole after her but felt nothing.
“Fuck!” he said angrily and desperately, trying to claw his way into the ground to save her.
***
The inside of the planet’s crust was just as soft as the top layer had been, it squished around her, moving her through what felt like a huge furry straw that was actively being sucked on. When the space around her finally opened up, her eyes had to adjust to the faint golden glow. The room was spherical, the lining of her surroundings was a rust color with ribbons of teal coloring running randomly throughout it. Juniper slowly stood, surveying her surroundings with open curiosity.
The soft moss-type plant matter was a bit rougher in here, denser in texture. Juniper cut a few strands of it from the wall, loading them into her pouch for later research. She was able to keep her mind active with the research for what must have been twenty minutes before she started fully trying to find a way out. Her communication device in the suit didn’t seem to be working, when it searched for the ship or for Bren it could find neither. The aperture that she had slid into the room through was now closed, and she couldn’t see any other clear entry or exit points.
She wasn’t sure what the makeup of the matter was, but she did want out. She gripped the knife she had used to gather samples tightly in her right hand, double checking for where she came in. She smacked her knife into the wall, her hand a tight fist around it, and attempted to drag the knife downward. The plant life was thick and made pulling the knife down difficult, she put all of her weight into dragging it down but it was still just hardly moving. Once the slit she made was a foot long, she tried to part the plants with her hands, which proved difficult. She couldn’t see any space behind it and it was hardening and changing color quickly.
A noise behind her alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. It was a soft whirring sound, like a cat’s purr but more smooth, accented by a short click or chirp every few seconds.
Juniper slowly turned around, steeling herself to stop from making any sudden moves or large gestures. Behind her was a rather round creature, pitch black in coloration and covered in short spikes. The moment Juniper looked at it, it became startled and scurried up onto the wall of the enclosure, its spikes worked as excellent grips to help it climb and move without much effort.
“Hello there,” Juniper said softly under her breath, not really greeting it but trying to downplay her surprise. The quills on its body rippled and it twittered a bit in its place. Juniper hunched herself down a bit closer to the ground to make herself seem smaller and less of a threat. “What the hell are you?”
***
Bren was screaming into his communication unit, running back to the ship as fast as his legs could take him.
“It fucking ATE HER- IT ATE HER,” he shouted, slamming the buttons of the pass code in order to open the containment door. He quickly decontaminated and then started rushing into the hall, almost knocking Pov down as he did.
“What was it?” Pov asked, securing his own helmet on, regardless of whether he needed it. His fingers methodically were ensuring his blast gun was properly charged and had the safety on. His stress and worry didn’t show on his face but his whole frame was rigid in a way that it never had been before. His feelings for Juniper were genuine and it killed him to think she could be lost- but he couldn't show it.
“There was a worm that looked like the same material as the plant matter that covers most of the ground that we’ve seen, she was studying it and it grabbed her and took her under,” Bren replied, trying to be succinct.
“She’s underground? How thick is the matter?” Pov was now walking back towards the containment door and Bren followed.
“I tried to claw at it and it didn’t work, it looks a lot less solid than it is,” he responded. As they stepped out onto the planet surface, Pov pulled something out of his own pack and started inputting information. “Do you think a bio-scanner would be able to get through all this matter? It’s alive too,” Bren argued, impatiently.
“I’m just checking heat signatures.” Pov started to walk, the device could only cover a range of fifty square feet. “This stuff is a lot cooler than the average human, it should make it clear where she is.”
“That’s a lot simpler than I thought it would be,” Bren admitted, glad Pov was there to actually focus. Bren’s heart was still beating so hard and he knew it wasn’t because if something happened to her he would have failed the mission, there was so much more to it.
As they walked the landscape changed greatly, what had been land that was mostly undisturbed was slowly replaced by upturned giant chunks of the planet. The soft moss of the ground showed itself to go at least twenty feet deep if the torn up portions of ground were any good estimate. The portions of the moss that were completely destroyed turned a deep blue and hardened considerably.
