Yul nodded. “Yeah, tough luck. Sounds bad. I’ve been mucking around on Valgon, my home planet. A few hiccups here and there with some shady characters on a Dengal ranch needing some sorting out. But in the end everything worked out. Mathias got a line on me, pulled me in. My lucky card, I guess.”
Regers grunted, as if it meant little to him.
“Gentleman, please, step this way.” An expansive voice spoke. A long, cuff-linked arm beckoned.
The seven men followed him, a man in camel-hair suit with salt-and-pepper hair immaculately groomed, a back ramrod straight, one who spoke with precisely-enunciated words. Yul already had a bad feeling about this meeting and mission.
They assembled in a lavish reception room. It was a board room of sorts—with an opulence that made anything they’d seen so far look like plain poverty—fluted marble pillars supporting a cathedral ceiling, a crystal chandelier sparkling like diamonds over a polished mahogany table, state-of-the-art wide holoscreen displays, one-hundred-year-old whiskey waiting in a hand-painted glass decanter, the vintage bottle on deliberate display. The commanding presence quietly closed the door.
“I’m sure you’re all familiar with The Dim Zone, gentlemen? Ever hear of an obscure little planet, Xeses?” Mathias’s glittering eyes and shark-like grin did not set Yul’s nerves at ease.
THE DIM ZONE
BOOK II
Chapter 1
The planet’s horizon showed as a sepia smudge in the near distance. A small planet by most standards, thought Yul, lighter of atmosphere, half of his home planet’s gravity.
He stared over the drab terrain. His wrist brushed over the blaster at his hip and he felt sweat budding under his thermal suit. His faceplate misted with grey steam from his breath. Tucked under an armpit he carried a bulky glass container for collecting samples. His matted hair itched like the devil, plastered as it was to his neck. It was warm here, even by his standards—Xeses, this alien planet, too close to the young sun that nourished it.
Brown shrubs and prickly thickets pocked the landscape. One could never be too sure what dangers lurked on these uncharted worlds. Various cases of mishaps on remote excursions were not uncommon. Equipment failure, oxygen-tank leaks, explosions, freak accidents, dangerous atmospheric conditions, wild animal attacks.
He flexed his shoulder muscles, squatted to stretch his knees, studying what might be aquatic life in the shallow puddles that lay before him. Oddly his limbs could already feel the stiffness from his long trek from the Lander VI spacecraft. Occasional pools of shimmering water glimmered jungle green in the distance. Bubbles oozed from the muck. He and Hurd and Regers could only safely venture a few miles distance from their parked vessel, the soft ground mushing more and more under their space boots. The ground was treacherous, too risky for a closer landing.
Regers, brisk and wild-eyed and looking slightly off, appeared bulkier in his suit than in reality. He trudged to his right, holding a life sensor apparatus, a black box with sliders and dials. Hurd, in charge of ship’s tactical, took up the rear, a lean man whose pale complexion often mirrored his mood. Three intense, dispossessed men, sent on a lonely mission far across the galaxy.
And yet, Mathias, the smooth-talking industrialist who had approached them a few weeks earlier, had assured them that nothing dangerous existed on this remote world—Mathias, the same man who ran a successful cybernetic company out of Phallanor, a few hundred light years away. “Bring back anything exotic or interesting. Especially plants.” Those were Mathias’s exact words. “The more you can carry, ie plants, the more we’ll credit you for.”
Provocative promises, thought Yul. But he couldn’t refuse the impressive stipend the billionaire had offered. Hundreds of thousands of yols to split amongst them, depending on the quality and number of plants they brought back.
The details why this planet had been chosen, Mathias had not specified. Yul had not objected to this world or the region out in a far corner of space, The Dim Zone, home to untold, unexplored planets and feral alien pirates, most notably the Zikri and the insectoid Mentera. He was getting paid handsomely. It was enough.
Some three miles from the lander, the trio slogged through knee-high ferns with broad green leaves bearing red and yellow stripes, their light silver suits swishing in the alien foliage.
Regers stopped, a strident buzzing emanating from his sensor. “Hold up. Got something.” He knelt, lifted a tough frond and twisted off one of the pods that hung from its tip. Holding it up to his visor, he studied it like a monkey eyeing a banana.
Yul stooped to stroke one of the alien pods with his gloved hand. It seemed to quiver with a strange energy.
“Take these ones?” Hurd paused, squinting, a hard, strident gust rasping through his com.
Regers continued to examine the pear-like pod with an air of distaste. The mottled patches on its surface seemed to irk him. “What about these buds on the ends?” he grunted.
Yul tipped back his head. “Throw them in. Mathias’ll pay well for them.”
“They’re hardly buds,” scoffed Hurd. “Some type of husk or pod.” He wrinkled his nose and flicked his squirrel-like eyes over the specimens.
“Whatever. You carry them.” Regers tossed the pods, which floated dream-like in the lower gravity to thud against Hurd’s chest.
Yul carefully tucked three pods into the corner of the covered bin he carried and moved it closer to take the plants, soil and all.
The roots of these ferns, for lack of a better word, seemed very short, stubbed with bulbs or nodules like small potatoes on the ends. Probably the low gravity had allowed them to survive with minimal root span. A plant such as this didn’t need
