Weeds grow in the darndest places

“Torrence, your O2 levels are getting low, come back to Base for a swap.” Marshall's voice vibrates my earpiece, pulling me out of my focused trance. You wouldn’t think rock-collecting would be a difficult task, but in a three hundred-pound spacesuit with giant Michelin-Man gloves, it’s not exactly easy. After zipping my last sample bag, I haul myself up from the green-yellow dusty rock beneath me. I try my damndest to stretch my back, but the mechanics strapped to my shoulders don’t allow for much flexibility. I’ll have to pay a visit to Nipper, who, in addition to being a doctoral candidate for astronomy, is a licensed chiropractor. “Nipper the Nerd” is her official title on the mission, it’s on her suit and everything.

“All set, Marsh,” I respond, holding the com button on my wrist, “I’m 200 yards out.”

I take my time getting back to Base, scanning the ground before I stomp over the uneven terrain, stirring up mustard-colored dirt clouds. Stomp right, stomp left. Stomp right, stomp le–

A split second before my left foot makes contact, I see something in my peripheral vision. But, my foot comes down hard on the dusty surface of the planet and my vision is temporarily obscured. I wave my hand back and forth, trying to clear my line of sight.

When the dust settles, I freeze. Three feet away, nestled between two small boulders, is a… dandelion?

“Uh, Marsh?” I speak into the com, needing some reassurance that I’m not oxygen-deprived and hallucinating.

“Torrence, I told you, get your ass back to Base!” the commander yells. “Your O2 levels are almost critical, and if you make me fill up your goddamn reserve tank, I’ll–”

“Marsh!” I cut him off desperate to have another pair of eyes on the sight before me. “I need you to check my bodycam footage. Live. Right now.”

There’s a pause, as I’m sure Marshall is pulling the live feed from the camera attached to my helmet. I can almost hear the small lens whirring as it zooms. The com is quiet for a few more moments, and I wonder if he’s forgotten about my oxygen levels.

“Come back to Base and refill, Lieutenant. Over.” Marsh says, suddenly official. He must be recording this for headquarters. I don’t blame him, so I follow suit.

“On my way, Commander. Over.”

At Base, I find the entire crew huddled around the main monitor, which shows my cam footage zoomed way in on the dandelion.

“‘Who needs a botanist for a scouting mission?’” Perez mocks the head researcher from headquarters. “It’s almost like I saw this coming!”

“To be fair,” Nipper cuts in, “It’s definitely not protocol to send a botanist on a scouting mission, especially to Venus.”

“She has a point,” I say as I join the huddle. “This is the very last thing I expected to see on this mission. Especially here.”

Perez shrugs, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Well, Nipper, it seems you may need that biology minor after all.”

“No one believes me when I say it was all necessary,” Nipper mutters as she pulls out her laptop. A few clicks, and she starts announcing atmospheric statistics to the group. “So, logically, no organic life should be able to survive in this climate, let alone thrive.”

“No shit,” Marshall laughs, “that’s why we're all sitting here scratching our heads, Nipper.”

All heads turn to Nipper, whose eyes still dart back and forth as she reads whatever is on her screen. “Well, what if…” she trails off, and the rest of us collectively hold our breaths for her next words.

“What if what?” Perez blurts, impatience winning him over.

“Well, this is completely hypothetical,” she begins, making eye contact with each of us. “Hy. Po. Thet. Ic. Al,” she emphasizes each syllable like she’s speaking to a group of children. I roll my eyes and sit on an extra stool, knowing whatever comes out of Nipper’s mouth next will be a long, overexplained definition of some obscure phenomenon.

“Hypothetically,” she begins again, as if we didn’t hear her the first time, “if certain conditions prevail in another area, where the majority of the life system, like ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of it, resides, a small offshoot like the one we see could survive for a short period of time. It would almost be like the system is testing the waters.”

