6 Sam
Everything was happening so damn fast. I felt like I barely left Earth and now I was well on my way to some moon I never even knew about so I could prove myself to a bunch of snotty researchers. I wanted to discover something useful. Maybe then people wouldn’t look at me like an imposter. Without Innifer, I felt like my identity had been stripped away and that was just pathetic. I needed to be important without her.
I stared at my sketch of the plant in my hands and started to recall all the terrible things it did to me. Its pollen had made me nauseous. Feverish. Irritable. It made it hard to breathe. It made my eyes itch. I’d never had allergies in my life let alone ones so severe and if other people with worse allergies ever wanted to hop planets, I could be the one to make it safe for them.
They were big dreams, but they were the only ones I had.
I’d studied other plants from Sylos to prepare my research. I knew which ones were potentially edible. Which ones were absolutely lethal and which ones could bite off a finger… because apparently, those existed. I knew a lot, but I had no hands-on experience so I was stuck with a lot of theories. Of course, now I knew we weren’t even going to Sylos, but I was hoping the plant life on Phesah would be similar if not the same as what I’d been studying.
The ship jerked a bit when we popped out of the jump gate. Windows on human ships were all live feeds. Everyone knew that. But on valerian ships, the windows were actual windows with radiation shields. I stared out into the diamond-speckled darkness for a couple of moments just to test my courage and then kept staring at my drawing when the ship’s speed picked up, trying to distract myself from the maw of space. But just knowing it was around us, big and endless and terrifying, made my foot bounce uncontrollably.
Across from me, Mr. Hemburg was putting a piece of gum in his mouth, watching me. I gave him a half smile and folded my sketch up, stuffing it in my pocket for safekeeping.
After a few hours in FTL, one of the valerians announced that we were approaching Phesah. Everyone started to get a little anxious. Some people looked excited and some were sweating nervously. I wondered how many people had ever even been to the Nexus let alone an exoplanet. I’d been to Sylos, but even I was dreading setting foot on an alien moon.
The captain, who also appeared to be the pilot, eased us out of FTL just in time for us all to get a glimpse of the moon from the giant front windows. It looked nothing like what I imagined it to look like. It was a beautiful black and purple color with tufts of white and gray scattered along its surface. Clouds, I gathered. It was a rocky moon from the looks of it and I could see what looked like patches of water winding through it like deep blue veins.
It was beautiful.
The same valerian warned of turbulence as we neared the moon’s atmosphere. I braced for something dramatic only to find that the trip was far smoother than any trip I’d taken so far. The pilot was good… or the ship was good. Either way, I didn’t feel like I was going to hurl. I did feel the need to shut my eyes though when I saw the familiar, fiery rush of burning gases wafting over the ship’s nose and over the windows. I hated that part. Even if I closed my eyes, all I could see were explosions and people being thrown across a cargo hold of that freighter.
When the worst of it was over and I felt the ship level out, I still didn’t want to look up. It wasn’t until I heard the childish gasps of the people around me that I finally pried my eyes open and peered out the window to see the first glimpse of Phesah’s surface.
And nothing could ever compare.
At first, we hovered over a flat cloud layer, but there were holes in the clouds through which I could see an array of dark colors. When the pilot dipped the ship’s nose and we started to soar toward the ground, it was like being on a ride in the wildest theme park in the world. I gripped my restraints and watched the ground grow closer. I saw black rocks, cliffs, and high, thin waterfalls flowing into winding rivers. Giant, umbrella-shaped canopies covered the span of a football field, skewing our view from high up, but the captain took us down into what looked like a giant, rocky clearing near a river.
My heart started to race knowing I was going to be stepping onto yet another alien world. For all I knew, I was allergic to everything there, but the breathing masks we were all provided were more than simple mouth covers. Once active, an entire transparent face cover conformed like a shell to the front of the face.
The moment I felt the ship touch down and stop moving, I was one of the first to undo my restraints and walk to the storage compartment. I wanted my OxyMask on my face as soon as possible.
My bag was marked with my initials on the strap and easy to find. I pulled it out and quickly grabbed my mask from the front pocket. It was a simple-looking black contraption that fit over the head to cover the mouth and nose. The button on the side activated the protective shell and was even equipped with readings on the glass for the wearer to see. If my heart rate started to go off the charts, I could tell. If my blood oxygen was low, I could tell that, too. Learning to wear the mask was part of our pre-trip training.
It would have been nice to have one when I was practically sneezing my guts out on Sylos a year ago.
“Alright, everyone. Listen up,” the captain spoke from the top of the steps.
All eyes turned in his direction. The rest of the valerian crew stood around casually, each of them a head taller than even the tallest person in our group. Two of them were females I gathered, judging from the slightly more slender, feminine shape of their bodies in the skin-tight suits. They were only an inch or two shorter than their three male companions and just as intimidating.
