Elm stretched her body on the bed, enjoying the warm light coming from the light emitters on the ceiling. While the lights were carefully calibrated to mimic the light conditions on her home planet Vathul, still lying under a strip lighting was hardly the same as basking in the afternoon sun, smelling the grass and having wind play with the leaves on her head. But you can’t have everything, especially here in the cold darkness of space.

She closed her eyes for a few more moments, carefully thinking about what she had planned for today. The Prize was finally supposed to pass through the wormhole to the unexplored part of the galaxy, but until they come across a planet with a stable atmosphere and existing flora, that was of little consequence to Elm. Her plan for the day was pretty much the same as the previous days since she joined the crew of the Prize - trying to put the botany lab and the associated greenhouses into some order, with a few breaks for stopping in the mess hall to get some sustenance and hopefully meet other members of the crew. Her kind was an extremely rare sight in the ISA space as they preferred to be left alone on Vathul, and a lot of people were intimidated by her tree-like appearance. Elm had already gotten used to people staring at her from her time on the Mars university and it didn’t bother her at all.

The botany lab was another matter entirely. The previous leading botanist, an elderly human doctor Rybanski, was no doubt a brilliant and accomplished scientist, but he had absolutely no system in his work. His notes were one big chaos, the projects weren’t categorized or often even labeled, and the greenhouses apparently went on completely unattended, some turning into jungles. Elm didn’t even have time yet to visit each of them - checking the last one, according to the incomplete notes filled with various tropical specimens, was on today’s to-do list.

Finally she got up, dressing in a version of the ship’s science crew uniform, tailored specifically for the Lavathulin body constitution. She clipped off a few tiny sprouts that appeared on her body overnight. While for most of her kind it was common to leave the shoots unattended at least until leaves have started to appear on them, Elm found it inconvenient and also unappealing. Especially after seeing how much care do human females take of their bodies, carefully removing all hair, she thought it would be appropriate to do the same.

She stopped over at the mess hall to get a quick breakfast and while munching on her favorite broccoli, she used her tablet to check new messages. Apparently the ship wasn’t going through the wormhole today, due to assisting with some pirate problem. On one hand she was glad that she had more time to get the lab in order, but on the other hand she was worried about the crewmembers getting hurt in action or hostages being killed by the pirates. Since there was nothing she could possibly do to help, she tried to stop thinking about it and got to work.

Her assistants, two postgraduate students were busy tidying and categorizing greenhouse 2 - the arctic and subarctic flora samples so she went to greenhouse 7 on her own. The air was hot and the humidity was over 90%. The conditions were maintained automatically by the ship’s computer based on the given parameters, ensuring that the plants will not die even when unattended for longer periods of time. While Elm enjoyed humid environments, the temperature here was a bit too high for her. But the plants in greenhouse 7 apparently thrived, turning the room into a tropical jungle. The sounds of insects and birds were replaced by quiet whirring - tiny drones were flying around, taking care of pollination, which allowed the plants to reproduce and take over the greenhouse.

Elm walked around, making notes into her tablet. She recognized most plants and checked them in the incomplete greenhouse manifest. Some more delicate species sadly didn’t survive in the new competitive environment. A beautiful purple blossom caught her eye. It was hanging from a liana wrapped around a tree branch. Elm had never seen that kind before and came closer to observe it more carefully. She noticed that the plant was rather extensive, its creepers sprawling around, climbing nearby trees and bushes. There was no label anywhere and none of the images in the manifest resembled the plant. There was one name without an image - Escallonia villanosa, with a vague description that could possibly match the plant - ‘climber with beautiful blossoms’. Other than that, the note only contained a couple of big red exclamation marks. Elm stood under the plant, trying to find some more information about Escallonia anywhere in the ship logs or scientific literature available in the archives, but apparently it was some new species that doctor Rybanski discovered, named and didn’t report anywhere.

She used her tablet to clip a few images, taking notes about the structure of the blossom and unique leaf texture. Fully emerged in her work, she didn’t really pay much attention to her surroundings. When she stepped back to make a picture from a greater distance, she tripped over something and fell down. As soon as her body hit the ground, she could feel light tickling, as something crawled around her legs and arms. The long creepers were moving towards her, trying to wrap around her body. Elm froze, trying to figure out what to do. If the plant was carnivorous, it was most likely very hungry after such a long time. The fact that Elm’s body wasn’t really made of flesh didn’t seem to bother it. Maybe it was just a parasitic organism used to latch itself onto other plant life and feed off them? There were many known cases of such plants. The best method to fight the parasites was usually simply manually removing them from the host, but some cases required more complicated approaches like creating chemical or biological agents to fight the parasite on the cellular level. 

Elm snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that her racial tendency to overthink things is going to cost her her life. She needed to act now and think later. Jumping up, she tore the creepers from around her legs and wrists, shouting out in pain as they took part of her bark with them, leaving long but fortunately shallow wounds behind. She had to crouch to avoid low-hanging branches as she sprinted out of the greenhouse, quickly shutting the door behind her. While catching her breath, the normally calm Elm cursed doctor Rybanski, deciding to be much more careful from now on.

And as for greenhouse 7, one of her assistants will surely be glad to take care of sorting things out in there.