"Isn’t that a little premature?" Grishnag put her hand on Dylan’s shoulder and steered him back to the door leading from the mess hall into the corridor. "Sure, it’s unpleasant, but as long as we’re careful, we’ll be okay."

"Sorry, honey," Cora said, "but we don’t know enough about what happened. I’d prefer not to keep poking around over there until we’ve at least taken a look at the flight recorder, ship’s logs, and medical reports. Even fifty years ago, our ships had failsafe and lockdown procedures. Foreign objects like those vines should’ve set them off automatically as soon as they sprouted from that seed, but those things took over the ship and infected the crew anyway."

"I’m with Cora," Dylan said. "We can’t guarantee those spores won’t find some way to get inside our spacesuits."

"Fair enough. If there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that the lack of information can kill you." Grish gave his shoulder a pat and nudged him toward the doorway before pushing a foot against the edge of a table and following him. She flicked a hand toward the vines covering the walls, ceiling, and floor. "And now I’m even more nervous about those damned things than ever."

"That’s exactly why I want everyone out of there," Cora said. "We can send remote-piloted probes back to the Vancouver after we check the logs if it looks too dangerous for living people."

"Understood," Ralissa said. "Lorkis and I are heading for the computer core. We’ll return to the flight deck as soon as we’ve extracted the core. Fortunately, it’s between us and the flight deck. Should just take us a few minutes. Lorkis, you scanned some of those spores before we boarded the ship, right?"

"Yes."

"Send the data to the Jemison. We want to be sure the internal sensors and medical equipment can detect them in case any of them did work their way into our suits, somehow."

"I’m on it. Horrifying thought, though."

Dylan activated his suit thrusters and dialed them down to the power level they’d used in the training sessions, just enough to keep moving forward without touching the vines, but not enough to splatter him into any of the surfaces ahead.

"Data received," Cora said. "Configuring the airlock sensors and medical scanners now."

"I’m coming up behind you," Ayastal said, and Dylan glanced down to find her drifting toward him and Grish.

"Scanners are all set," Cora said. "The airlock’s already set up for the highest-level decontamination. Once you’re past that stage, you’ll take a sealed corridor to the medical bay and go straight into the isolab so we can be absolutely sure you’re clean. I’ll have a swarm of our micro-mech units sterilize the corridors after you’ve reached the isolab."

"Good." Grish moved ahead of Dylan and entered the flight deck. "We can’t afford even a single spore getting loose on our ship."

Dylan’s gaze flicked toward the cloud of black specs hanging in the air as he followed her through the door and fired his thrusters to stop his forward motion. He shivered and crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to his wives and their passengers if the Jemison were contaminated, but couldn’t stop himself.

The next few minutes dragged by. Kolya and Donovan joined them, and more minutes slogged away. Finally, Dylan caught a glimpse of helmet spotlights at the far end of the corridor and turned to find Ralissa and Lorkis propelling themselves toward the command module. The serpentoid kid had the computer core, roughly the size of an early twenty-first-century car battery, clamped in his lower arms.

"Everyone into the airlock." Grishnag maneuvered herself back into the corridor, turned to the hatch on the right, and waited for everyone to dart past her. Once the whole team was in the airlock, she followed them inside, closed the hatch, and nodded at Dylan. He opened the outer hatch and led everyone outside.

"Shame we couldn’t keep looking around," Kolya said, "but it’s best not to take any chances. I’m hoping we can come back, though."

"We’ll see," Cora said. "All you guys need to do is push off the hull. The rotation isn’t enough to fling you out into space, so don’t panic. You’ll be able to regain control easily enough with your suit thrusters. I’m sending a waypoint to your HUDs so you won’t have any trouble finding your way back to the airlock."

"Thanks, babe." Dylan braced his feet against the hull, jumped, and sailed away from the Vancouver. He turned to keep an eye on the rest of the team as they leaped off the hull. "Everybody, get clear of the ship before the far end swings around, or you’ll get whacked like a baseball."

They rocketed away from the ship and regrouped around him. He turned and put the waypoint in the center of his HUD.

Donovan let out a long sigh. "Let’s get the hell out of here."

***

"And … decontamination finished. You’re clear." Cora turned from the console to smile through the window at the team. Everyone in the airlock let out a relieved sigh and sagged against the walls. Except for Lorkis, who slumped over to the floor and popped the latches on his helmet. He pulled it off, set it aside, and started dragging himself over to the wall.

Kolya and Donovan helped slide him over. He smiled and thanked them as he propped himself against the wall and released the latches around his waist.

