Flytrap

1

Let me think. Where shall I start? To be honest it seemed like a perfectly normal mission at first. I'd sat through briefings exactly like that one countless times. We'd lost contact with one of our research outposts on a newly discovered world. They had apparently completely disappeared. That probably sounds mysterious to you but back then it was routine stuff. You have to remember that things were very different in those days. Humanity had only just got out into deep space. I'm sure a youngster like you finds it hard to believe this but sending a message to another star system used to be a hit and miss affair. It was a crazy time. We were still feeling the aftershocks of the war. The new peace seemed fragile. Even tiny research outposts sometimes declared independence from muma Earth in the name of some crackpot ideology or other. And you have to remember that there are still things out there that would see you as an easy meal. My point is that a research team going missing wasn't exactly news. There was nothing special about this mission or at least we didn't think so at first.

I'd been serving on the UWS Bulldog for a couple of years. She was a good little ship. Ugly as hell but the old time survey ships always were. Amazingly fast, totally reliable, the perfect craft and I claim some of the credit for that. I wouldn't be able to if my old boss Chief Engineer McCourt was still with us but I don't think it's giving too much away to tell you that he doesn't make it to the end of my story. I wish I could tell you I missed him but we never really bonded. He didn't trust me. He thought I was military and as a patriotic Martian he hated Earth military. Unfair really. I was technically enlisted for a bit but It's not like I ever saw any action, by the time I'd got out of training the war was as good as over but as far he was concerned it was a case of "once a goofer always a goofer".

The computer brought us out of deep sleep once we were clear of the wormhole. If you are awake when you go through one of those things you go psycho. Wormbrain we used to call it. I saw it happen once. It was a nasty business but I guess that's another story for another time. That isn't a happy one either.

The first thing I thought when I saw the planet Beauty was that they shouldn't let scientists name planets. I mean what kind of dumb name is that for a world? Later on I decided they were probably trying to be funny.

We locked onto the coordinates of the research outpost and took her down. It was a bit of a bumpy landing. The planet's surface was almost entirely covered in tropical jungle. There wasn't really anywhere suitable to land but we had a job to do so we just flattened some trees. I've never been a big fan of jungles. They freak me out. I'm not sure what it is about them. The insects don't help. After a few minutes in a tropical environment your body is always crawling with disgusting bugs. On a deeper level I think it is partly that in a jungle you can't get away from the relentless struggle for survival. You can feel nature's unending war going on all around you. Hence the old expression "the law of the jungle".

We tried to hail the outpost on the com but unsurprisingly there was no response. The captain decided to send three of us over to the base to see what we could find. I almost always went on field missions. You needed a techie and McCourt hated to leave his beloved engines in anyone else's hands. I was accompanied by our science expert the Prof and a rookie called Joe. I had a lot of respect for the Prof. She was one of the United Worlds' leading experts on the search for alien civilizations. Joe had only been out of training for a few months. He'd been transferred to the Bulldog when we'd last stocked up on supplies. I never really got to know him. Poor kid.

We had to trek through the jungle for half an hour or so. The heat was unbearable and the insects were driving me crazy. The others weren't having much fun either. Joe kept up a constant stream of complaints.
"This planet is such a dump. I don't know why we are bothering. It is obvious that insects have eaten them all. I can feel the little critters eating me alive right now."
The Prof wasn't known for her sense of humour.
"Don't worry Joe the insect life on Beauty is harmless."
That failed to cheer him up. "Whoopie dooh. I'm being eaten alive but its OK because the Prof says the insects are harmless. What am I doing here? I only signed up because my brother told me that the ladies love a man in uniform. Hey Lucy. Does it do anything for you?"
Naturally I told him where he could stick it. Looking back I wish I hadn't been quite so forceful about it.

Getting us into the outpost should have been my job but disturbingly the door was already open. All three of us froze when we saw that airlock gaping wide. There were strict procedures. UW Command was paranoid about alien diseases. If the airlock wasn't closed it meant that something serious had happened.

