“What about war, fighting, attempts to take power?” Chuckie asked.
Serion shook her head. “We have none of those. It is not . . . logical or right to fight amongst ourselves. We are all one, truly, with Cradus, Spehidon, and Crion. Why would we fight? We can achieve whatever we want in terms of science or art and all are encouraged to do so. Our world is beautiful, full of everything we need, and, until the Orange Scourge appeared, abundant. We have no reasons to be discontented, so we are not.”
“So, this is a utopia.” Chuckie sounded thoughtful.
“Seems like it. What are you thinking, Secret Agent Man? I can see the wheels turning, even through the Moon Suits.”
“Nazez was also a utopia. So was Tropea, before Grumpy and Dopey arrived.”
“So? It’s nice to visit places that aren’t fighting amongst themselves. It’s a relief to know that worlds like this exist.”
He nodded slowly. “It is. However, this is, technically, the third utopia we’ve visited on this trip. And we’ve only made two stops.”
“Oh. Huh. Hadn’t realized that, but you’re totally right. Which seems like far too much of a coinkydink and we don’t believe in those.”
“Exactly.” He was going to say more but we arrived.
Sure enough, there was a ton of orange, pretty much as far as the golden eye could see. But it also looked familiar. Extremely familiar. Like I’d seen this stuff all my life familiar. Even the color, though I was used to the color being something else. “Are those a form of squash? Or carrots? Or carrot-squash?”
“What is squash?” Fathade asked. “Or carrots?”
“Something edible on Earth.”
“We cannot eat this,” Fathade said. “It is deadly, to us and to our world.”
“It’s choking any part of the world it touches,” Sciea added.
“Can I touch it?” Tito and I asked in unison.
“Why would you want to?” Fathade asked.
“Because I’m betting that we both have the same idea. Tito?”
“I think it’s a form of squash, yes, though I agree the color is more in line with carrots.”
“Me too. Based on the vines and leaves and such, I think it’s an orange squash of some kind, and those things grow like weeds. My dad planted a single zucchini plant when I was little. Supposedly it couldn’t grow in Pueblo Caliente’s soil and weather. Ha. It not only grew, it flourished. At first, it was zucchini for the nearest neighbors, then the neighborhood, then a mile radius, until everyone said they’d never speak to us again if we gave them one more freaking zucchini. Then we gave baskets to the homeless shelters until we got the same response. Then my parents had to pay people to come take that stuff out before it overtook our house, since it had taken over the entire yard and the dogs literally had nowhere to go to do their business.”
Tito nodded. “This looks organic—for our world. But it’s not organic for this one. However, if it is a type of squash, that means that we can figure out how to get rid of it.”
“We cannot risk toxins,” Fathade said. “We are one with our world, so any toxins in our world will go into us. We have only managed to keep the Orange Scourge at bay. But soon it will infect us, too.”
“Will it hurt the Moon Suits if we touch it?” Didn’t want to wreck these things or give myself radiation poisoning just because I felt sure the plants weren’t dangerous to me.
“We assume yes,” Cavus said. “Use this tool to gather then.” Cavus handed me what looked like the things people used to pick up trash without bending over—a long set of pincers. How Cavus produced this I had no idea—as with the ball of Moon Suit that Cavus had given to Wruck, it appeared basically out of nowhere.
Took the tool and grabbed the nearest squash vine, which had about ten squash on it. It took some tugging, but I was able to unearth it.
“Those are roots,” Tito said. “And they’re long. We need to confirm what this is immediately.”
“What are roots?” Fathade asked, sounding freaked out.
“Um, I saw what looked like trees and deer and birds on our way down the mountain. Don’t the trees have roots?”
“Nothing like these,” Fathade pointed to the squash vine. “The trees are part of the surface of Cradus, they don’t go into the core.”
“Jeff, you and the others stay here. Chuckie, ask every single question you’ve got. Tito and I are going back to the ship. We’ll be back as soon as we know what’s going on.”
Jeff opened his mouth, presumably to argue. Put up the paw. He closed his mouth. Wow, the One True FLOTUS Power worked even while in the Moon Suits. “We’re fine, you’re fine, this moon is not fine. We’ll be fast.” Grabbed Tito’s hand and took off.
“Not that I’m arguing,” he said as I tested whether hyperspeed could work here and, happily, discovered that it could, “but why are we racing? I think there’s time.”
“Maybe, but I have an idea. I just need you to be sure that this stuff is not deadly to anyone on board our ship.”
The street managed to match my speed and we returned quickly, this time on a fast roller coaster that took a couple of dips so that we could get where we were going faster. And I might have wanted to see if we could do it and it if was as fun as I’d thought it would be. We could and it was.
The street dropped us off right where we’d come out of the tunnel—the opening Serion had created was still there, so we went through it and ran into the airlock.
Fortunately, Tito had been paying attention, because he did all the door closing stuff. “How do you think we get these suits off?” he asked as he hit the airlock’s normalization mechanism.
“Well, in Bizarro World you just sort of peeled.”
“Wait until the airlock’s ready, just in case.”
While waiting, considered where to start the peeling process. Had no good idea. Once Tito gave me the go-ahead tried at the neck, the top of the head, and the wrists. Didn’t work. Considered the only part of the suit that seemed like it moved, closed my eyes, and gently grabbed at the extra material that was there.
Success. Was able to peel it over the top of my head, and once I had done this, the rest rolled down easily. Tito imitated me and we were soon standing there with a ball of gold in each of our hands.
“We can’t let anyone get to this planet,” he said. “They’ll destroy it in a month or less.”
“Agree with you a thousand percent. Now, you get to your lab or whatever and verify this stuff’s toxicity to us and the others on board.”
“What are you going to be doing?” he asked as we exited the airlock.
“Me? I need to go have a confab with some of our passengers.”
CHAPTER 62
“THIS COULD BE YOUR craziest idea yet,” Reader said. “And I say that with the full knowledge of all your other crazy ideas.”
“What’s our mantra, James? I believe it’s that my crazy tends to work a lot better than everyone else’s sanity.”