"Could you have possibly chosen a hotter place to land, baby?" Cruz asked. He was the second person out of the ship, right behind the captain, and already he was frowning at the hot and heavy moisture in the air. "Will you pardon me, while I go back inside for my suntan lotion?"
Thor ignored the comments, as he was double-checking the air quality with a hand held chemical analyzer. The results matched the readout from the ship's computers. The air on Zeus lacked standard density, comparable to being at a high altitude on Earth, but it was entirely breathable.
"We're in the shade, Cruz." Washington said, looking up at the huge, leafy trees that surrounded them. Already, they were coming across several anomalies the ship's sensors didn't adequately prepare them for. The trees had trunks the size of Earth houses and were as tall as ten story buildings.
"We might be in the shade, baby, but my armpits are as moist as Margo's middle when she gets at hold of a cucumber."
"I heard that, you little man." Margo said, from her spot standing beside the Space Relations hatch. The other two women from the crew came out right after her. "How about you find a wet cucumber under your pillow the next time you lay down?"
"How ghastly!" Cruz cringed. "Captain, order this lesbian to behave while we're off the ship!"
Like Thor before him, Washington ignored his science officer. He faced the three women, all of who were looking around uneasily. "Are you sure none of you wants to come with us?"
The shy Willow simply shook her head, while Mary was slightly more vocal.
"I have no idea what the thought patterns are of the people out here." The pretty blonde admitted. "I don't want to suddenly walk into a crowd of them. If you bring one at a time back I'll try to read them, but not a whole bunch all at once."
That much was true, Washington acknowledged. There were times when Mary's psychic abilities would become overwhelmed if too many people were around, let alone an entire group of unknown aliens. He glanced at the biggest woman on his crew. "Margo, what about you?"
"I'm just the cook around here." Margo shrugged. "What do I know about exploring new planets and shit? Besides, I have two hot pieces of ass to look after right here."
"Get behind me, lesbian!" Cruz shouted at her.
"No, you get behind me." Margo replied, before she poked her tongue into the side of her mouth and leered at Willow.
"Captain, tell her to stop looking at me that way." Willow requested.
"You can look at me that way." Mary smiled saucily. "Oh, yeah! I like it!"
"Captain, you have to do something about this." Cruz worried. "Margo could infect the others with her biological dysfunction. Theoretically, we could return to the ship and discover them all with ugly butch haircuts like the one Margo has."
"Enough." Washington stilled them all. "Willow, I will be leaving you in charge while we're out."
"Aww!" Margo griped. "Why not me?"
"Willow will be the highest ranking member of the crew once we're gone." The captain emphasized. "We'll be gone for two hours. Once we have gathered specimens of the local flora and surveyed what we can of the landscape, we'll make our way back here. Willow, stay near a communications console while we're out exploring."
"I sure will, Captain." The brunette said, as she scurried over the man's side. She pecked him on the cheek. "Be careful out there, hubby."
Washington grinned back. During the adventure on the Groombridge 34 system, he had married according to the local customs of one of the planets there. Barbie was his first wife, and in the case she could not bear children, Willow wedded him as a willing back-up. In the short time he'd been married, he had yet to consummate his marriage with Willow, but this was mostly because Barbie was such a jealous woman. In fact, his first wife liked teasing him about his second wife, as far making Washington promise that he wouldn't lay a hand on Willow until Barbie gave him permission.
Because they were beaus, usually anyway, Mary walked over to give a more intimate kiss to Cruz. This left Margo and Thor glancing at each other.
"Come here, you big lug." Margo waggled her finger. "You wanna wrestle naked later?"
"I thought we were out of vegetable oil?" Thor asked, as he made his way before the big woman.
"You're right, we almost are." Margo frowned. "We'll just have to go Greco-Roman with the whipped cream then. Give me a kiss, you big, hunky barbarian."
