The Getaway Special

31

“I think it’s the trees,” Judy said.

“The trees?”

She risked a glance down into the tank. There was enough light reflecting off the fronds overhead to illuminate Allen’s face in pale green. He was half out of his sleeping bag, hands hovering over the computer, its screen providing a bluish counterpoint to the green light from above.

“There’s nothing else out here. And I’d swear one of ’em’s closer than it was before.” She looked back out, but nothing had moved since she’d switched on the light. At least she didn’t think so. It was hard to wrap her mind around the concept that something like a tree could move. Millennia of evolution had hard-wired her brain to accept plants as part of the landscape, not as something that could walk around.

But that sucking sound… She shined the light down at the roots, and sure enough, she could see where they had pulled free of the ground. They lay on top of the soil now, but they were slowly working their way back into it, like earthworms in a freshly spaded garden. And behind the tree, thirty or forty feet back where Judy remembered one standing before, was an open spot with gouges in the mat of tiny fern where the roots had ripped free.

“Jesus,” she said. “Have a look at this.”

Allen popped open his hatch and pulled the second flashlight from its tape, then stood up and shined it out into the night.

“There,” Judy said, aiming her beam at the roots and the torn-up ground behind them.

They watched the tree nestle into place. Judy kept an eye on the branches, ready to duck if one of them took a swipe at her, but they stayed put.

Allen swept his light around in a circle. “Is it just that one?”

“I don’t know. It’s the only one I actually saw moving, but they all look closer to me.”

“That could just be the light.”

She supposed it could. All those shadows behind them made them look like they were leaning forward. And she didn’t remember exactly where they were to begin with. It was like when she rearranged the furniture in her apartment; it was hard to remember how it looked before.

But the tree standing next to the Getaway was unmistakable. If it had been there when they landed, their parachute would have snagged in its branches. And they had seen its roots in motion.

It wasn’t doing anything now. The branch that had brushed the side of the tank was still there, still stretched out toward them like the arm of a kid poking at an anthill with a stick. The tiny fronds at the end of it fluttered softly in the breeze—except the air was dead still.

“Hello?” Judy said. Her voice sounded small and flat.

She reached out to the end of the branch and gingerly touched a frond. It was soft, velvety, like a moth’s wings. A little shudder passed through the entire tree, and the branch slowly rose back into the air to join the others.

This was totally outside Judy’s realm of experience. “What now?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Allen shined his light to either side, then turned and swept it behind him again, but none of the other trees had budged since he and Judy had switched on their lights.

The tree’s roots had stopped moving. They weren’t buried all the way in the ground, but it didn’t look like it was going anyplace soon. Of course until a few minutes ago, Judy would have sworn it never had moved.

“I don’t think we’re being attacked,” Allen said. “Do you?”

“No. It looks more like…”

“What?”

She had to struggle to say the words. This was a tree they were talking about! But she had heard it move, and had seen it anchor itself down again. And that outstretched branch. “I… I think it’s just curious.”

Allen took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. “I would be, if something dropped out of the sky right at my feet. But it’s had all afternoon to check us out. How come it didn’t do anything until now?”

“I have no idea.”

They watched the tree for more signs of animation, but nothing moved. After maybe five minutes of standing there in the hatch holding a flashlight, her shoulders growing cold in the night air, Judy said, “I don’t think it’s going to do anything more.”

“You want to go back to sleep?” Allen asked incredulously.

“No, but I don’t want to stand here all night waiting for a tree to move, either. Let’s try something else.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it waited until we’d gone to bed before it moved before; let’s try switching out the lights and hunkering down again. Maybe it’ll think we’ve gone to sleep again and come a little closer.”

Allen thought that over for a few seconds. “Do we want it to come closer?”

“I want it to do something.”

He looked at the tree, then back at her again. “This is nuts, you know that?”

“You got a better idea?”

