It was a cold day in space when the captain came to me and said, "Diana Wilhelm, you're coming on a landing party with me."
So I went on the landing party which consisted of Captain Kirk, Spock, three other redshirts, and me.
We beamed down to a swamp-like planet known as Zyyptarr. It was uninhabited by any kind of humanoid life forms. Since I am an entomologist, I was sent down to study the wildlife that could be living there which was pretty much limited to fly like creatures and mosquitoes. So far, it was looking pretty bleak, not even a fly had buzzed past me.
The weather on the planet today was very hot and humid, it felt like being in a very steamy disgusting communal bathroom. In other words, it was just like being back at the academy all over again. Despite how awfully horrible the air felt, the planet was heavily forested. It was like a tropical rainforest. There were tall trees with moss growing on them and long, thick vines hanging from their branches. There were also beautiful flowers but they were also very odd. The flowers grew right next to each tree in a ring, and they were all very brightly colored and had nectar just dripping from them.
After a while of searching through this area and studying the trees and the flowers and searching for even one bug of any kind, the captain said, "Spock, you take Peterson and McConnel, and I will take Wilhelm and Mario." Spock's team was sent east and my team went west.
As we went on our way, Mario decided that he wanted to try to drink some of the nectar that was dripping out of one of the flowers.
"It looks like a golden drop of sun," he said to me as we approached one of the flowers.
"Don't do it," I warned.
"Why not?"
"Because all brightly colored plants are poisonous. They are colored that way to warn off predators."
"Not all brightly colored plants are poisonous, sometimes plants that aren't poisonous will look like that to keep predators away. Besides, what kind of predators are on this planet? Have you even seen any bugs?"
"No, I haven't," I had to admit, he had gotten me there. "But that is no reason to sample the nector. Spock didn't even know what the compounds that it consisted of were!"
Mario proceeded to cup his hands together and let some nector drop into his hands until they were about half full.
"Don't do it Mario," I warned, I couldn't touch him because I didn't want to get the stuff splashed on me. For all we knew, the nectar could be absorbed through the skin and kill a person.
Mario lifted his hands up to his mouth. Just then, Captain Kirk saw what Mario was doing.
"Mario no!" he shouted, but it was too late. Mario drank the nectar out of his hands. The captain and I just stared at him for a minute as mixed expressions ran across Mario's face. I slowly started to back away from him, as the expressions kept getting weirder and weirder.
Mario ended up going berserk and running off through the forest with high speed. The captain and I had no choice but to slowly follow him and continue on our way. When we did run across Mario again, he was hanging from a vine in a tree. His face had turned an odd green color. There was nothing that we could do for him so the captain left a sort of signaling device by him and we carried on our way.
Eventually, we came across a rapidly flowing river. The tricorder indicated that the river was harmless water. I walked along the bank of the river, if there were animals on this planet, they would definitely have to come to the river for water but I still found nothing. I turned sharply to walk over to the captain, who was looking at some of the rock formations, and slipped on a rock, screamed, and fell backwards into the river. I struggled against the current of the river, it was absurd how deep it was for being only one foot away from the bank. The water was moving too fast, I would never be able to reach the shore and I was already struggling to stay afloat. After what felt like a life time, I heard a familiar voice.
"Would you like to sit on my hard gigantic log?" asked Captain Kirk mischievously. Despite how busy I was trying not to drown, I looked at him with disgust for a moment but then I realized that he had come floating up to me on a rather large piece of driftwood.
"I would love to," I coughed as he heaved me on top of the piece of lumber. Somehow, he got us back to the shore of the river. We then made our way back to the place where we started from to meet up with Spock. Spock had appeared back by himself.
"Where are Peterson and McConnel?" Captain Kirk questioned Spock.
"They died captain, there was nothing I could do to save them. Peterson died from tripping over his own feet and falling onto the ground and McConnel died from tripping over Peterson's corpse."
"How did that kill them?"
"I honestly do not know captain. I think it has something to do with the color shirt that they were wearing."
I looked down at my shirt, it was blue. "Thank god I'm not a redshirt!" I almost yelled and threw my hands up into the air. I definitely would have been dead if I were a redshirt. Spock just stared at me like a typical Vulcan would, but the captain was looking at me with a look of amusement and started laughing. Once he had finished, he had Scotty beam us and the dead redshirts up.
Everyone who wasn't a redshirt had a good laugh that day over how stupid seeming the deaths of the redshirts were.