"That’s the downside to being in a spacesuit. As long as I’ve got this thing covering me, I can’t slither."

"That’s the first thing Nishara said when she started the EVA training a few months ago," Dylan said with a quick laugh.

Lorkis chuckled, took off the top part of his suit, and started wriggling out of the lower. Everyone else removed their spacesuits and Cora walked over to smile at Dylan, Grish, and Ayastal. She placed her metal hand on the window and each of them took a moment to mirror the gesture and smile back at her. She stepped aside so the rest of her wives could greet them.

"Okay," she said when they’d finished, "let’s clear the road for them. We’ll take a different route to the med-bay and wait for them to arrive."

"See you in a few minutes," Dylan said as they filed out of the room and headed for the medical bay.

Cora led the others into the main bay and everyone gathered outside the isolab. A door on the opposite side opened and the exploration team entered.

"I used my wireless connection to set everything up. Just stand in the scanner and it’ll run automatically."

Grishnag nodded and walked over to step into the booth in the right-hand corner. The sensors moved slowly over her, scanning every square millimeter of her body all the way to the insides of her bones. After nearly ten minutes, the scan finished and the results came over Cora’s wireless link. She broke into a huge grin.

"You’re clean!"

Grishnag released a long sigh as she vacated the booth and Ayastal squeezed into it. Cora repeated the procedure while Grish stepped out of the isolab and exchanged hugs and kisses with her wives. After Ayastal’s scan finished, the rest took her place one by one. Finally, all of them had been cleared.

"You had us all worried," Nishara said as she kissed Dylan and embraced him for a long moment.

"I think we were all pretty nervous, ourselves." He rubbed her back slowly before she slid over to give Grishnag a hug and kiss. "I have no idea what those spores did to the Vancouver’s crew, but I know I wouldn’t want it happening to any of us."

Lorkis placed the computer core on one of the beds and glanced around at everyone. "Shall we see if we can find out what we’re dealing with?"

Cora nodded and waved a hand at the door. "Yes, let’s do that."

***

"Let’s see what we’ve got." Cora tapped a button and the flight recorder’s menu appeared in the holofield. She selected the final entry and a set of windows appeared, displaying feeds from the Vancouver’s internal cameras.

Everyone else gathered around the circular console on the Mae Jemison’s flight deck and stared at the images. Kolya found Donovan glancing down at himself and brushing his palms over his arms as if trying to dislodge more of those spores. Even after the decontamination -- the most thorough Kolya had ever gone through -- and the following medical examination, he was probably still worried that something might’ve been missed.

Kolya certainly was, herself. It was like walking through a spider web, clawing it off, and then wondering if there might be a spider skittering around under her shirt.

"This one’s in the med-bay." Cora selected the first window and playback started. A man with those weird ridges under his skin lunged against the transparent wall between the isolab and the rest of the med-bay. His eyes were open wide and his mouth twisted into a crazed rictus. He stumbled back and threw himself into the wall again -- and then again and again.

Behind him, strapped to a bed, another man alternated between screaming and coughing up clumps of black spores. He thrashed and strained against the straps. The ridges under his skin were less pronounced than the others, but Kolya doubted he’d stayed that way.

All the other beds in the isolab were vacant, but the straps on one had been torn loose.

Kolya shivered. Donovan slipped his arm around her and she leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder.

Playback stopped. Cora shook her head slowly and selected the next window.

Another crew member ran through a corridor with those alien vines covering every surface. He tripped over one and sprawled face-down. As he pushed himself back up, another infected man lurched out from a doorway, grabbed him, and clamped his hand over the man’s mouth. He tried to pull away, but couldn’t break his assailant’s grip.

His eyes opened wide in sheer terror and his thrashing became more violent, but he still couldn’t break away.

He screamed suddenly -- and then he choked and retched. A small cloud of spores puffed out of his nostrils before the other man released him. He fell to the floor, gagging and clutching at his throat.

"Shit," Dylan whispered.

Cora stopped the playback and held his hand. Grishnag put her arms around him. Their wives hurried around the console to touch his shoulders, back, and hands.

Donovan shuddered and turned away from the image in the holofield. Kolya pulled him into an embrace. She wanted to tear her eye away from the rest of the files, but she remained transfixed as Cora closed the first two feeds and started up the third.

Shuttle bay. Two men stumbled across the floor and into the shuttle, followed by five others, all of whom had those ridges under their skin. Their uniforms and skin were covered with those spores.

