Page 5 of Alien on the Moon (Thryal Mates #3)

Elena

“Have you heard of Milpas?” Elena asked, pushing her hover chair from her desk over to Rylan’s to peer over his shoulder at the results of the soil samples.

He picked up his head, glancing sidelong at her. “No. Is that an Earth snack?”

As if on cue, her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in hours. Often, when she found herself wrapped in her work, she would forget little things like eating, sleeping, and using the bathroom.

She giggled. “I think you’re thinking of Milkas.” The last time she’d visited Earth with her sisters, she stocked up on her favorite chocolate. She had brought that and some other Earth snacks with her to the base for some easy fuel while she worked.

She looked around. All the other scientists seemed to be on their lunch break, and she hadn’t even noticed. “But I would be happy to tell you all about it over lunch.”

Apparently, Rylan had the same habit of getting too wrapped up in his work because his stomach audibly grumbled at the mention of food. He flashed her an embarrassed smile. “Lunch sounds great.”

The cafeteria was mostly empty by the time they got there. Elena ordered the granis, a porridge with meat and spices, while Rylan got the plo’meek stew.

“So,” Elena said between mouthfuls of porridge. “Milpas is a farming technique from the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. It’s a form of companion planting, which leads to a higher crop yield without pesticide or fertilizers.”

Rylan set the spoon down and leaned in closer, his gaze fascinated and eager to learn. “How?”

She loved the way he looked at her. The Thryals on Arccoo’s planet seemed to think of her more as a kid who needed babysitting, but he truly listened to her and her ideas. The respect he felt for her was obvious and intoxicating.

“One of the best-known versions of it is the three sisters: maize, beans, and squash. The Mesoamericans would use the corn as a climbing trellis for the beans while said beans would enrich the nitrogen in the soil and stabilize the stalks of corn. Meanwhile, the wide leaves of the squash would keep the soil moist and cool and prevent weeds and predators from killing the corn and beans.”

His eyes lit up at this, and her stomach fluttered when he grinned at her. “So, what you’re saying is that, for us to keep the soil enriched after terraforming, we need to maintain a polyculture farmland rather than a monoculture?”

Elena snapped her fingers, turning them into a finger gun. “Bingo.”

At this, he furrowed his brows. “Bingo?”

“Earth phrase.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It just means that you got it right.”

“Bingo,” he repeated with a smile. “Your language is fascinating.” Out of anyone else, the words might have sounded sarcastic, but she knew he was being sincere.

Her cheeks warmed as she looked away, studying the bits of wheat in her granis. She never quite understood what her sisters meant when they said a sign of having a crush was feeling flustered at the smallest word of affection. Not until she met Rylan.

“Thanks.” She bit her lip. Now was not the time for a crush. She and Rylan had a terraforming project to save and a famine to prevent. “So, what do you think? Should we start looking into plants that can be combined to form symbiotic relationships? That way, we don’t have to keep adding nitrogen to the soil. It will start to naturally enrich itself.”

Her mind raced with ways to combine the properties of Thryal plants and create a more sustainable soil system.

Rylan scratched his cheek, his brows furrowing as he pondered her suggestion. “I think it’s worth looking into. But that assumes the soil itself is capable of sustaining life.” He said the last part sharply. It wasn’t exactly a rebuke, but it carried within it a warning for her to look before she leaped.

She hummed thoughtfully. The granis filled her mouth with a subtle warmth, like eating a jalapeno pepper. It distracted her from the heat in her cheeks. She thought she had the solution, but he made a very good point. “Right. I guess I got ahead of myself a little there.”

“No, no, it’s a great idea.” He flashed her a soft smile. “Even if it’s not the whole solution, I think you found a piece of the puzzle.”

He took a sip of his Jolt and tapped his fingers on the cafeteria table. “So, for our next steps, we should take more samples and pinpoint what the soil is missing. Then, we can find plants that will replenish these nutrients.”

