Part Two: Deep Space, June 5th, 3002
"… and that's why I changed from pink fingernail polish to yellow fingernail polish."
Leela just kept staring out the front viewport, completely lost in her thoughts. Amy got up from her seat at navigation and waved a hand in front of the cyclops' face to make sure she was even awake.
"Uhh, Leela? Are you ok?"
Leela reacted as though she'd been shocked. "Huh, what? What's going on? Is something wrong?"
Amy cocked her head. "Uhh, no, but I was starting to get a little worried. I just told a fifteen-minute story about fingernail polish and you didn't even roll your eye once. I wanted to make sure you were alright."
"Yeah, I'm fine." Leela said, forcing a weak smile. "I was just thinking, and I guess I kinda got lost in my head."
"You were thinking about Fry again, weren't you?" Amy asked as she sat back down in her seat by the communications gear.
"Yeah." Leela admitted. "I mean, I know it's not a coincidence that Planet Express has been three times as profitable since he got fired, but for some reason I just don't like my job anymore, even with the raise that Hermes gave us."
"You like him, don't you?" The intern asked, knowingly.
"W-what?" Leela stammered. "No! What on Space Earth gave you that idea?"
Amy was surprised by her Captain's outburst "Well you know, you two spend so much time together, I just figured…" She shrugged.
Leela shook her head. "No, it was never like that. I mean, we had a couple of moments. Like on the Titanic right before it got sucked into that black hole, but nothing serious. Besides, I don't think it matters much anymore."
"What do you mean?"
Leela hesitated. She had told her coworkers that Fry wasn't going to be coming back to Planet Express, but she hadn't mentioned the fight that she had had with the delivery boy. She hadn't even explained why Fry hadn't contacted anyone but her after he had been tossed overboard, or even told anyone that she knew where he was. Her coworkers suspected that she knew more than she was telling, but as yet none of them had pushed her on the subject. After storming out of Fry's apartment she had had a long walk home in the rain in which to cool off. By the time that she'd gotten back to her apartment her anger had subsided somewhat, and she'd even felt a pang of regret. But then her mental defenses, honed by years of continuous emotional bombardment by society's cruel nature, snapped firmly into place against the pain that Fry had caused her. From that point onward she attempted to think of the delivery boy as little as possible.
"Well…" Leela began, reluctantly deciding that Amy had the right to know, regardless of how uncomfortable it was to talk about.
Amy waited expectantly while Leela gathered her thoughts, the autopilot beeping softly in the background.
"I talked to Fry after he disappeared. Face-to-face, I mean." Leela managed at last.
Amy looked surprised. "But you said he just left a note at your apartment saying he wasn't coming back."
"I know. I don't know why I lied. I think it just hurt too much to talk about it. Fry and I had a fight. A big one. I found out where he was living and went to have a talk with him. He got so angry with me that he told me to leave, and I don't think he'll ever speak to me again."
"What?!" The intern was shocked. "Fry threw you out of his apartment?! That's so out of character for him! He must have been really angry at you."
Leela gave the intern a pained expression. "He found out that Bender and I secretly tried to get our jobs back without him. We knew we had a better shot at getting Farnsworth to rehire us if Fry wasn't around, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Now he thinks that everyone stabbed him in the back, like we all just wanted to take advantage of him."
"Oh." Amy said. "well that's too ba-"
But Leela wasn't finished. Her eye narrowed, and her grip tightened on the steering wheel. "I tried to explain that I was just trying to keep from hurting him, but would he listen? No. But then, he never does, does he? Everything he does is so… reckless! Drinking that Trisolarian Emperor, locking himself in a freezer tube with that crazy ex-girlfriend of his, trying to sell his lungs, and now this! Instead of listening to me, he decides to abandon everyone that cares about him and start over."
Hesitantly, Amy tried to offer a few words in Fry's defense. "Spleesh, Leela. He's not that bad. He means well. And anyway, if he wasn't so reckless he wouldn't have come to the future at all, and you'd still be stuck in that job that you always say you hated so much."
The harsh look on Leela's face softened slightly.
"Besides," Amy added cautiously, "doesn't he have a point? We did kinda take him for granted. Remember how on each delivery we used to fly a quarter mile farther away from the place where Fry had to deliver the package, just to see how far he'd walk before he started to catch on? We haven't exactly been very nice to him, especially Bender. And then you went and did something that made him feel betrayed-"
"Betrayed?!" Leela roared, real anger flashing in her eye. "What right does he have to feel betrayed? It's because of him that I lost my job in the first place. Farnsworth fired me because Bender and Fry stole the ship. I mean, what the hell? How can I get canned for someone else's blunder? But did Fry stand up for me? No. He let me take the fall with him, as if it was all a big joke. I mean, I expect that kind of crap from Bender, but I thought Fry and I were friends. Fry betrayed me, not the other way around!"
