RED FLOWERS AND IVY

WHEN HE WOKE, HE TURNED on his torch and saw the vine crawling down the cave tunnel toward him. It moved so slowly — the cave was almost too cold for it — but red buds still formed in the light. He burned it, then ran up the tunnel torching the thin, trembling vine, choking in the smoke till he tripped and fell.

The vine shivered, turned its black stub toward him, and crawled for his head.

He vomited. Pollen-induced nausea, he told himself. Nothing more.

But nothing stopped it. It was a good hunter. He knew just how good.

He watched it inch toward him till it was only two feet away, then he stood and backed down the tunnel. It crawled on — warily, he thought —and hesitated on the edge of the vomit. It turned the stub away. One leaf farther back reached out to touch it, testing, making sure — at once a hollow tube behind the leaf stretched out and plunged in, writhing and sucking. Red buds formed behind each third leaf.

He staggered away, down the tunnel and into the last gallery, to pools at the back where the cave ended. He turned off the torch — his only light — to conserve energy, then sat in the sudden darkness.

It had trapped him. It had choked the cave’s entrance shut. He had nowhere left to run. He could not burn his way out — the pollen would stop him first. The vomit would stop it for a short time, but it would come. Buds would open. Pollen would drift down to him and make him sleep.

He ripped off a shirt-sleeve, plunged it in a pool of water, wrapped it tight around his nose and mouth. If I can keep the sleeve wet, he thought, and still breathe

He heard it: a distant sound like that of a cork pulled from a bottle of wine. A bud opened. Another. Two more. He splashed water over the cloth and fumbled for the comm unit in his pants pocket, turned it on.

“Lieutenant?” the comm said. The computer on the other end had the soft voice of a woman.

“Has the Scimitar sent rescue?”

“No. The landing bay is not yet repaired.”

It was why he and the two members of his team had stayed on the world conducting more and more studies — a T-34 had exploded in the docking bay. No ship-to-land craft had been able to dock or take off since then. They’d been stranded without possibility of refueling for the return trip — no refuel drones could descend to give them what they needed to return or even just to fly one hundred miles away, even just that.

“Are you still broadcasting distress signals?” he asked the computer.

“On all standard and seventeen nonstandard frequencies.”

“And my coordinates?”

“Your present location is —”

“Are you broadcasting them?”

“At intervals between the distress signals, together with details about your situation.”

“But there is no time,” he whispered.

Brant had died first. Sarah had found him still alive but lying in mud staring up at nothing while the vine bored through his suit into his chest. He and Sarah had buried Brant away from the ship, in a grave as deep as they could dig.

Sarah had gone next. She had lain comatose in the lander for two days after breaking a vial of concentrated pollen she’d prepared for study. Everything he’d done to try to save her had failed. Outside, the vine had quietly surrounded the lander.

She’d briefly regained consciousness, once. She’d felt convinced that bacteria from Brant’s body would kill the vine. “Just like Wells’s Martians,” she’d whispered, almost sadly.

But it hadn’t. He’d buried her next to Brant.

And he’d stayed with the lander as long as he could, in contact with the Scimitar, hoping for the repairs to be finished. He’d tried to keep the vine burned from the lander, but more and more of it had come and he could not keep it back. When it began to break through the hatch, he’d packed food and supplies, jettisoned the rest of the food, and emptied the sewers so the vine wouldn’t tear the lander apart and destroy the computer. He’d dressed in a biosuit that would protect him from the pollen and burned his way out of the lander into the jungle past the vine.

TO THE EAST were mountains, far off, white capped. His plan was to reach the mountains, climb above the vine’s biozone, and wait there for rescue. They had landed in a river delta rich with life. What he wanted now was to be someplace high and cold where he was the only living thing.

By nightfall, he was in a place where the forest canopy was so thick he could not see the mountains. He stashed his gear at the base of a tree, and something small and black in the underbrush rushed away — something else alive here, he marveled. He and Sarah and Brant had cataloged far fewer species in this lush forest than they had expected. He now knew why. He wondered how anything survived. Speed and cunning, he thought. Speed and determination. He was glad to have seen the animal. It gave him hope. He climbed into the canopy: and the mountains were still far off. They seemed no closer.

Something tugged at his foot. He looked down and saw a tendril of vine circled around his boot. He kicked, but the vine’s grip tightened. He tried to pull it off, but more and more of the vine kept circling his boot, pulling him deeper into the darkening canopy.

Something touched his hand, and it was the vine. Another tendril dangled down toward his head, the flowers on it lovely and red.

He pulled out his knife and cut his hand free. He cut his foot free and climbed down through the tree, faster and faster.

The vine had found his food. His pack was covered in a mass of seething, flowered vine. He cut it back, threw it in heaps and burned it. He burned back the tendrils reaching down for him from above.

His pack had been torn apart. The food was scattered. He salvaged the water-filtration unit, the med kit, his sleeping gear. He took the packages of food that hadn’t been opened.

And he ran for the mountains.

THE VINE WAITED on the trail. It was a clever hunter. If you were panicked — if you ran in terror — you’d never see its tendrils stretched across the trail at ankle-height.

He tripped and fell, his gear scattered around him, and a mass of vine fell on him. It circled his body and choked him and tried to stab through his biosuit with its rigid tubes.

He tried to stay calm. He cut the vine again and again, and he kept cutting till he could roll away.

It followed quickly, all the parts he had cut it into. It had been slow and sluggish — but still deadly — by day. He learned it was a nocturnal hunter.

