Gabe waved it away.
“I know. I’m just kidding.”
He took a deep breath.
“Maybe—”
The AI appeared to be in a black box with curved edges. The box was set inside a metal container.
We checked the galley and the washroom, but of course neither contained anything of interest other than the remains of a completely withered magazine in a holder.
There were two storage cabinets in the rear. We’d just opened one when Belle broke in:
I took the blaster out of my belt and tried to move Gabe away from the hatch, which was now just a large opening. But he wasn’t going to allow a woman to take the lead. “Wait,” I told him.
A picture blinked on inside my helmet, sent by Belle. The shrubs surrounding us appeared to have come to life. Vines were moving, pods expanding and contracting almost as if they were breathing. said Gabe. He had his back to me and was holding on to seats on either side and standing so I couldn’t even see past him. Finally he edged over. he said.
Tendrils were creeping in through the air lock.
“That doesn’t look good.”
Gabe got his blaster out and looked down at the moving vegetation. He got within a step or two before one of them whipped around his right ankle and brought him down hard. He pulled the trigger and blew away most of what remained of the air lock. A cluster of vines and branches immediately began to crowd through. I put my own blaster back in my belt, grabbed the cutter, and tried to use it to free him. Belle was telling us both to stop, to get away from the open hatch. The vines were coming after us quicker than I could slice through them. A couple of them wrapped around my wrist and I lost the weapon.
Gabe yelled,
Belle didn’t have a cutter. There were no weapons, of any kind, mounted on the lander.
The vines dragged me forward, off my feet. I fell backward. Their grip tightened and they pulled both of us into a tangle of moving shrubbery. More of the stuff was coming through the opening. Vines closed on my throat and my right arm. Gabe had gotten hold of something and was resisting while I was dragged over him. They weren’t all pulling in the same direction. Some were trying to drag me directly forward across the deck and onto the ground outside the blown hatch. Others, hanging vines, were also trying to get me through the hatch, but they were coming in from the trees. The lower appendages released me and I was lifted toward the top of the air lock. My oxygen tanks banged against the overhead.
Gabe was calling to me to look out, but I couldn’t see anything other than a sky full of vines and creepers. The vines were trying to get my shoulders through the area where the outer hatch had been. I heard Gabe’s cutter.
And the light faded.
XXI.
.
When I saw light again I was still airborne. But it was Gabe who had hold of me, not the vegetation. The lander was just off to the side, where it had set down and crushed some of the shrubbery. Gabe sounded desperate:
“Yeah. I’m all right.” I inadvertently pushed him away in another effort to get rid of the vines that had been strangling me. But they were gone. Whatever was left was dead, just hanging from my arms and throat. He set me on the ground and I lay there sucking in air, terrified something was about to seize me again. I tried to get to my feet, but I was too shaky. Behind us, one of the shrubs looked crushed. It was dead on the ground, its appendages scattered in all directions, and most of them unmoving. A pod near its center had burst open and spilled something that might have been pus into the soil.
The lander’s air lock opened.
Gabe helped me get to my feet and half carried me inside. The hatch closed behind us. he asked.
“Yeah.” As far as I could tell, nothing was broken. He got me through the inner door and let me rest while he restored the air pressure. “Belle,” I said. “Get us off the ground.”
I wasn’t sure she’d be able to. Vines and branches surrounded the lander. But we lifted off. Despite a couple of bumps, we continued up and I breathed easier when it became clear we’d broken free. Gabe got out of his suit. Then he helped me with mine. “What happened?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do a thing. Couldn’t do anything. Belle got us clear.”
“Belle? How’d she do that?”
“She took the lander up and brought it down on top of that thing. Crushed it. Whatever it was.”
Of course she had. Where was my head? “Belle,” I said. “You okay?”
“Thank you.”
“I’m fine. Maybe we should get out of here.”
said Belle.
My hip was hurting and my neck felt as if it was several centimeters longer than normal. “It’s a good thing we were wearing the suits,” said Gabe. “Otherwise I don’t think we’d have made it.”
I could see bruises on his neck and arms, and he began pressing his ribs and making faces. “You sure you’re okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ve been worse.”
I just sat there with my eyes closed and my head back while Belle took us well above the treetops.
Gabe was moving around in his seat, trying to get comfortable. “I hate leaving here,” he said. “I wish we had a way to do a serious search. There might be some documents on board, something we could recover and take back with us. We didn’t even get the jacket.”
“You want to go back?” I asked. It was a joke, of course.
He laughed. “I can live without the jacket.”
I’d been afraid we were going to find out the plant, whatever it was, had done some damage to the lander. I sat examining the controls. Everything appeared normal.
Belle said.
Gabe was looking down through his window. “There’s another one on top of the ship. I don’t know where that came from.”
I didn’t like being the reason we were pulling away from what might have been a major discovery. “If we went back, we wouldn’t be taken by surprise again. We could go in with the blasters and take out the damned things.” I became aware I didn’t know where my blaster was. “Uh-oh.”