The crew brought back the plant back to the ship, but it starts to develop a peculiar appetite.
- 📖 The first few days were not overly eventful. The plant grew faster than anticipated in its new environment. Which was not bad, as it provided enough food for the animals that the crew kept feeding. It started when the first crewmember apparently got bit by the plant.
- 📖 Then the experimentation started. Ike had the hypothesis that the plant might be carnivorous. So he and a few others started to put pieces of the dried meat rations into the soil. And indeed the plant grew faster and thicker.
- 📖 Captain Sato can still hear the screams of the unfortunate crew members, Bruno, Vuldar and Halia, that were surprised in their sleep. Quickly the vines wrapped around their bodies, so she hoped they did not suffer for long.
- 📖 A first action was to try to contain the problem, cutting off the plant from the rest of the ship and figure out what to do next. Unfortunately it was already to late. Spores of the plant began to spread through the ventilation system.
- 📖 It spread faster than it could be contained. The nourishment and rich atmosphere made sure of that. So it was just a matter of time it would catch up to other unsuspecting crew members. In a fit of panic, Sato ordered the isolation of a single area from the main ventilation system, reroute all resources there and vent off the atmosphere in the rest of the ship.
- 📖 Sato expected a bigger effect, that after a few hours, the plants would wither and die. But they didn't. The low-atmosphere environment of their planet made them adapt and, according to theories, go into a kind of hibernation similar to tardigrades.
- 📖 And if that was not enough, it looked like the plant developed a taste into her crew. It began to hunt them down, encircle and surround them in their hiding place. Slowly crushing the walls open, like an old can.