She forced herself to focus on the words coming out of his stupidly handsome face rather than the easy grace of him tapping his elegant fingers on the table. She was never going to make fun of her sisters for being easily distracted by the little things their husbands did ever again.

Okay, that may have been a lie. She was definitely still going to tease them about it. But she would be doing it knowing full well that she was a hypocrite.

“Elena?” Rylan waved a hand in front of her face. “Elena? Are you okay?”

She blinked, coming back to herself. Her cheeks burned a bright red. “Sorry. Must’ve zoned out for a second there.”

He smirked. “Daydreaming about Milkas?”

“ Milpas ,” she replied, but now that he mentioned it, she could go for a bite of her chocolate stash, too. Hmm… She arched an eyebrow. “That is, unless you’re trying to trick me into craving a chocolate bar so I’ll share.”

He pressed a hand over his heart in mock offense. “You wound me.”

“But…” She leaned in closer, looking up at him from under her lashes.

“But if you were to offer to share, I wouldn’t object.”

Sitting back, she barked out a laugh. “Knew it. You have a sweet tooth.”

“That’s an interesting hypothesis. The scientific method requires the repetition of an experiment,” he said, straightfaced. “I tried the dessert you call chocolate once and liked it. But to conclude that I have a sweet tooth, I would have to try it at least two more times to see if the hypothesis is correct.”

She rolled her eyes, playing the role of the begrudging assistant. “Well, if you insist for the sake of science… I may be able to find some for experimentation.”

Once they had finished their meal, she headed to her room for her stash of Earth-made processed junk food. As much as she liked the food on Thryal, something was comforting about the familiarity of food from her home planet, a reminder that no matter how far away she was, Earth was still there.

People at home still went about their business. They continued living, working, loving, and dying. And they all looked up at the sky and wondered if the little blue planet so full of life was alone in the universe. She was one of the privileged few who could say for certain that it wasn’t.

She fished a chocolate bar from her stash and opened it, taking half for herself and giving the other half to Rylan.

Grinning, he took a bite. “Trial two supports your hypothesis.” Craning his head over her shoulder, he studied the rest of the food in her stash. “Is all of this chocolate?”

“No, not all of it. I call this my homesickness stash. Because when you’re far from home, you miss the little things, like the food you eat that isn’t good for you but still tastes good and reminds you of road trips when you were a kid.” Scooting aside, she made a space for him on her bunk and patted it as an invitation for him to sit down.

Compared to Thryal, Earth seemed primitive and mundane, but Rylan always listened to her describe her home planet with rapt attention. He was brilliant, and she found that incredibly attractive.

She’d met plenty of smart guys so high off their own intelligence that they assumed they were the smartest people in any room and condescended to anyone who disagreed. Rylan wasn’t like that.

When she spoke, he listened. He never dismissed her, instead absorbing whatever she said and thinking through her ideas instead of opening his mouth and saying the first thing that popped into his head. And when it came to discussions of Earth, every little thing sounded like magic to him, making her see her home planet in a new light.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

He picked up a bag of cheese puffs. “What are these? Is everything in this box edible?”

Laughing, she shook her head. She was glad she’d gone through that phase where she was fascinated by manufacturing products. “Of course, you would pick the hardest food for me to explain first. Do you remember the plant I talked about earlier as a part of the three sisters? Corn?”

He nodded.

“Well, these are made with that plant. Corn is a staple food in my world. You heat a dough made from it and extrude it through a machine. Then, you coat it in the curdled milk from an animal called a cow.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “It sounds complicated.”

“It is. But it’s also what we humans call junk food because it may not be healthy, but it tastes great.”

“I’ll have to try it sometime.” He picked up a bag of potato chips. “What about this one?”

And the world fell away from her. It had a habit of doing that when she was on the verge of a revelation. The potato chips set off a faint resonance, like hearing a familiar musical tune from across the house and trying to recall the name of the song.