Amy's response was a tiny, intimidated squeak. "Oh." She said. The bridge fell into silence, a silence that the intern was too scared to break until the ship reached its destination.
Two tense hours later, the Planet Express Ship glided into the atmosphere of a small terrestrial world. The planet was smaller and less massive than Earth, but what it lacked in stature it made up for in sheer beauty. The brilliant blue light from the nearby star shone down on clouds of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Oceans covered nearly half of the planet's surface, with all of the dry land contained in a single gigantic continent. At the landmass's center was a bleak, wind-swept desert, but the continent's edge was tintet green and purple by what looked like vegetation. Leela brought the ship in low through a valley between two snow-capped mountain ranges. The peaks, able to grow to dizzying heights in the weak gravity, easily reached 40,000 feet.
After a few minutes, the valley began to widen, and the mountains became rolling hills. The Planet Express Ship was soon flying over a flat, featureless plain. Leela set the ship down near the coordinates that she had been given and removed the keys from the ignition. As the ship's engines powered down, Bender came walking in through the hatch, holding the package under one arm.
"Hey chumps. Are we there yet?" Asked the robot.
Leela glanced at the robot and then out the viewport. The PE Ship was resting in the middle of a sprawling plain. Rather than grass, the ground was covered in something that looked like purple moss. The tops of distant mountains could just be seen, their bases hidden by the curve of the planet. There was no sign of civilization anywhere. She frowned. "Yeah, we're here alright, wherever here is. The Professor was pretty cryptic about this mission; all he gave me was a set of galactic coordinates for the planet and a latitude and longitude to land at. He wouldn't even tell me what's in the package that we're delivering."
"Did he at least tell you where we're supposed to deliver it once we landed?" Amy asked.
Leela shook her head. "No. I figured that it would be obvious once we landed. But I don't know about you guys, but I don't see anybody around."
"Maybe we're in the wrong place?" Bender offered. "No offense, but you know what they say about human drivers."
The two humans ignored him. "Should we call the Professor, you know, to make sure he gave us the right coordinates?" Amy asked.
After thinking for a second, Leela took the package from Bender. She showed the intern the shipping label, which had the coordinates of its destination marked on it in clear black ink. Hermes' red stamp sat squarely in the middle of the label. Everyone present knew that no shipping label, pay stub, or miscellaneous document bearing the Jamaican's seal of approval would contain an error capable of being overlooked by his zealous bureaucratic scrutiny.
Amy was obviously a bit perplexed. "Huh. Well then what do we do now?"
"Well, since Hermes probably didn't give us bad information, we can probably assume that there's people around here somewhere. We just can't see them from here for some reason. Maybe they live underground like on Subterra IV. I think the best thing to do is to head outside and look around. Maybe we'll find something that will tell us which way we should go."
Amy, Bender, and Leela stood at the airlock. The Martian intern had the package, since she was technically the new delivery girl. Leela pressed the button that would open the inner hatch, and the three of them squeezed into the uncomfortably small space. When Bender hit the button that would cycle the lock, a red light began to flash and a buzzer sounded three times. Surprised, and a little irritated, Leela pushed Bender's hand out of the way and pressed the button. Again there was a red light followed by the buzzer.
"Hey guys?" Bender and Leela awkwardly turned to face the intern in the cramped compartment. "There's a message on this screen thingy over here." Amy continued. "It says that the atmosphere is toxic. The ship won't let us outside unless we have suits on."
"What, really?" Leela asked, genuinely surprised. "We've never delivered to a planet with an non-breathable atmosphere before. Why wouldn't Hermes have mentioned that?" Not that it really mattered. Besides, she thought, it shouldn't be a surprise. Not every planet in the universe has been terraformed to human standards.
The two humans and the robot clambered out of the airlock, and as Bender waited impatiently, Leela went and fetched two spacesuits. In a matter of moments the three of them were back in the airlock. This time, when Leela pressed the 'cycle' button there was the hiss of the airlock's atmosphere being drawn into the ship, and another hiss as air from outside was allowed in. When the interior and exterior pressures reached equilibrium the outer hatch swung open, and the trio walked down the ramp to the planet's surface.
The purple ground under Leela's feet felt soft and spongy. Curious, the PE Captain bent down and grabbed a handful of the mossy purple stuff that coated the ground as far as the eye could see. It came free of the ground with a soft sucking noise that was barely audible through Leela's helmet. She held the moss up to her face and looked closely at it. It was only a shade or two darker than her hair and looked like the foam that was stuffed into cheap mattresses. After a few moments, the stuff started to squirm in Leela's gloved hand. The PE Captain dropped it, grossed out more than she cared to admit.
When Leela looked up, Bender and Amy were a few dozen meters ahead. When they realized that she had fallen behind they stopped and waited for her to catch up.