“But where is the other ninety-nine percent?” Marshall asks, echoing my thoughts and I’m sure Perez’s. Before Nipper can answer, though, realization strikes. There’s only one place it could be in this wasteland–

“Underground,” Nipper and I say at the same time. We hold each other’s eyes, the gravity of that word crashing over us like relentless waves in a sea storm. My chest constricts as I rethink the odd numbers on my own laptop when we arrived four rotations ago. Before we set up Base, a glorified, pressurized camping tent, I set up my seismograph. As the crew’s geologist, my job is to get readings on the ground below the landing site and the Base site, so we don’t accidentally set up camp on an unstable underground cavern or something. Our site was safe, but about two hundred yards out, I got a few odd readings that I couldn’t make sense of. And, since we don’t have a drill, There wasn’t much I could do about it. Assuming, since Venus is mostly igneous rock, there would be some parts of this planet with odd underground formations, I wrote it off. Now, though…

“Suit up,” Marshall commands as he rises from the desk chair. “Let’s go check it out.”

We stand in a circle around the weed poking through the boulders, none of us really sure how to proceed. Nipper crouches and extends her hand slowly, reaching for one of the leaves connected to the short stem. She hesitates, like she’s afraid it’ll bite her, or disintegrate in her hand.

“Just do it, Nipper,” the commander instructs. “It’s not like we don’t have footage of it.” All of our cams were set on manual recording, just in case we lost connection with everyone out of Base.

Nipper pinches the leaf between her heavily-clad fingers and pulls, breaking the leaf from the stem. She stares for a moment, fascinated, before whipping out a sample bag and carefully placing the specimen inside.

“Now what?” Perez asks. As the rocket scientist, or “Astrophysical Engineer” as he prefers, this has the very least to do with his duties on this mission. He probably should’ve stayed on Base, as we’re required to always have at least one person to answer messages from headquarters at all times, but Marshall told him we’d claim special circumstances if anyone asks. And this is the most special circumstance.

“Let’s pull it,” I suggest, only half kidding. Nipper looks at me like I’ve grown a second head before she scoffs.

“‘Let’s pull it,’ come on, Torrence,” she mocks me, rolling her eyes. “Be serious.”

“I am,” I assert, turning to Marshall. “It’s the only way we’ll find out what’s really going on here.”

“But we could destroy it!” Nipper squeals. Her voice always gets insanely high-pitched when she’s upset. I know I’m pissing her off, but we didn’t come all the way here to take pictures and walk around.

“So?” I toss back, getting agitated now. “We’re scientists, goddamn it! It’s our job.”

“Torrence is right,” Marshall says. Nipper and I whip our heads to him, both of us surprised. “Just pull the damn weed.”

“I call it!” Perez shouts into the com, making us all cringe. He steps forward, but Nipper stops him, throwing her arm across his chest.

“No! There’s a proper procedure to follow, and we need to try to keep it all in one piece for research…”

As she continues her tirade, I step behind Nipper and unceremoniously yank the weed from between the rocks. Marshall laughs through the coms, and I smile. But, it fades as I look down at my hand.

“Torrence!” Nipper screeches, but I barely register her shout. Flowing from the tiny flower in my hand is a long, thick root. Several small offshoots are sprinkled along its thick circumference, and the length disappears into the small opening from which I pulled the dandelion.

“Holy shit,” Perez whispers.

“My sentiments exactly,” Nipper breathes.

“Start digging, Torrence,” Marshall commands as he turns back to Base.

Armed with only my sample collecting kit, I lead the crew back to the site. We left the dandelion attached to the root, Nipper finally winning over Marshall on “proper procedure.”

“Just telling you guys now, this is going to take a while,” I warn as I kneel on the rocks.

“It’s going to take even longer if you keep yapping,” Perez chuckles.

“Leave him alone, Perez,” Nipper scolds, bumping him with her elbow. They continue to argue back and forth as I line up the pick a few inches from the opening, planning to chip off about eight square centimeters at a time. I silently curse the meager tools I was allowed on this mission as I tap the mallet on the stake three times. I only achieve a small crack, not nearly enough to break a piece off yet. I look up at Marshall, exasperated.

“Can you shut those two up?”

“Hey!” Perez feigns indignation by dramatically holding his hand to his chest.

“Shut up, you two,” Marshall grumbles, and they do. Finally.

I give the chisel three more strikes and sit back on my heels. “Marsh, this is going to take for–”

I’m interrupted by three identical knocks, coming from below the Venusian dandelion.