Page 14 of Alien on the Moon (Thryal Mates #3)
Rylan
Rylan sighed, rubbing at the headache blooming behind his eyes. He understood why Elena was so upset. Of course, he did. The failure of this project was as frustrating as it was humiliating.
When she came in with bright eyes and unusual ideas, he began to hope that maybe they had a chance at saving the project and countless people from hunger. And for a while, it looked like it was going to work.
It made the defeat all the more bitter. But Elena was right that they still had time to—what was that Earth saying she was fond of? Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Despite what he said, he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Stiya, can you get me the new soil readings?” he asked as he passed her in the hall. He considered going back to the lab, but Elena was probably there, and he wanted to keep his distance until things cooled down a bit between them.
She sighed and sent him the latest test results. “Maybe you can make sense of what’s going on.”
He returned to his office with the files and read through them. None of it made sense. Why were the squigs dying? Though the previous test made it appear that the soil was depleted, it now seemed richer than ever. Why, then, did the plants grow in yellow-green rather than their normal rich, dark green?
He puzzled at it for hours before dragging himself away to grab dinner. He would be of no help to anyone if he ran himself into the ground.
The cafeteria was strangely quiet and sedate. Usually, it was full of friendly chatter, but it seemed as though everyone sensed that the end of the project was coming soon, and they had failed to make it work.
“Sir,” Kyn said, sitting down across from him. “Is it true? Are they ending the program?”
“Only if we fail to fix our problems. The prince has kindly granted us more time, but…” He took a bite of his kallar sandwich and sighed. “Try not to spread this around, okay? Morale is low enough as it is.”
She shook her head, a determined look crossing her features. “You said we had one more shot at this, so you need to make that clear to everyone because we all still believe in this project. We want it to succeed, and knowing we still have a chance will give us enough hope to continue.”
“Would you want it even if it’s false hope?” He sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, but I’m also trying to be realistic. Isn’t it insanity to try doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?”
She smirked. “Not insanity. It’s science. Isn’t the whole point that we repeat experiments to make sure that we have the right answer?”
He opened his mouth to retort but then closed it. She had a point. Didn’t she? The whole job of a scientist was to hypothesize, collect data, and then synthesize it and repeat until they were sure the results were correct.
“Just try telling that to the royal council,” he muttered.
She inclined her head, conceding the point. “I still think it would be best if you were straightforward with everyone. Just tell them that the fate of the project is not yet decided, so we still have time to solve it.”
“I’ll think about it. Like I said, I don’t want to give false hope.”
“False hope is better than no hope at all.” She collected her tray. “If anyone asks me, I’ll tell them what you said, but we both know it’s better if you get ahead of this.”
With a sigh, he finished his meal and headed back to his office to write the base-wide memo. Sitting at his desk, he typed, deleted, and then retyped his message, struggling to put this situation into words. Finally, he came up with this:
Everyone,
Rumors have been going around about the project being canceled. This is not yet true. While Prince Arccoo has delivered an ultimatum on behalf of the royal council, he has also graciously given us one last chance to provide results. Do not give up or give in to despair. We still have time, and we can still pull this off. I believe in every one of you.
Rylan
He sent it out and then decided to take his own advice by focusing once more on the soil test results. After reaching dead end after frustrating dead end, though, he decided to go to bed. Before hitting the showers, though, he peered into the lab through the window.
Elena sat there furiously typing into her comms. She had to be just as exhausted as he was, so he typed her a quick message: Remember Eureka. It was their code word to get the other person to take a break.
A look of anger flickered across her face as she read it. That was new. Usually, she would smile affectionately if he sent her a silly message or picture. Instead, she shut down her comms and fled the room.
So much for that peace offering.
If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure what she expected him to do. He sensed an underlying reason for her being upset, but he couldn’t even begin to make sense of it. Why was she being so stubborn?
For a time, he thought he understood humans, but now, it seemed as though he’d never understood her at all. What did he do wrong?
At least she still respected him enough to take his advice. She left the lab, presumably to shower and go to bed. Instead of dwelling on her capriciousness, he decided to do the same.
He lay in bed, tossing and turning, his mind full of theories and frustrations. Why were humans so confusing? Why were things falling apart, both in the project and his love life? And why were the squigs dying?
After about three hours, he gave up on sleep and dragged himself out of bed. If he wasn’t going to rest, he might as well take some more samples of the plants and the squigs.
He didn’t bother with an envirosuit, instead just walking right out with his boots on and testers in hand. The planting field reeked of whatever infection the squigs had, and the gelatinous goo covered everything in sight. Regretting forgoing the envirosuit, he squatted and felt the yellow-green leaves of the bral and vreben.
Strange.
Usually, blighted leaves would be brown and crunchy at the end, but even though these were yellow like they had an infection, the leaves themselves were supple. They had been focusing on the soil and squigs and avoiding taking samples of the plants themselves out of fear of damaging them when they were already so delicate, but maybe that was the wrong course of action.
He took a sample of both plant species from every row before checking the soil’s nitrogen levels. Somehow, it was even healthier than the last readings. So why did the plants droop and turn yellow? By all rights, they and the squigs should be thriving.
“What is wrong with you?” he muttered, rubbing a leaf between his thumb and forefinger. He half expected it to crumble to dust, but it stayed soft and strong.
As an afterthought, he picked up some soil mixed with the slime. Maybe it was somehow contributing to the strange uptick in nutrients and the odd color of the plants.
Out of curiosity, he ventured to the pile of compost they had left out in case the squigs started eating again. After days of sitting there unchanged, the organic material had begun to break down again. He stooped down and took a sample of that too before heading back inside.