An emerald green river flowed less than half a mile away from where they were walking
and they walked parallel to it, able to hear its roar well enough to use it as a guide to get back to the ship when they needed to. The two stars that lit the entire planet so warmly were now drifting closer to the horizon and the men’s desperation to find Juniper became even stronger. They had been walking for hours in almost a perfect loop.
“We need to eat something, I can head back and grab food packs and meet back with you, we’re useless if we don’t have the energy to keep going,” Bren said, he didn’t want to stop searching, he didn’t want to waste a moment, but he had to be logical about this in any way he could.
“Alright, I’ll be following this same arc, be sure to com me if you can’t find me,” Pov replied, glancing up at him for just a moment. “She’s going to be fine, we’ll find her,” he said, his voice didn’t make it clear if he was reassuring Bren or himself.
Bren left and Pov took a deep breath, steeling himself to relax. There was no way the last thing he said to her could have been some cold words sending her off on a mission to something as unimportant as studying new plants. He was furious at the thought of losing her because of idiocy like that. He sped his pace a bit, pushing himself, and then he saw it- a heat signature so similar to his own, moving closer to the spot he could see it was humanoid in shape and size, he began to run the twenty feet to get over the location.
“I’ve got a heat signature that matches her,” Pov exclaimed into his com, circling the location quickly, looking for any way that he could get down there. She looked like she was sitting down, there was a beanbag shaped heat signature down there also but he didn’t pay it much mind. Whipping out his blast gun, he stepped away from her location by about ten feet and aimed straight down.
*****
Bren had run as fast as his legs could carry him, he heard an explosion and he knew Pov had used the blast gun. He shouted into the com for coordinates while running towards the direction he thought the sound had come from. Why was he so useless? Why couldn’t he just have been like Pov and ignored food? He left at the most important moment and now Pov wasn’t answering his com either.
Pov could smell the hole in the planet before he could see it. The moss, when it burned, had a smell not unlike burning rubber. The crater had turned a dark blue and was quickly hardening. Pov jumped down into it and the difference of pressure under his feet was like jumping from a water bed onto concrete.
***
Juniper had come to an understanding of sorts with the creature.
She kneeled to the ground, and then sat, and the spike ball climbed down from the wall and slowly began to approach her. It had four short legs that stayed close to the body and moved quickly, almost making the creature look like it was rolling to the untrained eye.
She slowly moved to her pocket and pulled out her document screen, quietly turning on the camera option. The creature got closer, studying her as she studied it, its quills bristled now and then curiously as if it were documenting the information it carefully gathered. She recorded these movements, and then turned her screen around to show the creature what she had done, wondering how it would react. It didn’t have a face to gage a reaction from, but the way it bushed out quickly let her know it was surprised or scared of the video.
It slowly got closer to her, and she allowed it to, until it was almost directly in front of her face. Without it having eyes, she wasn’t sure where to look, so she focused on the most central quills that seemed to react to her.
Quickly, looking like it had hardly moved, it stuck a quill through the glass front of Junipers’s helmet.
Now she panicked.
The air on this planet would kill her within minutes, she had no doubt of this, and this pin cushion just put a hole in her defense against it. She jumped back a bit and the creature quickly retracted the quill back into itself, scurrying up and away from her to the ceiling where another aperture opened and let it through.
Juniper hurried to seal the hole in her helmet, panicked and terrified. Holding a glove over the small hole she pushed her head forward on her neck to get a better look at it. There was no visible open hole, however where the quill had punctured was now a black spot that looked like it had sealed the hole when the needle was pulled out. Cautiously she removed her hand from her helmet, double checking that the hole was in fact sealed.
“What the hell,” she said softly. The room released a soft hissing noise and Juniper looked around quickly, wanting to see where the creature would come out from if it did. Nothing came out, and she sat there confused.
