C6R

Angela wandered away from the encampment once again. The youngest of the crew of explorer-scientists, she was highly curious, and wanted to know – simply for her own self-knowledge – just why Caroline remained away from the landed starship for longer than anyone else, and just why Caroline always seemed to go to the same location.

When Angela noticed Caroline's locator signal was back in that same area again, she had to leave the starship and find out what was so interesting there, what Caroline was hoarding for herself.

Armed with her pulse riffle and backpack of survival supplies and sample kits, Angela headed out to the north-northeast, traversing the kilometer to the abrupt beginning of the thick forest. None of the other twelve crew members saw her or attempted to question her or stop her, as they did not contact her on her communications headset.

After nearly four full weeks on this Earth-like planet, several trails had been essentially carved into this thick forest. Angela followed the one from which she had seen Caroline emerge on two previous occasions. It was essentially a straight-as-an-arrow trail, the bulk of the underbrush having been sliced away. Some of the plant life was growing back toward the trail, brushing against Angela's well-covered legs.

As she trekked slowly toward her goal, the curious explorer recalled in her mind's eye the original scans made of this area. About another two kilometers ahead was a large depression, likely made by the impact of a small meteor at some point in the planet's history. Since that time, the forest had come into being, apparently as a "garden" for a highly-intelligent alien race the team had dubbed the Jenkuyo, given how the forest began so abruptly at the edge of the vast grassy plain.

Despite her great physical condition, a prerequisite for being selected for this mission, Angela began to slow from fatigue. She had been awake nearly twenty hours already, not having been able to sleep well during her last regularly-scheduled sleep cycle. Yet she trudged ever onward, propelled by her curiosity as well as the desire to see the depression area with her own eyes for the very first time.

At long last, the forest seemed to come to an end ahead; between the massive rust-colored trunks, she could see a vast gap to the other side of the depression. Seemingly just a heartbeat later, Angela stood at the edge of the depression, amazed at its immense size – nearly a half-kilometer across and about two kilometers long, indicating the angle and direction of impact – despite having seen the charts of the area more than a few times. She stood near the "shallow" end of the depression, the end which bore only sparse grass and an occasional weed or wild flower for vegetation. Looking off to her left, she noted the rise of vegetation – literally, in both types and height of vegetation – as the depression deepened.

Carefully, the young explorer slid about ten meters down the dirt-pack side of the depression. She had come this far, so she figured she may as well continue.

Heading to her left, following the downward slope, the vegetation increased around her. Sparse grass gave way to thicker grass, to small plants to shrubs to trees of growing heights the further she descended the slope until, finally, she was in what she could only term as a "sub-forest" of the main forest, some two hundred meters below the altitude of the starship and in a semi-darkened setting due to the thick canopy of greenish-blue leaves high above her head.

Slowly, Angela meandered around the many thick trunks, her hands absently brushing aside the occasional vine or low-hanging branch. The sound of flowing water caught her attention, off to the right, the unexpected sound startling her since there was no water source revealed in the scans of the depression area. Cautiously, the explorer altered her path toward the sound of the flowing water.

What she ultimately found astounded her.

A natural spring bubbled from the sloping ground and had chiseled a stream into the depression. And in the stream, on her hands and knees, was the raven-haired Caroline, as naked as the day she was born, facing away from Angela with several lengthy reddish tentacles rising up from the stream to wrap around her arms and her legs.

Instinct took over, and Angela had readied her pulse riffle before her conscious mind called a halt to the action, recognizing that her older counterpart was not showing any signs of distress or discomfort. In fact, as Angela studied the scene, she realized that Caroline's body language was that of enjoyment, of freely giving herself over to the wet tentacles slowly slithering further up her arms and her thighs. It was a body language similar to that of a woman granting her lover full use of her body, knowing that they would both achieve untold delights from her submission.

At least five minutes must have passed as Angela watched the tentacles slowly wrap around the feminine torso. It was almost as if the tentacles were exploring Caroline in the same way that she and her crewmates were exploring the planet. That clearly meant that the tentacles belonged to some form of intelligent life; perhaps they were even multiple self-contained forms of intelligent life.

That thought scared the young explorer. Only then did she realize that she had subconsciously lowered her pulse riffle. She raised it again and trained it near Caroline's right ankle, aimed directly at a fairly thick tentacle wrapped multiple times around the right leg. She did not dare make a sound or move closer, even though she wanted, needed, to obtain a better view of the most unusual situation.

A sudden searing pain in her left shoulder blade caused Angela's mouth to open in a silent scream. She was aware of her body falling forward toward the sloping ground, but lost consciousness before the inevitable impact.

*****

Angela awoke in her own quarters, feeling extremely groggy, as if she had only slept perhaps twenty minutes when she truly needed some twenty hours of sleep. Slowly, she lifted herself to a sitting position, looking through the tiny circular window and noting the pattern of the distant stars to starboard.

Had she simply dreamed that Caroline had been naked in the stream in the depression? Had she simply dreamed all those tentacles exploring her crewmate's all-too-willing body?

Was this simply her mind's way of informing her that she herself needed to mate?

Or, was this perhaps a vision of what awaited them on Planet C6R?