An expedition
“Welcome back, commander and doctor, refreshments and dinner will be prepared shortly,” the mechanical voice of the ship said as it whirred to life and flew above the treetops again getting us away from all the dangers that lurked in the jungle below.
“I’m gonna shower first,” grunted Elber and stomped towards the wet room in the small spaceship we currently called home. I just nodded since she had taken the brunt of the work today and I was glad to not have to endure her smell of sweat any longer than necessary. Especially since the living and sleeping quarters only measured around ten square metres and even the best air conditioning couldn’t help much in such a small space. I seriously didn’t get why she didn’t have her sweat glands removed. It was the easiest procedure today and there were enough alternatives to cool the body down in hotter environments.
Fortunately, I only had to put up with her for a couple of days before I could get back to my office on Proxima Centauri d to analyse and evaluate my findings. For now, I sorted through my findings of the day and added some notes here and there where Elber hadn’t given me enough time to jot them down at the site. I hadn’t found a lot yet, but I was sure that what I’ve found were traces of the ancestors of the mermaids you could find scattered all through the galaxy. There were many myths around them and their origin and this planet was the closest anyone had gotten to an answer yet.
When Elber was done with her shower, the ship had finished printing our dinner onto the small table, so we sat down and silently ate the perfectly balanced food that was required for such an outing. Fortunately, the atmosphere of this planet was close enough to human standards that we didn’t have to swallow the weird H2O tablets which bubbled in your stomach for half of the day.
It was a rather nice planet with a thick jungle all over its surface and lots of animals. That didn’t mean that the work here was easy. The dense undergrowth meant that Elber had to hack away at plants and dangerous lifeforms to get anywhere. She used an old-school machete for that, something I didn’t understand as well.
We were complete opposites which was why we hadn’t talked much on this trip although we had been here for almost a week now.
“You should get us a bit more north tomorrow, I’m sure we’ll find something there. The undergrowth here is too thick,” I said when we finished our dinner.
“You’ve been saying that for the last couple of days, but sure, Doc,” Elber grunted and looked dismissively at the cleansing light that currently washed over the table to clean and disinfect it. I was glad that she always did was she was told since I didn’t have the strength to argue with her all day about my seemingly unreasonable choices.
Like every other day, we went to bed early, each on their own side of the small room on a rather comfortable cot. It was rather unsettling how silently Elber slept, but it helped getting along with her. It didn’t take long before I fell asleep to dreams of flesh-eating mermaids.
I woke up with a jolt. A shaking throughout the whole ship had to have been the cause. In the first moment, I wasn’t sure if I just had dreamed it but the brightness in the cabin – the automatic darkening didn’t work anymore? – and the sinking feeling in my stomach told me otherwise.
“Put on your seatbelt, Doc!”
Elber was already on her feet and half through the door to the cockpit. Which was quite a feat with the whole ship dipping down to the ground. I swiftly buckled myself up in my cot and just got my hands off the fastenings when we hit the treetops and crashed noisily through them. It didn’t seem that Elber’s dive for the steering had done us any good. I was glad I was lying down and strapped in, otherwise I would probably have tumbled all over the place.
“What’s going on?” I yelled through the rumbling and screeching of branches against metal and glass.
“I don’t know, nothing seems to be working anymore, the whole ship is dead,” came the answer back.
Finally, our descent stopped but from the view outside I could see that we hadn’t hit the ground. Instead, we were precariously hanging in between the trees.
“I think we’re rather stable right now. I’m going to check what’s going on, you stay here,” Elber said as she climbed back into the living area, over the top of the table and towards the machine room.
“Like hell I’m staying,” I mumbled and unbuckled my seatbelt to end up at the end of my cot as an ungraceful pile before getting the hang of the slope. I looked at my wristwatch, but I could see at a glance that it had stopped working right at midnight. This planet had two suns orbiting each other so it never really got dark here.
I followed Elber up to the machine room even though I was more of a biologist than a technician. It was dark in the windowless room full of equipment, but Elber was already fumbling around with some switches and cables.
“Can you turn it back on?” I asked and peeked over her shoulder. She almost gave me a blow to the jaw with her head as she jolted up by my sudden closeness.
“Damn, don’t scare me like that, Doc! And no, all the electrical appliances are fried. I don’t know what happened, but we should look outside if we can find the answer.”
