Alien Jungle Read Online Free

pebbles. Then one of the workers kicked open the back doors. Hazy light broke over him.
    “Get up, Mr. Hanson,” Cole said in his ear. “Sir, we have to get out of this truck.”
    “I’m all right.” Aldus wheezed.
    He leaned heavily on his assistant as he clambered out of the vehicle. A blaze of color dazzled him: bright purple puffballs, stringy orange vines. The toppled truck had dug a trench through the undergrowth. To the side, three men and a woman huddled together.
    The woman wept. “Is that thing gone? Did you see where it went?”
    “With any luck, it’s buried,” said a man.
    Then a sound met them—like wind whistling through pine boughs. The howl of the monster.
    Aldus licked his lips. “How far are we from camp?”
    “Too far,” said Cole. He kicked at a vine reaching toward his ankle.
    The driver leaped from the cab, his face streaming with blood, and waved a resonator in the air. “This way. Let’s go!”
    The group followed without question. They stumbled over rocklike toadstools and slipped on slime mold. The driver followed the constantly changing topography grid on the resonator with his face furrowed in concentration. All around them, vegetation leaned away from the sonic waves the resonator emitted. Throbbing puffballs sent runners to trip them. Garish flowers spat pollen at their heads. Vines swung from towering black-capped mushrooms to snag their arms, their shoulders, reaching for them as if directed by a group mind.
    Aldus panted in shallow gasps. One hand clasped a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He held his other arm tight to protect his injured shoulder. Cole trotted at his side. Aldus glanced at him. Cole had been his assistant for over fifteen years, and in all that time, they had never had a disagreement.
    Until now. Cole insisted he could send a message through an Impellic ring and communicate with the authorities. Impellic rings created space-time tunnels used to carry one or two people to distant planets. This latest application into off-world communication was revolutionary. The problem was the only organization currently using Impellic rings was the Colonial Scouts, and Aldus couldn’t bring himself to ask for their help.
    The Scouts were teenagers who used the rings to transport to obscure worlds and report their conclusions to the Colonization Bureau. It was just a game to them. A presumptuous, dangerous game.
    Besides, twelve years ago, the Scouts who had found this world said it was innocuous. No intelligent life forms at all. They said nothing about moss creatures.
    Aldus’ team had been attacked since the moment they’d set up camp. Equipment was smashed or stolen. Now, five of his employees had disappeared from Beta Camp.
    He gave an involuntary shudder as he relived his first view of the ruined site. When he’d left the team two days ago, they had erected interlinking bubble tents and had already cleared the field for its first planting of grain. When he returned to check on them, he found the site all but erased and most of the team missing. The surviving workers claimed they’d been ambushed despite the precautions they’d put in place.
    He’d searched in vain for bodies. It was as if the jungle had absorbed them, as if the world were alive and taking offense. And he was responsible for bringing them there. Aldus forced the guilt away.
    No, he wouldn’t ask the Scouts for help. He was not yet ready to concede.
    A mossy hillock rose ahead. Reeds sprouted from its top like antennae, and brilliant meter-wide flowers drooped from its sides. But as Aldus approached, he noticed that the hill stood on stilts. He saw the occasional glint of glass.
    “It’s the Lander,” he cried with sudden recognition.
    “Looks even worse than the last time we saw it,” Cole said.
    “Oh, God, let the airlock work,” moaned the woman.
    Aldus glowered. He didn’t know her name; Cole had handled personnel. He was certain she was good at whatever job she’d been hired to