In lieu of an answer, he simply switched off his flashlight and ducked down so his head was even with the rim of the hatch. Judy did the same, dropping all the way down and hunting around in the dark until she found the pistol. It had fallen off the auxiliary hyperdrive into her spacesuit helmet. She pulled her sleeping bag up over her shoulders, leaving her feet free to move, and stood back up.

They waited. Five minutes seemed like forever. Ten became an eternity. She was just about convinced that they might as well settle back in to sleep when the tree made a soft creak like the noise of a door swinging open. Judy rose up just enough to look over the edge, but even with her eyes adapted to the dark again, there wasn’t enough light to see more than faint shadows in the deeper darkness.

The creak sounded again, and this time she could tell it was coming from the ground. It grew louder until it became a rumble that could be felt as well as heard, then there was a slurp and a pop. A moment later the whole sequence repeated, then a third time, and a fourth.

Judy rested her thumb on the hammer of the pistol, ready to cock it and fire if the tree reached in through the hatch. She had no idea what part of its anatomy to shoot for, but from inside the tank she didn’t exactly have a wide field of view to choose from. Fortunately she didn’t have to try; the squelching noises picked up their pace and a dark shadow moved away overhead, leaving stars in its wake. The ground shook with heavy thumps, like the footsteps of a giant. Judy stood up a little higher, and as long as she didn’t look straight at it, she could see motion in the darkness. Receding. The tree was running away.

There was a loud crash and a splintering of branches. Judy flipped on her flashlight just in time to see the tree smash headlong into one of the others that hadn’t moved. It teetered, nearly falling over, then stretched out a root and caught itself. It lurched to the side, roots rippling like snakes and branches waving wildly for balance, and it staggered another couple of steps before coming to a stop.

“Turn that off!” Allen hissed.

“Why?” Judy asked, but she killed the light.

“Because I don’t want it to come back and trample us, that’s why.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Judy said. “It’s terrified of us.”

“Yeah, right. That’s why it stops every time we turn a light on it.”

He had a point, but it wasn’t necessarily the right one. “Maybe the light blinds it, and it doesn’t want to move if it can’t see.”

“And maybe the light attracts it. Plants are phototropic, after all.”

“Earth plants are.” But she left her light off, straining to see by starlight alone.

The tree remained motionless for another minute or two, then, just as Judy thought to turn on the video cameras and see if they could pick up an image in this dim a light, it creaked to life again. She held her breath, gripping the pistol tight in her hand, but she relaxed when the tree thumped off deeper into the forest.

To heck with the video cameras. When they could no longer hear or feel the vibration from the tree’s headlong flight, Judy flipped on her light again and shined it at the ground around the tank. The fern carpet was ripped up like a bus seat after a street gang had tagged it. She checked the base of the other trees, but they hadn’t moved an inch.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said softly. “At least all of ’em aren’t mobile.”

Allen sat back down inside the tank. “One is crazy enough. You happy now?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You wanted strangeness. I’d say you got it.”

She knelt down and put the gun on the bucket again, then tucked her feet into her sleeping bag and settled back against the wall. “I certainly can’t complain.”

There was a tiny flash of blue-green light from Allen’s half of the tank: his wristwatch’s backlight.

“What time is it?” she asked. She had taken her watch off when she’d settled in to sleep, and didn’t want to hunt for it in the dark.

“About three.”

“a.m.?”

“Yep.”

It wasn’t nearly that late local time, but it had already been afternoon when they’d left Rock Springs. They should have picked a landing spot closer to the night half of the planet if they’d wanted to keep their biorhythms in synch with the day/night cycle. Of course they had no idea how long this place’s days were, so that might not have lasted through the night anyway.

It didn’t matter. In her years as an astronaut, Judy had learned how to adjust to practically any schedule. As long as she got a couple hours of sleep for every ten or so she spent awake, she could function indefinitely.

She was falling behind tonight, but there were still hours of darkness to go. Provided no more inquisitive trees came to see who had landed in their midst, she should be okay.