The captain gestured toward one of the females, who appeared to be the only one wearing a strange silver wristband with multiple little instruments magnetically fastened all around it like some kind of utility belt for the arm.
“This is Dr. Ilisa,” the captain continued. “She’ll need to measure your baseline vitals before we lower the ramp. We’re aware some of you might be under a bit of stress right now after entering the atmosphere of an alien moon. If you need a moment to breathe before heading to the base camp, take it.”
I took a couple of deep breaths as I watched Dr. Ilisa slowly make her way around to every human on the ship. She pulled off one of the slender, pen-shaped instruments from her utility bracer and pressed it to the underside of the first intern’s wrist for four seconds. At first, I thought she might be drawing blood, but when she drew back, there was nothing and she seemed to be reading something on a tiny screen also fastened to her bracer.
I didn’t understand alien tech, but if that was all she had to do to get my vitals, that was fine by me. I watched as she went from one person to the next until she finally reached me. My heart was still racing, but that was just excitement. When she pressed her little device against my wrist, I bit my lip, trying to slow my pulse a little. When the doctor looked at my readings, there was a very slight tilt in her head that made my paranoia scream inside me.
But then she moved on from me and walked to the next person, who apparently was Mr. Hemburg. He was barely a step to my left. I didn’t even notice him there. He offered his wrist, smacking his gum between his teeth like he’d done the procedure a hundred times.
Once the doctor had made her rounds, she gave the captain an approving nod, which the captain relayed to a man standing by the ramp controls.
“Masks on,” he ordered.
Nervously, everyone started sliding their masks onto their faces. On the side was a little knob that clicked in two directions. I turned it once and the transparent face shell emerged rapidly from the breather and covered my whole face. My hair was tied tightly into a low ponytail and the collar of my jumpsuit was zipped up under my chin. I also had a pair of gloves in my pack that I slid over my hands, telling myself that I wasn’t going to be touching anything with my bare fingers until we knew what it was.
When the ramp started to lower, there was a hydraulic hiss that echoed through the cabin. Then there was wind. A humid gust flew through the ship from outside, briefly fogging my visor. When the fog dissipated, little droplets of water were already sliding down my face shell.
When the captain said it was humid on Phesah, he wasn’t lying. Our suits were designed to filter out humidity and expel heat to keep us cool, so the full force of the moon’s climate was still a bit of a mystery to me.
Once the ramp touched the ground, the captain came marching down the steps and through the group of interns toward the exit. I turned toward him as he passed and when I did, his head snapped toward me. I couldn’t see his face, but I just knew his eyes were watching me through that black, tinted visor. We regarded each other for a moment before he reached the ramp and started to descend onto the flat, rocky clearing where he landed.
Slowly, people started to follow him outside.
Everyone was hesitant and cautious. Though many aspects of the alien moon looked Earthy, plenty of it didn’t. The colors were strange and the plants didn’t quite look real. Nothing on Phesah was green, which was not uncommon for planets orbiting dwarf stars. The plants needed to absorb much more light to thrive, which meant they came in dark shades from deep purple to wine to black. It was brilliant and surreal to see. Even the moss on the rocks where we were standing was a dark, bruise-purple.
To the left was a sheer drop about thirty feet from the ship where the rocks broke off into what seemed to be a river. The top of a waterfall plummeted from the cliff even further up from the clearing which sent a constant mist in our direction. Through my mask, I couldn’t smell anything, but a part of me wished I could. Despite my reactions to Sylos, there were still things about alien worlds that fascinated me beyond reason. I was a little caught up in it until I heard the captain’s voice again.
“Just through those trees is the base camp where you’ll all be staying for the next couple of days,” he explained. “Sleeping will be done on the ship to regulate your temperatures and protect you from nocturnal wildlife or weather conditions. You have about four hours to do your research before night falls.”
He turned and started heading toward the tree line and everyone followed, walking like they were drunk on the sights. So was I. It was hard to see where I was stepping when all I wanted to do was explore. The moon was a dream. It was like nothing I ever thought I’d see and yet there I was, walking on its surface. Me. A girl who practically grew up on the streets. Who didn’t think she’d make it to her twenty-fifth birthday. Who thought she’d be rotting in jail before she would be exploring alien worlds.
I was so deep in thought that I didn’t see Mr. Hemburg stop in front of me. I bumped right into his back and bounced back a step, embarrassed.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Mr. Hemburg.”
He turned to look down at me, casting a kind smile across his lips. “Please. Call me Michael. Mr. Hemburg is a mouthful, I know.”
“Sure.”
Looking around, I noticed we’d arrived at the base camp. It was well organized with three long tables covered in some kind of protective lining, a large tent made of some white, plastic-like material shaped into a dome, and washing stations. Everyone else was already exploring and I’d gotten distracted. Not a good start.