After dropping the samples off at the lab to be analyzed and pointedly avoiding Elena’s gaze, he headed back to his room to try and sleep. Something was steeping in the back of his mind like a kettle of satcha flower tea, but he knew he was too tired to fit the puzzle pieces together.
Mind still buzzing, he eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep.
At breakfast the next morning, Kyn sat across from him again. “Trouble in paradise?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He took a pointed sip of his Jolt to avoid snapping at her.
The scientist rolled her eyes. “Come on. Until yesterday, you and Elena were attached at the hip, and now you’re barely looking at one another. What happened?”
He sighed. “My love life is none of your business.” Aside from the conversation they’d had the day before, they hadn’t really spoken to one another outside of work-related topics. Why was she talking to him about his personal business like they were friends?
“It is if it means you’re too distracted to help fix this. And you both seem to do your best thinking when bouncing ideas off each other.” She took a bite of her granis. “How are we going to do this if you’re in a lovers’ spat with the other smartest person on our team?
Unfortunately, she had a point. When he was working, he kept turning to Elena to ask what she thought only to remember she was not with him. She was his favorite person to go to for brainstorming.
“She’s mad because she thinks I’ve already given up on the project and don’t care about it anymore,” he said, focusing on his food.
“Well, have you?” she asked.
His head snapped up. “Of course not! And I still care. I want this to work, but…”
“But what?”
He sighed. “I understand the prince’s point of view. Why keep throwing everything at a losing strategy? Science may be trial and error, but so far, we’ve been some trial, all error. And we have to think about the bigger picture here.”
“Preventing a famine,” Kyn said.
“Exactly.” He took another sip from his Jolt. “I wish I could just get it through her head that I can’t let people die for the sake of our egos. If we need to change strategy, we should do it before it’s too late.”
“Have you considered…” She stirred her granis, seeming to do it more to buy time to put her thoughts together than to mix the savory porridge. “Maybe this isn’t just about the project?”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
Rolling her eyes, she muttered something like, “ Men ,” and took a vicious bite of her breakfast. “Okay, let’s think here. How did you and Elena meet?”
“You know how we met.”
“Yeah, but I want you to say it.”
He didn’t appreciate the way she was talking to him. He wasn’t a child, but she was speaking as though she was helping a particularly slow student with his math homework. “Doing this project.”
She pointed her spoon at him. “Exactly. And you bonded through this project. Right?”
He furrowed his brows. “Yes?”
“So, what happens when the project is over?”
Oh. “Oh.”
She smirked. “There we go. I knew we’d get there eventually, sir.”
“So, I fucked up.” He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “What do I do now? I thought I made it clear I was interested in her beyond this project.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, you might have said that, but emotions are funny things, especially if you’ve been hurt before. It can be difficult to believe the next person is telling the truth.”
“You think someone hurt her?” The idea of it sent a solar flare of protective anger through his chest. How could anyone hurt someone like her?
“I don’t know.” She scooped out the last dregs of her granis. “That’s the kind of question you should be asking her. But people like us tend to be left out for some reason or another. We’re too bad at reading the room, or we feel like we have to be invited into the social gathering, or, once they strike on a topic we’re interested in, we go from quiet to rudely dominating the conversation.”
“So, she feels like me giving up on this…” he gestured widely to indicate the base and the project, “is the same thing as giving up on us? It doesn’t make sense.”
She shot him a pointed look. “Like I said, it’s emotional thinking, not logical. Two different things.”
“So, I’d better find her and apologize?”
She nodded. “So, you’d better find her and apologize.”
He finished his food and got to his feet. “Thanks for the talk. I probably needed that.”
“Any time.”
Well, there was no time like the present. Odds were that Elena skipped breakfast in favor of spending more time in the lab. As he approached, he saw her through the window talking with Jaku.
She looked more cheerful than she had the day before as she talked and laughed with the other scientist. Jealousy flashed through him like a lightning bolt. It wasn’t a rational feeling—he knew Jaku was married and not at all interested in Elena—but it still stung.
Still, even though their fight had only been going on for about a day, he missed the way she smiled when she looked at him and laughed at his stupid jokes. He missed working together and their conversations, whether related to the project or just about life in general. Her conversation with Jaku reminded him of exactly what he had been frozen out of.
And then he heard what they were talking about.
“I mean, you did see his memo. Right? He said he wasn’t giving up on the project just yet,” Jaku said.
“Well, yeah, he said it to keep morale up, but you should have seen him.” Her voice lowered in register as an imitation of Rylan’s. “‘ I’m sure your planet also has a concept of the sunk-cost fallacy.’ Ugh, what a condescending ass.”
Rylan clenched his jaw. A part of him wanted to walk into the room and confront her right there, but instead, he turned and walked away. Jaku didn’t need to be caught in the middle of this fight. They would resolve it in private like adults.
But doubt started to wriggle into his mind. Maybe everything was a failure after all. He left Thryal because he chose to make history over making friends. But nothing he tried seemed to work. The plants refused to grow and when they did, they grew sickly. The squigs all died. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong.
And his romantic life wasn’t doing much better. He was on the verge of losing the most amazing woman he had ever met because he was too oblivious to see what she really needed from him. And when she tried to express it, he was condescending to her without even meaning to be.
Until this point, he hadn’t actually been ready to give up. But now, there really seemed to be no point. He couldn’t make plants grow. He couldn’t make love bloom. It seemed like nothing he did would ever work out. Was there even a point in trying?