Yul toiled on while Hurd collected air samples in several canisters, to keep the specimens alive on the ship. Let Mathias worry about keeping them alive after delivery.
The harsh daylight dimmed as the sun dipped behind some low clouds, or what looked like wispy, atmospheric moisture. The three had collected about thirty plants in all and as many pods. The few trees here, odd sculpted ones with yellow cones, looked out of place; some were ragged and bushy with gel-like masses hanging from their ends, as if heavy with snow. The terrain was otherwise an empty shrubland, a barren moors with scattered pools. No movement of any kind graced the landscape. Windless wilds sheltering any number of mysteries. No other apparent life forms. Again Yul asked himself why Mathias had chosen this desolate locale. No answer came. The baking heat was diminishing as the sun crept towards the east in Xeses’s retrograde rotation.
A sudden flicker caught Yul’s eye. A large butterfly landed on one of the hanging pods, to extract juices with an extended proboscis. More a grey moth with four wings than a butterfly, about the length of his index finger.
He reached to grab a sample bottle from his kit. With a wild glint in his eye, Regers tore it from his grasp and blundered forward to ensnare the folded winged thing. Overshooting his mark, he stumbled headlong into the ferns and frightened the insect off.
“You bloody fool,” Yul cursed. He snatched up the sample jar. “That bug could be worth a lot of money.”
Regers scowled with sullen displeasure. He seemed antsy, as if eager to get this job over and get back to the ship. The suit could not hide Yul’s irritation; his massive chest, the accusing eyes and muscular arms that lurked under that light protective outerwear, prompted Regers to back off.
Yul turned from Regers to watch the moth in curious fascination. The large, bulbous middle twitched, and four wavy wings fluttered with back fin to guide it like a helicopter. It landed on another pod several feet away. He approached it with stealth; on a sudden downswing of his bottle, he closed the lid from underneath and secured the insect. The moth’s proboscis dug into the plant leaf which had torn free. The moth happily sucked on it.
Yul gusted a satisfied breath. It had been a three-mile trudge through this treacherous terrain. Easy to get lost here without landmarks. Fortunately the lander came equipped with a built-in homing beacon. Yul had programmed it for all three of them, in the event they got lost or separated.
Hurd peered at the few bins of plants. His blue eyes narrowed in scepticism. “Mathias will want more samples than this.”
“We can’t risk being down here for too long,” Yul warned. “Albatross is crippled and I don’t like leaving her in the hands of Frue and Greer. Besides, Mathias was specific about the area. We got the plants he wanted—I think.”
Regers raised an angry hand. “If you’d listen to me, it’d be those two idiots, Frue and Greer, collecting odds and sods instead of us.”
Yul shook his head. “We argued enough about this, deciding who was going planetside. Let’s live with it.”
“Frue, the little baby, he whines like a—”
Yul cut Regers off. “If we need to, we’ll make a second trip down. For now, we’ve secured some plant life, so Mathias can’t squawk too loudly.” He pursed his lips, pondering Mathias’s cryptic words. There was much he wished he had asked the man earlier that he hadn’t. Like why come all the way out here for some plants? They could have brought scientists along to study the flora, eggheads more suited for collecting and codifying. He suspected Mathias had hired them more for their muscle than anything. Nevertheless...a nagging feeling tugged at Yul, one of those gut instincts that told him something was about to go strangely wrong.
The three slogged their way back to the lander. Hurd slipped twice, once almost into a fermenting, slimy pool, earning Regers’ laughter, but Yul only cursed out a warning. Regers was out of line. He was worried about any damage to the samples that had taken much effort to obtain. Stupid to come all this way and have nothing to show for it. Already Hurd’s ferns were drooping.
Wait, could they actually be moving? He shook his head, stared at them, then blinked. Only his imagination. Hurd’s jerky hops had the leaves quivering. Doubtless these plants experienced little to no change in their environment. Important that they survive until they get them back to Mathias’s cybernetics lab on Phallanor, the far side of Arcturus.
Regers remained smug over his initial discovery, strutting and hopping with his shorter stride. He removed himself from the task of carrying the bulky containers and clutched the sensor box in a loose grip. His eyes glazed as if he were stoned. The color in his face shone a waxy grey, beads of sweat dripping down his narrow cheeks. In sour silence, Yul and Hurd carried the samples, happy to be relieved of this chore as soon as possible. All over once they got back to the lander. He regretted that the electric cart that Mathias had supplied to transfer the samples was insufficiently designed to handle this soggy, rough terrain.
He paused and looked back. A new frown furrowed his brow. Strange that there wasn’t any larger animal presence here. The atmosphere was near poisonous, but the flora seemed rich enough. What lurked in the pools, he daren’t guess. One shimmered with a strange iridescence at his feet. He stooped to stir in the muck, using a twig from one of the sparse and stunted