I stepped around Mr. Hemburg… er… Michael and started to look around at the base camp, seeing what we had at our disposal. There were some scientific instruments set out, which I was sure the valerians took as a nice gesture, but I doubted anyone knew how to use any of them.
I set my bag down on one of the tables and dug through the contents to find my data pad. I turned it on, signed into my notes, and logged the day and location to start. Then I slung my bag onto my back again and glanced up to see what everyone else was doing only to see him. The captain was looking at me again. Or so it seemed. He was leaning up against a thick tree trunk, arms crossed over his chest. I would have kept staring at him were I not instantly distracted by the trunk he was leaning on.
The tree was thick with vines that seemed fused into the bark in a vertical pattern. Higher up, beds of what looked like bright-white fungus grew in layers, swirling like a spiral staircase toward the top. The top itself was so much higher than I thought. My head craned back to see it only to realize the giant, black umbrellas we saw while we were descending to the clearing were the tree canopies.
And they were huge. The trunk’s thickness was slight in comparison to the massive top spread out above. And it touched the next tree a hundred feet away.
“Low light,” I muttered to myself. The dwarf star Sylos orbited was small with a reddish light that made day look like a sunset. Less light meant plants needed to be more efficient in absorbing it. “Amazing.”
The umbrellas certainly took up a lot of space like giant natural solar panels. That had to be it.
I almost tripped over my own feet trying to get a good look at the strange roof of the forest.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” a voice said.
Mr. Hemburg. He was right there again and when I almost tripped, his hands gripped my shoulders and stayed there. I tensed at his touch and sidestepped away.
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
“I’ve studied this moon quite a bit. I’ve never been here, but of course, I was digging for all the information I could find before we came. The valerians call the trees ‘yanuhe.’ If you look down,” he said, pointing at the forest floor. “You can see that as selfish as they might seem, taking up all the light, the roots go very far and it filters the energy into plants low to the ground.”
“Wow,” I breathed, immediately kneeling down on the soil to wipe my gloved hand through the moist dirt.
Just as he said, I found a spiderweb of roots tangled just underneath us.
“They attach to thicker roots which attach to massive roots,” he kept explaining. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
“That is incredible,” I smiled, looking up to see his face only inches from mine. Stunned, I sat up straight and cleared my throat. “I should record that.”
Picking up my data pad, I took a quick photo of the webby roots and logged it. Pretending to be far too distracted by the discovery, I turned away from Mr. Hemburg and went to take a photo of the tree itself. I snapped the photo before even realizing that the captain was still leaning against it. So, I’d snapped a photo of the captain and the tree. I gulped when he noticed me lowering my data pad. Shit, did he think I was trying to take a picture of him?
“Come on,” Mr. Hemburg said, placing a hand on my lower back. “Let’s get more work done before it gets dark. I’d be happy to help you.”
Awkwardly, I followed him into the woods where many of the other interns were headed, all being closely watched by our valerian escorts. I wasn’t keen on working with Mr. Hemburg. Not with the way he was acting. I was better at working solo, but I supposed he knew better than I did. He’d studied the moon intensely he said. And he knew what to look for and how to take proper samples. Learning from him would be incredibly beneficial.
But I was the only one he was offering his knowledge to. I passed Professor Fost and two other interns as we walked and the old woman gave me a look that swept straight to Mr. Hemburg’s hand on my back. I hated that. When we passed Candice, I smiled and she just crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes like she thought the worst of our pairing. I wanted to speak up and say something, but what would I say? What were they even thinking? That I was being favored in some way? I wanted to believe he was going to show everyone a bit of special attention on our trip. We all looked up to him enough. We all wanted to learn.
According to the readings in my helmet, we’d been on Phesah for a little over an hour and just like the captain said, the doctor was working her way around to take everyone’s vitals. So far so good. No one was reacting badly to the environment and everyone seemed to be consumed with their work. Heavy conversation echoed all around as people bounced theories and ideas off each other and squealed about seeing new things. Sample jars were being filled left and right and people were jotting notes on their data pads faster than I’d ever seen anyone do at the university.
Mr. Hemburg was never more than a few steps away and every time he spoke to me, I’d catch someone tossing me a judgmental look like I was the class slut. Girls all looked at me the same like I was stealing something from them. And men usually looked at me like I was giving them something. Which was why I didn’t have friends.
Except for Innifer.
And Thomas.
I huffed outwardly at my inner frustrations and continued working. While I roamed, I found a few strange plants I really wanted to study. Mainly the moss growing on the rocks. It was almost black, like everything else on that moon, but I noticed it was only growing in the grooves of the stone and not in the soil. I followed a vein of it all the way back to the edge of the stone cliff overlooking the river and found myself peering over into a sparkling body of moving water. Droplets peppered my mask and cool gusts of humid air rushed up toward me, blowing stray strands of hair around my head.