"Everything ok?" Amy asked.
"Yeah, fine." Leela replied, and motioned for her two friends to keep walking.
For what seemed like hours Leela and her two companions searched the countryside for some clue that there was sentient life nearby. Leela led the way while Amy, who was not used to long distance hiking, fought doggedly to keep up. Bender took up the rear, caught between a need to whine about being forced to work so hard and a desire to flout his robotic superiority. The going was rough. Walking on the moss was like walking through deep snow. Leela kept sinking into the stuff up to her shins, and she had a hard time keeping her balance. Worst of all, every time she lifted her feet the moss seemed to pull at her spacesuit's boot as if there was some kind of suction. Eventually, Leela was too tired and frustrated to continue.
"That's it." She said between panting intakes of breath. Bender and Amy stopped beside their Captain, glad for the rest. "There's nobody here. Let's get back to the ship. Maybe if we fly around for awhile we'll see something. If not, then screw it. We'll go home and Hermes can deliver the package himself."
Amy nodded, too exhausted for words. The intern, panting hard, handed the package to bender and sat down on the soft ground. Bender stuffed the small box in his chest cabinet and then turned away. He froze.
"Umm, meatbags?" Bender asked with uncharacteristic alarm.
Leela turned to face him. "Yes, Bender?"
"Uhh, what color was our spaceship when we left?"
Leela gave the robot an odd look. "Umm. Green? The color that it's always been?"
Bender pointed off in the direction of the ship. It was a lot farther away than Leela had realized. Distance was hard to measure on the flat, featureless plain, but it looked they had wandered a mile at least from the ship. Even at this distance she could clearly see what had caught the bending robot's attention. The once-green spaceship was now a dark purple, the same color as the moss.
Amy let in a sharp intake of breath, and Leela felt her heart skip a beat. "The ship must be covered with this purple moss stuff!" Amy exclaimed.
"Come on, back to the ship!" Leela ordered, and she began to fight her way through the moss. A moment later there was a loud scream. Leela whirled to face the sound, laser pistol drawn. There was no alien monster, just Bender standing idly with his arms crossed and Amy sitting cross-legged in the moss. There was a look of panic on the intern's face.
"Leela, it's got me!" She cried. As Leela watched, horrified, Amy tried unsuccessfully to dislodge herself from the purple moss. A thin film of the stuff was starting to crawl its way up the sides of her spacesuit.
"Bender, help me get her free!" Leela yelled. Bender, obviously reluctant to do any more work than was absolutely necessary, only budged when the PE Captain shot him her most dangerous glare. Leela grabbed Amy's left arm while Bender grabbed her right.
"Ok, on the count of three, pull! One. Two… Three!" Amy's bottom came free of the moss with a loud pop. Unfortunately, Bender had pulled a little too hard, and Amy's suited figure went sailing through the air. She hit Bender square in the chest and knocked the robot backward. The two of them landed in a heap. Leela, who was still gripping Amy's arm, lost her balance and felt her feet leave the ground. Suddenly she was also lying flat out on the ground. The PE Captain tried to get up, but something held her in place. A thin sheet of purple started to climb the edge of her helmet.
"Damn. I can't move. The moss is holding me down. Are you guys alright?"
Amy and Bender both assured her that they were. Unfortunately, they were also both stuck.
The moss began to creep its way up Leela's helmet, until she was completely encased in it. All she could see was a dull purple glow. Whether she was seeing dim sunlight or whether the moss was somehow weakly fluorescent, the PE Captain had no idea. Amy and Bender were silent. Leela had tried to keep up a conversation with them so as to keep up morale, but she'd quickly run out of encouraging things to say. She also knew that they expected her to be the one that got them out of this, and so she had spent the last few minutes thinking. She went over their situation one more time, trying to find anything that they could use to their advantage.
"Let's see. I could probably reach the autopilot on communicator, but the ship might be just as stuck as we are. Besides, even if the ship lands two feet away it won't do us any good if we can't move. She'd already asked Bender if he had something that could cut or burn its way through the moss. The robot listed off at least half a dozen different tools that he had that might do the trick. Unfortunately they were all in his chest cabinet, which the moss was currently preventing him from opening. Leela had a knife strapped to her leg and the laser pistol at her waist, but she wasn't even able to move her hand enough to reach them. For the tenth time she cursed herself for holstering her weapon before helping Amy. If she still had it in her hand it might actually have done some good.
As far as the PE Captain could discern, they had no options. But that was unacceptable. There had to be some way out of this. She was damned well not going to die at the hands of some stupid alien plant. She had to think of a way out of this, and she had to do it fast. The layer of moss collecting around her was growing thicker by the minute. Every minute she delayed made it just a little more likely that her spacesuit would become her tomb.