Oh, hell. Those are the guys I found in the shuttle. Kolya pressed her lips together.

Three of the infected lumbered into the shuttle before the hatch closed. The floor opened and it lowered into the launch bay. Kolya could barely make out the men at the controls spinning around and throwing their arms up to defend themselves.

Two of the infected grabbed the man on the left and tried to drag him away from the console.

The third raised his hand, gripping a screwdriver, and plunged it into the other guy’s chest. Over and over, until he stopped screaming and slumped over the control panel.

Donovan moaned. He’d turned back to the projection in time to watch the man die. Kolya rubbed his back slowly.

Ralissa sobbed, and Kolya glanced over at her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared at the images.

In the current window, a sudden rush of air whipped through the shuttle bay and blew the spores off the two infected crew members still outside the shuttle. The wind stopped abruptly. The men turned quickly one way and then another, as if confused, and staggered back toward the inner door. About ten seconds later, they collapsed.

Cora continued watching for at least thirty seconds, but nothing else happened. She stopped the playback and closed the window.

"Unconscious in ten seconds after exposure to vacuum, about the same as humans. Whatever the spores did to them, it seemed to boost their strength, but didn’t make them any less vulnerable to lack of atmosphere."

"I think I’ve seen enough," Ralissa whispered before wiping tears from her face.

Cora nodded and closed the remaining windows. She pulled up a menu of the ship’s logs and selected the final entry. A woman’s quivering voice came from the speakers.

"This is co-pilot Justine Feldman. The rest of the crew are dead or infected. I’ve set course for the local star and destroyed the navigation system." She let out a long, wheezing, rattling cough. "I’m infected, too. I’ve got maybe a day before those things reach my brain and take over completely. I’ve … I’ve got to end it before that happens."

Donovan drew Kolya closer and squeezed his eyes shut. She did the same, and thought about leaving the flight deck with him before she could hear any more of the log.

"I’ve also started a reactor shutdown," Feldman continued after another coughing fit. "And after I finish this entry, I’m copying everything into a distress buoy and launching it. I have no idea where we are, but someone from home needs to find this, somehow. You need to know what happened. Don’t let it happen to anyone else. If something goes wrong and the Vancouver doesn’t reach the star … anyone who finds this ship, destroy it immediately. Do not attempt to board it. Don’t let those things reach any inhabited planet."

Another round of hacking and coughing followed before she regained enough control to continue.

"Dr. Justine F … Feldman … signing off."

"I’m not sure any of us even want to see the medical logs," Grishnag muttered.

Cora pulled up another file, keeping it in a small window directly in front of her, and read it.

"The gist of it is, the spores spread along the victims’ central nervous systems to their brains and take over. The medical officer said it’s not just controlling the body. It invades the brain, accesses memories, and overwhelms the victim’s thoughts. Destroys the personality, basically, while retaining access to whatever the victim knew. All that’s left is a husk controlled by whatever grew inside it." She closed the file. "Yeah. You definitely don’t want to hear the details."

Dylan and the others reached over to put their hands on her shoulders and back. She managed a shaky smile before continuing.

"The Vancouver must’ve passed through another rift before it could plunge into the star. Looks like the reactors finished their shutdown shortly after the ship pinged the jumpgate network. And … well, we know what Feldman did, probably right after she finished recording that last log."

Ralissa wiped away more tears. "I’ll send a copy of everything to Galactic Expeditions and recommend they scuttle the Vancouver. Just because you were able to get rid of all the spores during the decontamination procedure, that doesn’t mean someone else will be as lucky. All it’d take is decontamination equipment that’s not as advanced as yours, or a malfunction, or just a glitch in the software, and this could spread to a densely-populated planet."

"There are a half-dozen planets with large populations not too far from here," Syala said softly. "One of them is Tevsa. It’s got over ten billion people living on it."

Everyone nodded and stared silently at the holofield. Cora contemplated it for a few more seconds before speaking again.

"I’ll go over the rest of this information and decide whether we need to send any remote-operated probes to the Vancouver. It’s possible we have all the info we need right here." She closed all the files and turned the display off. "When I can stomach it, that is."

Zilaka leaned over to put her arms around Cora and nuzzle her cheek.

Kolya took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and broke the silence. "Well, while we’re waiting for an answer from Gal-Ex, maybe we can head down to the planet and take a look around? Maybe it’ll get our minds off what we just saw and remind everyone that not everything in the galaxy is an unspeakable horror."