The way the light was on Phesah, all reddish and soft, made the water look like fire. Glancing back down at the black stone under my feet and then at the sparse bits of fog sitting low against the banks of the river, I put the pieces together. The moon was volcanic. The very rock we were standing on had to be something like obsidian, which explained how slick and dark it was.
I hoped I was right, but to test my theory, I decided to crouch down for a sample of the moss in hopes of knowing more about the plant’s environmental needs. Maybe everything relied on the volcanic setting.
Or maybe my ideas would lead nowhere and I was just reaching in the wrong direction.
With a tiny jar full of dark moss, I stood with my pack by my feet and took a slow turn around to look at the strange, alien, and yet gorgeous landscape. The fog sat low as far as the eye could see and those weird, giant umbrella trees were each tall enough to breach the surface of the heavy clouds. It made the terrain look like a white ocean with blackish-purple domes scattered throughout. From directly above, it was near impossible to know how much life thrived beneath the cloud cover and mist.
I peeled my eyes from the landscape to pop a cork on my little moss sample. As I crouched to put it in a safe compartment in my bag, I saw the captain emerging from the woods. Unlike the other crewmen, his suit wasn’t just a bodysuit. He had a jacket over the suit itself, which had a strange, asymmetrical hem to it that wrapped two-thirds of the way around. It was weirdly dashing on his long, athletic frame.
I was staring.
I told Thomas that Saleuk wasn’t attractive a thousand times. Truthfully, all of the valerians had the body of a god. It came with well-developed genetics and training I supposed. Humans were so damn content with their luxuries that most of them never paid any attention to their physique, but valerians were fresh from war and possibly heading into a new one. They had to stay trained. Stay alert. They couldn’t afford to be a liability to their people and there was something very admirable about that.
Being a liability myself for most of my life, I felt like I could see things with a bit more clarity than I could before.
It wasn’t until the captain stopped at one of the landing legs of the ship that I realized he had caught me staring. I stared right back as he leaned up against the ship and crossed his arms. His head cocked and though I still couldn’t see his face, I could imagine a smirk behind that visor.
I slung my pack onto my back again and took a couple of daring steps toward him.
“I know you don’t need that helmet,” I said, calling him out on the lie. “I know you can breathe our air and you can probably breathe here.”
“Helmet’s a precaution,” he said.
“So you can’t breathe here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I nodded, disbelieving. “This place is beautiful. Why isn’t your base here instead of Sylos?”
“The plant life is too aggressive. Anything we clear out to build grows back twice as fast and twice as thick.” He turned and pointed out toward the horizon. “There was a research colony built over there a long time ago. In Earth years, I’d estimate about fifty. The forest peeled apart the buildings like it was mad we’d settled there. And unlike humans, valerians learn fast.”
I narrowed my eyes at the cocky captain. “Do they? Because I thought you guys overharvested your first homeworld until it was almost uninhabitable.”
He cocked his head in the other direction. “Right… and we learned that’s bad and colonized other planets better. More efficiently. Valer is still habitable, by the way. Well, now it is.”
“Of course. But considering how old the human race is compared to valerians, I think we deserve a little slack.”
“We’ll see.”
Were there any valerians who didn’t want to push my buttons? The captain was reminding me too much of Saleuk. Too much. I pursed my lips and pivoted to head back into the woods, but my curiosity got the better of me. Annoying or not, I had questions.
“So, you know about this place, right?”
The captain stood up straight and rolled his shoulders like he was feeling a bit stiff.
“Of course, I do.”
“So, are there volcanos here?”
“Wouldn’t that information have been in the files you were all supposed to read?” I gave him a look like I really wasn’t in the mood to dance around answers. “Yes, this moon is full of volcanos. Most of which are dormant. But there was a time that they weren’t, which accounts for the black stone,” he said, tapping his foot on the ground beneath us.”
“Obsidian.”
“Sure.”
“That’s incredible.”
A low chuckle vibrated from the captain’s mask before he muttered something in his valerian tongue.
“What’d you just say?”
“Nothing, geshi.”
Canting my head, I shifted my weight to one leg, popping my hip out like I used to when I was going to stand up to someone. But I digressed, putting a lid on the temper I swore I wouldn’t let get the best of me anymore.
“Sam,” someone said. “A word?”
I spun to find Mr. Hemburg waving me over, his hands resting on his hips. Excitement and dread clashed inside me. Excitement to work with such a renowned researcher and dread that working with him would send all the wrong signals to my classmates.
Shit.
I glanced at the captain as I slowly backed toward Mr. Hemburg.
“As fulfilling as this little conversation could have been, I have research to do,” I said flatly.
“Stay close,” he said as I made my way toward the woods.
The way he said it, though, was a little chiding.
Annoying.