Derek’s environment suit creaked and hissed as he clambered awkwardly down the moss covered slope. Vines coiled around his boots with each step, snagging his ankles, constantly threatening to trip him and send him toppling head first towards the valley floor. A fall was the thing that all of the explorers feared the most. The environment suits were sturdy, but something about the atmosphere of this new planet made their joints brittle. They wheezed and groaned more than they should, and sometimes stiffened unexpectedly. Worst of all, the face-plates had become prone to cracking at the slightest impact. The soft crinkling of the plastic, the sudden whistle as the pressurised air escaped, these were the sounds that death made on this planet on the far side of everything.
They had planned to use the suits only for the first few weeks, whilst they bodies adjusted to a new gravity and they convinced themselves that there were no dangerous toxins or virii lurking in what should have been fresh, clean, compatible air. A few weeks. That’s what it should have been.
Six months into the mission, however, and the planet still had surprises for them.
As the resident xeno-biologist, it was supposed to be Derek’s job to catalogue the flora and fauna, in particular the vegetation. He had predicted viable food sources, even possible bio-fuels. So far, he had held only a single piece of native vegetation with an ungloved hand, and had spent three days in the infirmary as a result. As best he could now guess, the entire planet was completely toxic to human life.
A thriving eco-system, full of seemingly boundless life and variety, and all of it poison.
Derek suspected that was the reason they had just started calling it “the planet”. “New Earth” somehow stuck in the throat now. It was also the reason that all of them, with the exception of the Captain, had stopped sending messages home. What could make you send a message across the cosmos if all it was going to say was “We failed, you’re all doomed.”
For all Derek knew, Earth was dead by now anyway. Either that, or Earth had abandoned its explorers and gone on to “Plan B”, whatever that might have been. In either case, the seven of them were the last humans that Derek was ever likely to see and, to him, that made them the last seven humans in the entire universe.
The environment suit pinged, and a green dot floated across Derek’s heads-up display.
“Finally,” he muttered. He had been searching for the ship’s engineer, Peter “Heavy” Hudson, for two hours; ever since Hudson’s location beacon had vanished from the ships radar, along with his vital signs.
The ankle joints of the suit cracked and gasped as Derek dropped the last few inches off the mossy slope to the valley floor. Beneath his feet, the crushed vegetation let out a tiny cloud of mustard yellow spores. Derek knew the spores well. It was the spores that had put him in the infirmary, it was the spores that caked every seam and joint of his environment suit. It was the spores that had fried the insides of the ships main drive, making escape from the planet impossible.
What Derek couldn’t work out was why every plant, every flower and creeper and vine and fungus on this whole planet released the same yellow spores. Yellow spores, everywhere he looked. Yellow spores, slowly encrusting everything.
Except, it wasn’t everything, Derek knew that.
It was just them. Just the humans
Derek headed towards the green dot, carefully stepping over the gnarled roots and twisted vines. The yellow spores, seemingly caught his wake, drifted along behind him, landing one by one onto the environment suit.
Crack, hiss, pop.
Crack, hiss, pop.
Derek might have found the sounds of his suit comforting, like listening to summer rain on a rooftop, if he hadn’t been so terrified.
Peter “Heavy” Hudson had been sixteen pounds over flight weight on the day of the launch. They had all known about his weight issues, and his appalling impulse control. They were indulgences the mission team would never had allowed, had it not been for the fact that half the technology in the ship was Hudson’s design. They all knew that if they had a chance of getting from one side of the universe to another, any chance at all, it was only with Hudson on board.
Two days before the launch, he’d given the mission a four thousand three hundred and twenty one to one against chance of success. Derek had made a note of it, it was the lowest odds that Hudson had ever given and he gave odds on everything.
Derek tried not to guess what the odds were that Hudson was still alive.
Rounding the corner, he got his answer. Hudson was sitting in a small clearing of four inch high, dew kissed grass, strew with mustard yellow topped mushrooms. Sitting cross legged, letting a thin mist of yellow spores settle gently on him. Sitting with his helmet on the floor next to him.
“Hudson!”
Derek’s voice rattled the intercom as he reflexively called out his team mate’s name. Without his helmet on, Derek couldn’t be sure if Hudson had heard him or not.
Derek raced awkwardly across the small clearing. The right knee joint of his environment suit let out a loud crack and refused to bend, leaving him dragging one stiff leg behind him. He couldn’t hear any air leaving the suit, but over the sound of his own ragged breathing in his ears it was hard to tell. The suits amplified everything that you didn’t want to hear.
“Hudson!”
The engineer slowed turned, cocking his head as if the sounds of Derek crashing across the clearing were coming from somewhere much further away. His eyes finally focussed on Derek, a broad smile creasing his wide face. His eyes were glazed over, a mist turning them entirely white. Juice from the yellow capped mushrooms ran from his lips and dripped from his chin.
Derek came to a juddering halt.
“What are you doing, Hudson? Get your helmet back on!”
Hudson raised his hand, and offered Derek a palm full of half chewed mushrooms.
“Mush … room?” he slurred.
Derek jabbed the radio controls on the forearm of his suit. Static filled him helmet, as if every joint and seal of his suit had burst at once. Whatever had blocked Hudson’s locator was blocking Derek’s radio as well.
“Damn, damn,” Derek muttered, switching off the radio. He grabbed Hudson by the hand, scattering the half eaten mushrooms. Something squealed in his shoulder joint as he tried to haul the corpulent engineer to his feet. “Come on Heavy, help me out,” Derek gasped.
“Mush … room?” Heavy asked again, groping with his free hand in the grass for more of the mysterious fungi. “Mush … room?”
Derek lost his grip on Heavy and stumbled backwards. His boots slithered underneath him on the wet grass, refusing to grip and, for a moment, the suit didn’t make a sound at all. Derek held his breath as he felt his centre of gravity shift, and he knew that he was falling.
With a thud, Derek landed flat on this back. He didn’t breath out, didn’t dare, concentrating instead on listening intently for any sound of air escaping his suit, any hint that the fragile plastic face plate might have cracked.
He didn’t hear Hudson plodding closer, and he didn’t see Hudson pick up the twisted branch from the ground. He didn’t hear the strange, alien sounds that came from the engineer as he crept closer to him. He didn’t see the cloud of spores that burst from the mushrooms that littered the floor rush into Hudson’s nose and mouth.
All he heard, was a crinkling of plastic crumpling under pressure.
All he heard, was a thin hiss as the safe, clean air of his environment rushed out.
All he could see was a thin silver spiderweb, growing across his field of vision as his faceplate cracked.
When Hudson’s shadow fell over Derek, it was almost a relief.
He held out a handful of mushrooms again, and cocked his head to one side. When he spoke, it wasn’t with his voice, but none of his normal inflection or personality. It was as if someone else was speaking, someone else who had slipped on a suit made out of Hudson and was slowing getting used to the way that it moved, to the way that Hudson’s bones and muscles and skin popped, and wheezed, and groaned.
“It tastes … it tastes … tastes … a little like … grilled cheese …”
The mushrooms fell through the air, a rain of partly masticated fungus, as the thing in the Hudson suit raised the tree branch over its head.
Inside the suit, Derek closed his eyes and listened as the gentle rain of pops and cracks became a thunderstorm.