Once the three men received their intimate farewells, they checked their belt-clipped radios and plasma pistols. Next, they hoisted their expedition packs onto their shoulders and strapped them across the waist. Cruz waved, Thor grunted, and Washington pointed in the direction they were going. A couple of minutes later, all three men had vanished into leafy green shrubbery that was as tall or much taller than they were.
"Do you think they'll be okay?" Willow asked.
"Why not?" Margo replied. "They've got guns on them. Believe you me; whoever gets a shot of plasma up their ass is going to have second thoughts about messing with our good captain."
"We've been cooped up inside the ship forever." Mary said. "How about we bring out the lawn chairs and sunbathe? I want an all-over tan."
"Mary, you're giving me tingles, you little hussy." Margo flirted.
"Think of it as my way of protecting Willow." Mary wiggled her head saucily. "If you want a piece of her, you'll have to go through me first."
"But I can't ever get past you!" Margo complained.
"Tough titty, bitch." Mary winked. "Willow, you either sunbathe naked with us, or we're going to make you."
"I have to stay by a comm, in case the Captain calls."
"No you don't." Margo made a face at her. "There's a comm right by the hatch. All you have to do is set the dumb thing on speaker. Now get in there and go grab your chair, because I'm not bringing it out for you!"
Willow anxiously looked at Mary.
"If you don't do it yourself, we're going to make you." The blonde tart said.
"Okay, fine!" Willow blurted out.
The moment the woman turned to head inside, Margo reached out to slap her butt. Willow jumped, squealed, and right after ran into the ship for safety.
"Do that to muah." Mary said.
Margo went ahead and smacked her butt, causing the shapely blonde to start bouncing up and down on her toes. "You liked that, didn't you?"
Mary poked her tongue out, before she too ran back into the ship.
"Do you think the girls will be all right, Captain?" Cruz asked, after about half an hour of exploring.
"Stop thinking about them and keep your eyes open." Washington answered. He was holding one end of a tape measure up while Thor walked around the circumference of a very large tree trunk with the rest of it. "You're letting yourself get distracted."
"You're right, Captain." Cruz nodded. He'd been taking pictures of insects earlier, finding creatures that looked like ants, bees and termites, but in an unusual array of colors and all about five times larger than their counterparts on Earth. It terrified him to think of a spider with proportions like that, but so far they hadn't stumbled upon any spider webs. "I'm just a bit nervous about being out here, baby. It isn't often that we go where no man has gone before."
"You should be excited about that." Washington said.
"Captain, I've run out of tape." Thor announced, the big man unseen thanks to the huge bulk of the tree.
"Give me one!" Washington called back. "Cruz, I'm going to mark this tree with my plasma gun. After that, I'm going to walk around the tree to where Thor is so we can finish measuring this giant. You stay right here so we'll know where the starting point is."
"You don't think the inhabitants are giants, do you?" The science officer asked.
"I guess we'll know when we run into them." The captain said, before walking off around the edge of the tree. "I'm coming to you, Thor."
Cruz noted the plasma scar his superior had left on the tree. He turned to consider the foliage around them. There were proto-ferns with leaves that had wavy edges and were a good five feet long, and vines snaking along the ground around the giant trees that were thicker than Earth logs. Even the dirt below their feet was unusual. It wasn't dirt but something else; a sort of silt made of old volcanic basalt that was exceedingly fertile. He could compare the soil to what was found on the islands of Hawaii, where foliage was just as fertile and rich with nutrients.
Maybe giants were hiding in the trees, Cruz considered, glancing up at the branches that started up at fifteen to twenty feet above his head. After taking into account how big and sturdy the branches were, and how their branches stretched out to other branches from other giant trees, he wondered if there could be an entire ecosystem up there like the ones found in tropical rainforests on Earth.
"Incredible." Cruz murmured to himself. "An entire cross-section of species could spend their entire lives in these trees, without ever setting foot on the soil here. It would be a minor catastrophe if one of these trees simply fell down. Well, a major catastrophe actually, for the animals that live in it. Who would have ever imagined that a giant tree falling down could be an Extinction Level Event for its inhabitants."