The unit that regulates the oxygen on her suit, on the right arm, beeped loudly to let her know it was deactivating. She panicked again, trying to set it back on, but it was reading that the room was filling completely with oxygen. She watched the readings, stunned, and double checked them to be sure. It wasn’t a mistake, these devices rarely ever malfunctioned. She left her helmet a bit longer until what oxygen was left in the suit was depleted. Setting her helmet in her lap she turned her attention to the wall behind her again.
The gash was now a navy blue so dark it was almost black. She touched it and through the gloves of her suit she could feel that it felt like hard blown glass where she had cut, no longer soft and giving under her touch.
What did that ball of quills do to make it so there was oxygen in there? She couldn’t help but ask herself this and many other questions. She decided it probably was able to gage what her suit was filled with by probing it and puncturing the helmet, but even then she was amazed it could replicate the oxygen so perfectly.
The creature slipped back into the room through the aperture in the ceiling, circling the ceiling before coming down and resting in front of her on the ground. It rolled forward for a moment and dropped a quill at her feet before backing up again. Slowly, with measured movements, Juniper reached down and picked it up, turning the quill over in her hands a couple times.
It was heavier than it looked, and at the base it was more of a red than a black color. She bundled it carefully, so that the tip of it couldn’t puncture her suit, and then packed it into her bag. She spotted a veggie bar in a small bag and realized how hungry she actually was. She began to bite into it when she realized she had received a gift but not given one in return. Breaking the bar in half, she leaned forward to offer one half to the creature, setting it on the ground in front of the spike ball. Seemingly pleased with the offering, it picked it up with one of its small paws and turned it over, tilting itself back to Juniper to watch her. She ate her half slowly, brushing the crumbs from her mouth gently.
The creature watched this carefully, it’s quills rippling in excitement. Juniper smiled at it genuinely, it seemed intelligent enough and mostly harmless, this was a once in a lifetime discovery as far as the expeditions she had been on were concerned.
She began to try to communicate with it when a huge explosion erupted from what felt like just a few feet away from them. In the moment it took her to gather herself the creature had vanished.
***
Pov had leapt into the molten mess the moment he blasted into the ground and immediately found himself being swarmed by a mob of spiky balls that weren’t exactly stabbing him, but definitely weren’t being careful with him as he felt himself quickly be swept away underground.
Watching the monitor closely he could see they were dragging him towards the heat signature he was sure was Juniper. After a few more moments he was shoved through a narrow aperture, he lost hold of his handheld in the commotion, but it was worth it. It felt like he was being born anew as he fell down from the entrance in front of Juniper. She rushed to his side and looked him over.
“Are you okay? What was that noise?” she asked, dragging him up into a seated position. He looked into her blue and worried eyes, amazed by them for a moment before he too got concerned.
“Why is your helmet off, put it on,” he responded, not answering any of her questions in his own worry.
“I’m fine, look the room is completely full of oxygen and it’s
being cycled somehow,” she showed him her right arm so he could see the screen. “Now answer my questions.”
“I’m alright also, I just used this little babe,” he motioned to his blast gun, “because I saw your heat signature was here and I needed to get to you.” He removed his helmet, leaning back against the wall of the room and catching his breath. Assured that he was fine, Juniper sighed a breath of relief.
“You interrupted us,” she complained. “I was so close to getting to see if the damned pin cushion could communicate more than body language and you had to blow a hole in its home.” She knew that he was just trying to help her but she was first and foremost a scientist; a scientist who just had the validity of her study of an alien creature compromised.
“Look, I know you are wanting to figure out these spike balls but I heard that you were sucked into the ground and it scared the hell out of me okay? You’re so brilliant and important and the thought of anything happening to you terrifies me,” he said angrily. He was pissed she couldn’t understand where he was coming from with this. “I didn’t have a clue where you were or what was happening to you, you could have been dead- so don’t you dare scold me for wanting to be sure that the cleverest person I know didn’t just disappear from my life without me getting to say goodbye,” he finished, breathing heavily and angrily.
This was the first time she had properly seen him as a man, instead of just the cyborg nerdy kid who ran her ship. She looked into his eyes, really looked into them, and could see the emotion clearly behind the dark coloration, it was all out there in the open.
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