“Lieutenant?” the voice out of the comm unit said. “Lieutenant?”

He didn’t want to answer it. He hadn’t slept for two days. The vine had followed him. It, and others like it. Vines seemed to be everywhere: in the clearings, in the trees, in the undergrowth stretched across the trails.

“There were these two guys sitting at a bar —”

“Stop the jokes,” he said.

“The ship ordered me to keep your spirits up. Jokes are calculated to do that. I have heard different flight crews tell four hundred ninety-seven complete jokes and thirty-three partial jokes interrupted by necessary work. I remember them all and can divide them into subcategories. What type of joke do you like best?”

“Sleepy jokes, stories about sleep — anything about sleep. I’m so tired.”

“Two hundred and thirty-nine of my recorded jokes mention items related to sleep — beds for instance. Do you want to hear them?”

He turned off the comm unit.

When he turned it back on, it was silent. He let it stay that way. He needed the computer, but he liked it quiet. After a time, it spoke.

“Don’t do that again,” it said.

“So now you’re giving me orders?”

“I was worried.”

That made him stop. If he could have opened the visor on the biosuit to wipe his face, he would have. If he could have looked at the computer, he would have. He looked around for the vine, but couldn’t see it.

“How close are the mountains?” the computer asked.

“What do you mean by ‘worried’?”

“How close are the mountains, Lieutenant?”

“Answer me.”

“You are my charge. I have orders to help you.”

“You helped me before you received your present orders.”

“It is what I am made for.”

They were both quiet for a time. “Are you all right?” he asked it, then.

“The vine is not attacking the ship anymore, but the ship is highly damaged. It will never fly again. I am intact inside it.”

“They’ll take you out and carry you back to the Scimitar.”

“If they have time.”

“You cost too much to abandon.”

It was silent, then.

He thought it had been an odd conversation.

He wished later that he hadn’t told it they would come for it only because it cost money. It was from Earth, after all, and they were all a long way from Earth. They all needed each other if ever they were to go home.

He tried to sleep in a rocky clearing, he was so exhausted, and he did sleep for ten minutes — then it was on him, and he was cutting at it, slashing, cutting

And he saw blood: his blood.

It was frenzied then at the taste of his blood. He cut and cut and tried to run, dragging it after him, slashing at the stabbing tubes stretching for his leg.

He’d cut through his biosuit. He held his breath and slashed his way free and ran.

His head was giddy with the pollen. Tying off the suit above the cut did no good: he’d learned that human skin absorbed the chemicals in the pollen, though not as quickly as if he’d breathed them.

“Lieutenant,” the comm unit said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You believe it will not follow you into cold places?”

“It’s what I hope.”

“Mountains are not the only cold places.”

He found a cave in the foothills. He could see the vine massed in the scree below him, following.

It was cold inside the cave.

“You can sleep here,” the comm unit said.

Yes, he thought. Surely he could sleep here.

When he woke, the cave was so quiet. Nothing was on him. Nothing was tugging at his feet or trying to choke him. His leg where he had cut himself ached, but his head was clear.

He took off his helmet and ate. He leaned back and slept again for a time.

When he woke and walked to the opening, the vine had choked the entrance shut. He could not burn his way out. He could not hold his breath long enough. Tendrils were crawling slowly down the cave toward his feet.

“Lieutenant?”

The voice had been calling for some time. He struggled up, splashed water over the cloth around his face.

“Lieutenant?”

His joints ached, but he pulled out the comm unit. “Yes?” he whispered.

“Rescue parties from the Scim —”

“When?”

“Ten minutes ago. The initial party has flown to your cave. A second is here for the lander and me. They directed me to attempt to rouse you while they work.”

He said nothing.

“Are you dressed in what remains of your biosuit?”

He felt around him for his helmet and the torn suit, but it was somewhere behind him, and he hurt. He felt so tired.

“How close is the vine?” the computer asked.

“I don’t know. I turned off the torch — I can’t see anything.”

The computer said nothing to that. It expected a more factual reply. But the torch was next to his helmet — he remembered that now. He’d set the torch next to his helmet.

“How are you dressed? How close is the vine?” He reached painfully behind him, feeling for the torch, but touched the vine.

“How close is the vine, lieutenant?”

He jerked back, dropped the comm unit, stumbled into the water.

“How close is the vine, lieutenant? Can you tell me?”

“Close!” He sank to his knees. The water rose barely above his waist. “Close. I can’t see it in the dark.”

“Lieutenant, find out where it is and move away from it.”

The voice was muffled.

He reached down to splash water over his face and touched a vine floating toward him in the water. “No!” he shouted. He shoved it away and stumbled out of the pool. He kicked back the vine until he found his torch. The vine was everywhere in the gallery. He burned it until the fuel ran out. He heard buds popping open all around him in the darkness.

“Have you moved away from it, lieutenant?”

He didn’t answer. He felt his way back to the pool and splashed water over the cloth. He thought of his helmet and torn biosuit, but knew they would do him little good. He’d seen the vine bore right through Brant’s suit.

“The initial rescue party should reach your part of the cave in approximately one hour and twenty-three minutes.”

He sank to his knees, shivering from more than the cold, his head so dizzy he could not stand. “Lieutenant?”

“Yes?” he said.

“I want you to make it. I have. You must.”

“I’ve done everything I can.”

They were quiet for a time. The cold numbed him.

“Lieutenant?”

“Don’t let them name this planet after me,” he said.

“They have already.” He covered his face with his hands. He could smell the red flowers.

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