Though she often wondered why no one else was interested enough to spend much time looking at the plants in Seymour's botany lab, Audrey couldn't exactly say that she minded having plenty of time with just the two of them. She still made sure to try out an activity or excursion once in a while, but seeing him was easily the most enjoyable part of being on the ship.

One particular day, she found the very odd sight of an envelope waiting by the door. Whatever language it was written in, she was almost certain she had never seen these symbols before. It wouldn't have been right to read his mail anyway, though she had to admit that she was curious. Radios and communicators were a lot easier and more convenient than shipping mail around the galaxies, and actual letters were usually reserved for important ceremonial events.

Entering the lab, she found Seymour hard at work taking notes about the growing sprout, but he quickly placed a covering back over it when he noticed her approach. For just a moment, Audrey was more intrigued than she was about the letter.

"What're you working on?"

Seymour flipped his notes over so they couldn't be read as she came to sit across the desk from him, and Audrey started to worry that she'd interrupted him at a bad time, but Seymour still looked as happy as ever to see her.

"I've been trying to breed some new traits into one of the species on board." He told her. "I promise you'll be the first one I show it to, but I want to make sure I get it just right first."

Audrey nodded, and decided to see if he'd want to tell her what the letter was about. Pulling it from behind her back, she held it out to him and explained, "I found this by the door. Looks like someone sent you something."

Seymour didn't stop to read what was on the outside, but he hastily tore the envelope open to see what he'd find in the letter. Maybe Mr. Mushnik had finally decided to write.

But instead of getting his first message from back home, he instead found a sort of message he'd already received several times before. Even before reading any of it, the way it was written was enough to let him know exactly who it was from. Sticky green ink, most likely some sort of sap, all written down on a sheet of paper made from a large leaf. Immediately, the smile dropped from his face.

"Oh no."

Caught off guard by his sudden change in mood, Audrey instinctively craned her neck to get a better look, but she still couldn't make any sense of the message "Is everything alright?"

Seymour groaned, and he lowered his head onto the desk.

"Not again…"

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Apparently not feeling up for explaining it, Seymour pushed the leaf towards her, silently giving her permission to read it. Audrey hoped he wouldn't consider her unintelligent when she had to pull out her communicator to give her a translation. She'd always wanted to get better at reading alphabets from other planets, but she'd been told that it wasn't important for her to know that sort of thing.

It made her feel a little better when it became clear that this wasn't a common language, because it took the device at least twice as long as usual to piece together the meaning.

"Your presence is requested on the planet Drosera…" Audrey muttered aloud as she read. Skimming the rest of the words, it seemed to be details about the date, time, and acceptable dress code, which didn't help to make things any clearer. "I don't think I've even heard of this planet."

"It's not in a lot of books yet." Seymour mumbled. "Just got discovered about a year ago, and they're not very eager to make friends."

He glanced up to see that Audrey was looking at him with quite a bit of worry. As much as he dreaded getting these letters, he was probably making it sound like something much more concerning than it actually was, and he decided he should tell her the full story.

"It's kinda hard to explain. I guess it… well, long story short, it started when I made First Contact with a species of alien plants."

"You made First Contact?" Audrey gasped. "Seymour, that's incredible! You'll end up in history books!"

Seymour, however, was looking much more embarrassed than proud. "It was really just an accident. Collecting strange plants was always my hobby, and then there was this total eclipse of the sun…"

Seymour hoped the shop's rickety old radio transmitter would be able to handle making this sort of call. On the rare occasions when they got business from another planet, their radio tended to be unreliable at best, and that was when they were working through approved channels and only trying to contact a planet near enough that it would be feasible to ship cut flowers over without being able to afford cryogenic pots.

He wondered what level of technology they had on the planet he was trying to contact, and what they'd think if they knew he was resorting to the old 'attach coat hangers to the antenna' method.

After many long minutes of static while he tried to get the wire into just the right position, he finally found himself connected to another radio, and a booming voice came through the other end. The radio immediately started making a strained whirring noise, clearly having very difficult time figuring out how to translate the language.

"Who is this? Your radio frequency is unfamiliar to us."

"M-my name is Seymour Krelborn, and…" He took a deep breath, trying to squash down a wave of nerves as he realized just how many different ways things could go wrong now. "This may sound like an odd question, but would you consider yourself a plant or an animal?"

"Plant, of course. I'm speaking, aren't I?"

So he'd found the right place then. Now he just had to do his best to fix the sticky situation he'd found himself in without starting an interplanetary war.

"In that case, I think I found one of the juveniles of your species."

The voice grew louder, as if the creature had just rushed closer to the radio. Seymour wasn't sure if he should be more or less worried about possible attacks when it began to sound more like a concerned parent than a war general.

"Is it alive? Has it been fed?"