"Good idea." Cora smiled. "After lunch, maybe Ralissa’s team can pick out one of the structures for us to explore. We can drop a few probes to scout the area and be sure there’s nothing dangerous around, then we can gear up and prep for landing."

Dylan glanced around at everyone and turned to Kolya. "I’d definitely like to feel the ground under my feet and see an actual sky above me."

"I think we would all enjoy that." Ralissa stood and dried her face off with her lab coat. "I’ll send the message right away."

***

"We’ve picked one of the structures that haven’t been explored before," Ralissa said as Nish, Zilaka, and Dylan joined everyone else around the holofield. They’d kept lunch simple, just ration bars to get something into their stomachs. Cora figured no one had been in the mood for an elaborate meal after seeing what had happened to the Vancouver.

She leaned over to briefly hold each of their hands as they passed by. Zilaka gave her a quick hug. Dylan and Nish kissed her before finding an empty space to stand around the console.

"The probes haven’t found any animal life in the vicinity," Cora said as everyone watched the feed from one of the small, spherical probes dropped from the Jemison before lunch. The probe approached an enormous structure that looked like a pyramid from the front, but when the probe began circling around its base, it was revealed to be a much more elongated shape. "Which matches data from previous surveys over the decades. All animal life appears to have been wiped out, and there’s barely enough vegetation still alive to maintain an atmosphere. The air is breathable, but it’s a little thin. The climate is on the chilly side, but it’s summer on that part of the planet, so it shouldn’t be too uncomfortable."

"Which is one of the reasons we chose that area," Ralissa added with a faint smile. "I thought we were all miserable enough after … well, you know. Most of the planet isn’t visually spectacular, but we tried to find the area with the most pleasant temperature."

"Much appreciated." Dylan smiled. "I’ve always hated being cold."

Ayastal nodded and cocked her head at the structure in the holofield. "How big is that building? It’s hard to tell with nothing nearby to compare it to, but it looks rather large."

"It’s the size of a city," Mila said with a grin. "Whoever the indigenous species was, if they were roughly similar to us in size, several hundred thousand of them could’ve lived comfortably in that."

Dylan whistled softly. "That’ll take a while to explore."

"Scientists in many different fields could probably build an entire career off just this one structure," Cora said with a smile. "It’d probably take several lifetimes to study everything thoroughly."

"Especially since we haven’t been able to translate any of the text we found in other buildings around this planet," Zadra added. "Nor have we been able to activate any of the devices we’ve found. Some structures this size or larger had what appeared to be a transit system and a range of independent vehicles, but we never managed to start any of them up."

"We could be the ones who figure it out, though." Kolya grinned. "You never know."

"We’re certainly gonna give it a try." Cora leaned forward and smiled as she watched the structure turn slowly in the projection. Tiny, capsule-shaped windows covering the building glowed with light showing faintly through a coating of dust and dirt that had been building up for who knew how many centuries. "Looks like there’s still an active power source, so that’s an encouraging sign."

"Nice." Dylan glanced at Ralissa and her team. "Have any structures like this one ever been found on other planets?"

"None quite like these," Peter said, motioning at the building with a big finger and then scratching an itch at the base of his left horn. "Pyramidal structures like the ones in Egypt have been found on many planets throughout explored space, probably because it’s an inherently stable shape -- wide base to support all the weight, walls slanted inward to keep the center of gravity low in case of ground-quakes, and so on."

"We haven’t found any that are ’stretched out’ like these," Lorkis added. "At least, none that I’m aware of."

"I’ve kept up on research and exploration articles and haven’t found any." Kolya stared at the projection and rubbed her hands together. "I like to look for points of interest for the next trip. I just go wherever the next ship takes me, but you never know when you’ll be able to steer yourself toward something really cool."

"Well, hopefully that’s what we’ll find down on the surface." Cora grinned and headed for the pilot’s console. "If everyone’s ready, we can prep for landing."

"Oh, this ship’s atmosphere-capable?"

"It wasn’t originally, but that’s one of the things we requested for the refit."

"Awesome. Well, I dunno about anybody else, but I’m ready to start poking around down there."

"So am I." Syala beamed and hurried to an empty seat. "I’ve been hoping to walk on an alien world for the last few months."

"I’d say it’s about time, then." Grish gave her shoulder a pat before finding her own chair.

"I think we’re all eager to stretch our legs and have a look around," Ralissa said.

"Okay, then. Buckle up, everyone." Cora sat and reached out to the controls. "Let’s see what we can find."

Next Chapter: Chapter 8: Planetfall