I wasn’t so sure about this suggestion. We could just wait for help inside the safe spaceship since we probably set off an alarm with us not being on the radar anymore. But I also didn’t want to just sit around and do nothing. Especially, when I had nothing to talk about with Elber.
We scrambled to the hatch that had stopped working as well and Elber broke it open with brute force. I thought that at least now some sort of alarm should start but the ship remained dead silent.
The way down to the ground was rather tedious and exhausting and I was glad Elber was there to help me. The jungle around us was aflutter, apparently what had caused the breakdown of the ship had also stirred up the lifeforms on this planet.
“Watch out!”
Before I had barely touched the ground with my feet, Elber shoved me to the side, and I fell painfully onto my shoulder. Right next to me an animal head toppled to the ground. I jumped up again dodging another one of the hairy beasts called bleeks that were suddenly attacking us. At first, I thought we just had upset a herd of them but when I was able to focus on the scene in front of me, I noticed something strange.
“Were they always able to fly?”
“What does it matter, Doc? Get your knife out and kill them if you want to live!” Elber shouted back swinging her machete like a madwoman.
I knew that she was right and after another second I joined her.
When we finally got the last of them, we took some deep breaths. Elber wiped the sweat off her face and tried to get the greenish blood off her machete by wiping it down on a big leaf. Just to see the leaf curl up around the machete as if it wanted to eat it. Elber started pulling at it but the leaf didn’t let loose. I had to join the effort to get the machete out of its leafy coffin tugging until the leaf released it and we both tumbled to the ground.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Elber cursed, “How can a whole jungle change into some carnivorous hellhole in a couple of hours?!”
“I… don’t know, it is rather peculiar,” I answered while observing the leafy bush that looked totally harmless again.
“Peculiar my ass, we need to get out of here!”
“Right, we should get back to the ship,” I said looking up at our ship hanging in the trees. At least those hadn’t become carnivorous yet, but I could see some movements in the vines that hadn’t been there before. “I’m not sure we can go back the way we came.”
“Of course we can!” Elber replied and stubbornly started to climb up the tree. Just to let go of it as soon as the first vines were winding their way towards her. I tried to cushion her fall – quite a stupid idea since she was a head taller and a lot broader than me – but that wasn’t necessary. She just floated gracefully down into my arms. Something that shouldn’t have been possible within the gravity field of the planet. We were so stunned that we stayed that way for a moment. Then, my curiosity got the better of me.
“Let me try something,” I said and before Elber could reply anything, I jumped up into the air and floated higher and higher towards our ship. The woman in my arms clung to me in shock.
“How are you doing this?!”
“I have no idea!” I laughed, exhilarated by the freedom of flight. Fortunately, Elber recovered from her shock and was able to fend off the vines that were coming at us until we reached the ship and got back on board.
“Something must have turned off all physical laws here while frying the electrics,” I said when I set Elber down so that she could put the heavy door back into its frame.
“Can we use it to get out of here?”
“I need to observe more. Even if we can fly out of here, we probably won’t be able to survive outside of the atmosphere,” I explained while already grabbing my tablet, just to realise that it wasn’t working anymore as well. Elber grumbled a bit as she climbed into her slanting cod but didn’t disturb me in my work. She knew that I was the one that could get us out of here.
But without any knowledge about what was currently happening to us, it was difficult to find a place to start. We could fly now which wasn’t connected to the gravity on this planet, I quickly made sure of that. Everything else was a mystery though.
I tried to gather more information from watching the outside and it was a rather interesting sight since a couple of the animals were also able to fly now. I even saw a fishlike lifeform leisurely floating over the treetops.
“Maybe we can breathe underwater now?” I wondered to myself.
“Should I test it?” Elber suddenly asked.
“What?”
“If we can breathe underwater? That’s what you said, right?”
I looked over to Elber, quite sure that I hadn’t said anything aloud. But maybe she had had the same thought when she had seen the fish creature?
“No, it won’t help our current situation,” I answered after a second.
The next time Elber replied to something I certainly only had thought was more obvious.
“I’m getting hungry, maybe Elber could get some of the bleek meat if the jungle hasn’t already eaten it.”
“I can certainly get us something to eat.”
I stared at her for a moment before nodding and getting a plan ready in my head. When I was sure that she was on the ground again, I focused onto our connection. “Make sure not to get eaten by the plants.”
I heard a loud “WHAT THE FUCK!” from the outside and chuckled a bit.
“I may have found a way to get into contact with the headquarters if I can expand this telepathy enough.”