"Yes, it's fine. Thriving, even. I've taken care of it myself." Seymour spared a glance at the pod lying in the corner, sleeping soundly after its most recent meal, then winced as he looked down at his bandaged fingers. It had taken a lot of experimenting to figure out how to keep the plant alive, but even before it started talking, he couldn't just bring himself to sit back and watch a plant die. Though he hoped he could convince them to bring it back to its home planet soon, because it was getting impossible to keep up with its appetite without making himself anemic.

Almost as if reading his mind, the voice next responded with, "Tell me what planet you're on. I can arrange a ship for pick-up."

"I'm on the planet Earth, of the Milky Way Galaxy. There isn't really a landing station around where I live, but I think I could scrounge up the bus fare to get to one."

Aside from the sounds of struggle coming from the radio, the line was silent as the creature paused to consider something.

"Earth… that's unexpected. We've reached out to signal your planet many times before, but none of the vegetation responded. We assumed there was no intelegent life, but we clearly must have missed your garden."

From the sound of it, he'd stumbled across a civilization that wasn't familiar with species like his. Or, possibly, they had come across similar kinds before but didn't see any reason not to go ahead with harvesting them for food. He didn't want to think about what was going to happen if he couldn't convince them otherwise.

"Well, um… plants don't exactly tend to be sentient in this part of space. We're more of an animal species." He cleared his throat, sending another nervous look at the thankfully still-sleeping pod. "Which reminds me, I think the plant here might be forming some plans to take over the planet and use it for livestock. But since we are sentient, if you all could maybe not to do that…"

The voice moved farther away from the radio again, and he could just barely make out a few phrases within some rapid-fire muttering, but he couldn't tell whether it was talking to another plant or ranting to itself.

"… intergalactic incident… told that impulsive podling to stay put… grounded until it's old and withering… lucky if they don't start launching herbicides…"

Eventually, there was a long, weary sigh, and the creature returned to the radio again.

"Send me your coordinates. I'm arranging a transport ship immediately."

"Anyway, I'm not sure all of them care about people too much, but the one I contacted was so glad I got their kid home and didn't report it as a hostile invasion that it wanted to establish goodwill between our planets. Now we get some pretty good trade deals in exchange for shipping them a few crates from a blood bank every couple of weeks."

"Seymour, you're a hero. You must have been so proud."

To her surprise, Seymour shook his head, an almost haunted look in his eyes. "It was awful. Their planet was so far away from ours that it took over a week to get there, and in the meantime, everyone was just going nuts over the story. I don't know what it is about those plants, but suddenly all everyone wanted to talk about was the 'botany genius' and his alien plant."

"I suppose that must've been a lot to deal with." Audrey said, reaching out to place a sympathetic hand on his arm. "Isn't it nice though, having people recognize how good you are with plants?"

"It's embarrassing. Everyone had all these expectations of me, but all I did was stumble into everything by mistake, and I never knew what to do or what to say. And then all these offers kept pouring in… I mean, they wanted to make me an ambassador." He shuddered, thinking back on how important officials had wanted him to take responsibility for maintaining relations with a whole new species. He could barely manage to sweep floors without messing things up somehow!

"Is that how you wound up here?" Audrey asked. "One of those offers was to run a xenobotany lab on this ship?"

Seymour nodded, but he shifted in his seat, starting to look a little guilty. "I think Mr. Mushnik might still be kinda mad at me. There were other jobs I could have taken that would'a made us a lot richer. But this one would get me away from all the attention back home, and it was the only one that sounded like something I'd actually like and be good at, so I took it anyway."

Audrey gave his arm a light squeeze and assured him, "I think it's great you picked something that made you happy."

He didn't know if his boss would see it the same way, but he was at least relieved to hear her say so.

A few seconds later, something else occurred to Audrey.

"So what happened to the plant you found?"

The brief time when it had been living in the shop hadn't been an easy experience, but there were enough amusing memories to make him break into a small smile.

"It did a lot of sulking because I wouldn't let it conquer the planet, but I'm pretty sure it started feeling happier once all of the plants who didn't know the full story started admiring its 'diplomatic prowess'. Now it'll invite me to events once in a while so it can show off the strange creature it met."

"It sounds like quite a character."

"It really is." He said with a small breath of laughter.

After Audrey had gone back to her room for the night, Seymour took a few more notes on how his latest experiment was progressing, then took a few minutes to re-read the invitation so he could schedule put in a request for a shuttle. Towards the bottom, he spotted something else that made him stop to think.

These messages always said that he could bring along a plus one, but he'd forgotten about it for a while, since he never had anyone to invite. But now he had Audrey, and since he knew how eager she was to see different species of plants, he was almost sure she would love to come. He decided he shouldn't bother her when she was probably sleeping by now, but he would invite her the next time he saw her.

Or at least, he would have invited her, if he hadn't abruptly stopped hearing from her.