The Mealworm
written by: Claudia Cramer
The sky on Titan remains foggy, forever wrapped in mist-like ice particles that blot out direct sunlight. Andie hardly spared it a glance as she made her way from the barracks to the greenhouse. She stepped into the designated footprints left behind from hundreds of trips between the two buildings. Ever since they landed on Titan, she’d spent most of her time either sleeping or planting.
After weeks of irrigating and fertilizing, the young plants had matured into adults ready to pollinate and bear fruit. Halfway to the greenhouse, she saw a person press against the glass sides and frantically wave at her.
“What the hell?”
Her body tensed but she continued to move at the same pace. Sudden movements on the moon’s sandy ground have caused other colonists to slip. In a cumbersome space suit, a fall meant lying in the dirt for hours, vulnerable, until another came along to heft you up.
Closer to the building, she noticed the person was McDonough. McDonough was a fellow cultivator, a designation given to those in charge of the agricultural development of the colony. He and her had worked closely together these past few weeks, both monitored the progress of the crops. He was older than her by about a decade, but his experience with agriculture was limited compared to her. For that reason, he deferred to her opinion when it came to the vegetables.
McDonough met her at the depressurization chamber.
“Andie!” He reached to unseal her helmet. The device hissed from the abrupt detachment.
“What’s got you in a tizzy?” Andie turned to remove the rest of her suit but McDonough grabbed both hands to stop her.
“There’s no time for that. I need you to take a look at the squash. Now. Something is wrong with them.”
She shook her head but followed him to the room where the squash grew. It was to be the main staple for the colonists and the governor hoped for a bountiful first harvest. They were running out of freeze-dried rations and the next shipment of supplies from Earth wasn’t due for six months.
Andie was greeted with the deep green arrow-shaped leaves of the squash. Dozens of rows were filled to the brim with bushy plants, all looked as healthy as she recalled from the night before when she was last in the greenhouse.
“McDonough, have you lost your mind? Been inhaling the nitrogen fertilizer a little too much lately? The crops look fine, better than fine if you ask me.” She crossed her arms and scowled at him.
He gripped the side of her suit and steered her away from the entrance and towards the corner of the room. The last few plants in this section were wilted, their tall stalks broken as if someone had stepped on them. Andie bent down and reached for the stems and gently pulled one away from the main trunk. It broke easily, and Andie held it in her hand, shocked by the weakness of the plant. A peek inside the hollow stalk showed nothing, no rotting or outward signs of deterioration.
“Has someone else been in here besides other cultivators?” She asked.
McDonough frowned. “Negative. No one but cultivators, security, and high ranking officers have access to this building.”
She huffed and turned back to inspect the squash, “Then I don’t understand how this happened.”
Her hand ran up the main trunk and stopped at a spot on the underside. It was wet and sticky. Carefully, she twisted the plant enough to examine the anomaly. Andie sharply inhaled, her heart seizing in her chest. There was a giant brown sore that spanned the first third of the stem. Just inside the edge of the hole was a wiggling, white worm. The maggot-like creature doomed the entire plant. She dropped the vine from her like it burned her and immediately checked the neighboring squash. Another sore, another white worm that poked out of the plant.
”Andie? What is it, girl? That’s not-” McDonough quieted as she raised her finger to show him the parasite as it inched its way along the digit.
“My god! We’re screwed. The whole bunch is infested!”
McDonough sprinted out of the room and donned his own space suit. Andie watched him disappear outside, as he headed in the direction of the governor’s building, no doubt to report the failure.
The worm sucked at her skin, in an attempt to pull the nutrients it sought from the squash. A misguided decision on its part. Andie squished it between her thumb and pointer finger, its guts splattered on her hand. One bug dead didn’t matter. The entire crop was now under a quarantine which could only end in death. Soon, all the plants would wilt and die before the first fruit harvest could even commence.
Andie turned to the second plant and lifted a worm from the stalk to her lips. Without the squash, there would be no fresh supplies for months. Colonists would starve, but not her.
- The Mealworm - October 15, 2024
