Traveler in the Dark

6

The haze of dark gray-green below them made Rebecca freeze as they crested the hill. "That's not rock."

Alice shook her head. "This is—" She crouched down, overwhelmed.

"I told you," gasped Spixworth. He took a step forward and Alice grabbed his suit leg.

"Don't touch it," she warned.

"I'll be careful. Look at it. The way it moves. Blick, you seeing this?"

"Almost there— I decided I couldn't let you get all the discoveries. I've got another sample case."

"We better set up the mobile lab, don't you think, Oxwell? I mean, considering what you were saying about alien bacteria... I doubt we want to risk trucking all this stuff back to the Wolfinger before we're certain that it's harmless." Spixworth turned toward Alice, but the answer came from Captain Stratton.

"Martham and I will head out to you with the gear. I don't want anything on my ship until we've run every test we know on it. We go slow, follow protocol. It's not just protecting us but also everything we come into contact with."

He was unsettled, Rebecca knew. This was not the sterile rock he'd been expecting. A breeze shook the foliage below and it rippled turquoise to green. She couldn't hear it, not through the thick helmet, but she wished she could feel it. What would it smell like? Would the leaves be soft? Prickly? She walked slowly to the edge of the field, careful to keep her boots clear of the grasses. Tiny green specks floated through the air. Rebecca reached out and caught one on her glove.

"Cheater," said Spixworth, hurrying to her side.

"Jar that, Emery," snapped Stratton. "And stop touching."

Alice held out a vial and Emery tipped the tiny fleck in. "What is it?" she asked.

Spixworth laughed and shrugged. Alice held it up to her helmet, tapping her feed to magnify it. "I think it's a plant."

"Like a dandelion seed," said Blick. "But its shape is odd. Save it for me."

Something fluttered in Rebecca's peripheral vision. She turned her head to see a small bug hovering a few feet from them above the tall grasses. She nudged Spixworth and pointed. He leaned over the grass to reach it, but it lazily floated away. "Does he really expect us to sit here and wait?" he asked, watching it land on a stalk.

"Yes, I do, Spixworth," said Stratton.

"But Captain, we waited a millennium and a half to find this place—"

"And it will still be there in ten more minutes. Rushing is how we make mistakes or miss things. Relax, think up some new names for the species you're going to find. Take a temperature reading or whatever it is you guys do that doesn't involve touching."

"I'm going to call this Spixworth's Steppe."

Blick laughed as he reached them. "How do you know it doesn't already have a name?"

Spixworth spun around as if he were looking for something. "Uh, because we're the first people to ever reach this place?"

"We're the first humans to be here, but we may not be the first people here. For all we know, there's some kind of village over the next ridge," said Rebecca.

"Oh, right," said Martham, "Where all your little gray men are hiding. Where's the welcome committee then? The Wolfinger must have been visible for miles and we've been here for hours. You'd think they'd—"

"That's enough," said Stratton, "Blick and Emery have a point. Until we've determined otherwise, we are guests at best. Try to keep it in mind. If this turns out to be a habitable planet, I don't want to go back to the Keseburg and tell them we can't stay because we started some kind of war with the natives."