It was coming to her. She just needed a minute to think. Potatoes. Something about potatoes. And it connected to the Milpas. No, not Milpas. Monoculture.

“Elena?” Rylan began.

“Shh!” she hissed, holding up a finger. The idea was coming together. What was it? Monocultures were risky because one blight could wipe out the entire species. It happened with bananas and with…

“The Irish Potato Famine!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet.

Rylan looked at her like she had grown two heads. “What?”

“Come on. We need to get more samples. I have an idea.” As they geared up, she explained how a massive famine in Ireland had been caused by a blight on the potato monoculture. To be fair, it had also been caused by the behavior of the British government, but that didn’t apply in this situation.

“So, you think a microbe in the soil could be causing this?” Rylan asked as he collected a sample of topsoil near where the terraforming first began to fail.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. It could be one that’s depleting the nitrogen in the soil rather than rotting plants outright. Maybe a mutated disease or something.”

Even from behind the oxygen mask, she could see that he was smiling. “You’re brilliant.”

Her cheeks heated up at that. To avoid thinking about it or his lips on hers, she turned back to the samples she had been collecting. “I’m sure you would’ve thought of it eventually. The chips just helped me make the connection.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Rylan said. He was standing close to her, just inches away. With a gloved finger, he tilted her head up so that she’d look at him. “I’m fascinated by the way your brain works. You’re one of the most formidable minds I’ve ever met.”

She let out a high, girlish giggle. How embarrassing. If Sofia and Carmen were there, they’d never let her live it down. “I could say the same about you. Most people tend to get tired of my rambling after a while.”

Rather than keep facing him and putting her foot in her mouth, she headed back to the base. There, she dropped the samples into the slot to be processed and pulled off her protective gear.

“Wait,” he said, catching up to her. He caught her arm as she tried to push past him. His grip was firm but not enough to hurt. Still, years of bullying in school and dealing with sexist creeps in her labs gave her quick reflexes.

Whipping on him like a rattlesnake, she punched him in the gut before she even realized what she was doing. He doubled over more in shock than pain, but guilt immediately slammed into her. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking—”

He held up a hand, straightening once he’d caught his breath. “No, I should be the one apologizing. Give me a minute to take off my safety gear and then we can talk.”

She waited, guilt twisting in her gut as he put away his samples and removed his suit. Why did she do that? What was wrong with her?

He emerged in his day clothes. “I think I owe you an apology.”

She blinked. Why was he insisting on this? “But I punched you.”

Shaking his head, he let out an amused huff. “Yeah, after I came onto you, made you uncomfortable, and then grabbed you when you tried to get away. That’s on me.”

“But I—”

“I misread things between us, and I’m sorry for that. If you still want to be friends after this, I would love—”

“I like you, too!” she shouted.

It was his turn to take a step back in surprise. “You what? But you pushed me away.”

Elena felt too exposed. Here she was, out in the open, admitting her feelings and neuroses where anyone could hear. “Can we talk in private?”

His emerald eyes widened. “Yes, of course.”

When they reached her bedroom, she shut the door with a sigh. “I’m not used to feelings like this. Or attraction.”

Rylan stayed silent, listening and letting her speak before revealing his thoughts. But the way his brows furrowed told her she had upset him with her words.

Still, she barreled on. “I’m not kind in the way that my sister, Carmen, is kind, and I’m not fun in the way that my sister, Sofia, is. I understand logic, machines, and nature, not people. So, when you started flirting, I panicked because I don’t know what to do with that.”

With a sigh, she scrubbed her face with her hands. “It’s nothing you did wrong. I’m just a neurotic weirdo.”

Finally, Rylan spoke. “Before, you said people don’t like your rambling. But that isn’t true. I love to hear you talk. When I look at you, I see someone who’s beautiful. But then you have an idea, or you start talking about something you’re passionate about, and the joy of it makes you radiant.”

For the first time in her life, Elena didn’t think. She acted. Throwing her arms around him, she pulled Rylan in for a kiss.