We cautiously edged our way into the outpost nervously fingering our pistols. At the time I wished we'd brought heavier duty weapons but I know now that they wouldn't have done any good. The base wasn't very big. There were cramped cabins for the nine researchers, four labs and a control room. It didn't take us long to work out that nobody was around. Once we'd established that much we moved onto looking for clues. Surely the base had to contain some hint of what had happened to the crew? If it did we never found it. There were no bodies, no signs of a struggle, no traces of disease. The outpost seemed perfectly normal except that nobody was there and the door was open. There was nothing left to do except locate the black box and take it back to the ship for analysis. The captain wouldn't be happy that we had failed to find the researchers or uncover any leads but what could I do?

We were just about to head back when I realised that Joe was missing. We searched every inch of that outpost. We went out into the jungle and yelled out his name. We tried to use the base's scanners to track him down but it was no good. Joe had disappeared into thin air just like the researchers.

2

Joe's disappearance was totally inexplicable. The thing is that despite my phobia there were wasn't meant to be anything on Beauty that could hurt us. The initial survey of the planet had found no signs of higher animals, poisonous insects or deadly diseases. Beauty was all plants and annoying but harmless insects.

I was just about to give up the search and head back to the Dog when the Prof tried to shoot me. A plasma bolt whizzed past my ear and melted the console behind me. I tried to pull out my own gun but I was too slow. She told me that if I didn't stand up and put my hands on my head my brains would look like the console. Since it had turned into a smoking pool of molten metal I decided not to do anything rash.

I felt more disgust than fear. I assumed the Prof was secretly a diehard militant. I couldn’t think of any other sane explanation. It was then that she started acting really strangely. She launched into a huge rant that made no sense at all.
"I know you know. I won't let you hide the evidence. I've never been a violent person but this is far bigger than either of us. You have no right to deny the worlds the truth. There is an alien civilization right here on Beauty. I won't let you keep this quiet."
As far as I was concerned that little speech was completely insane. I tired to point that out to her in a nice gentle way that wouldn't provoke her into melting my brain.
"Prof. I know you've always wanted to find intelligent alien life but Beauty isn't the place to do it. This world doesn't even have complex animal life let alone a civilization. You're the science officer. You know that better than I do. You've been under a lot of strain lately and I think its affecting your judgment. Put down the gun and I promise I'll never mention this to anyone."
I could hear the panic in my own voice. I was trying to sound like I was in control but we both knew I was pleading for my life.

Half of me still thought she was an Owcie terrorist but I couldn't rule out the possibility that she had simply gone mad. If she was an Outer Worlds militant I was as good as dead but crazy people are unpredictable. That unpredictability might give me a chance to escape. It was a tiny slither of hope but it was all I had. To my immense relief that one in a million shot actually paid off. She turned round and said "Wait. I'm coming with you" and ran off after her invisible alien friends.

The Prof still had enough presence of mind left to close the airlock behind her. She even activated the emergency lockdown. That meant that it was going to take me a good hour or so to get the door open again. At least I wasn't dead. The crazy beechwack had come close to finishing me off. I was very grateful to her imaginary aliens for leading her away. On the other hand it was their fault she'd attacked me but lets not get into that.

By the time I'd escaped night was beginning to fall. Beauty was a small world so the days weren't very long. I wasn't at all keen on being out in the jungle after dark. There weren't meant to be any large predators but something had finished off an entire research team and killed off one of my own crew. If that wasn't bad enough there was also an armed madwomen out there somewhere who thought I was trying to suppress the discovery she'd spent her whole life looking for. Naturally it crossed my mind that the Prof might have killed Joe but what about the researchers? I had to get back to the ship as fast as possible. The others needed to know about Joe and the Prof.

I've seen some terrifying stuff during my time in the Exploratory Corps but I think that trek back through the jungle was one of the scariest things I've ever done. I was alone, I was already pretty shaken up and I hate jungles. They are particularly bad at nights. At least during the day you can see where you are going. For a world without any large animals Beauty seemed strangely noisy. All kinds of unnerving sounds were coming out of the pitch darkness. My torch cast just enough light to create sinister claw like shadows but not enough to actually let me see anything useful. Miraculously I somehow managed to make it back to the ship.

Once I'd got back on board the captain debriefed me. Well actually he yelled at me for a bit. He wanted to know where the hell I had been and what had happened to my comrades. Once he'd heard my story he had me locked in my quarters. Everyone reacted to my version of events with total disbelief. Like I said earlier research missions used to go missing all the time but never without any trace. They were equally dubious about the possibility of a young rookie disappearing into thin air. As for what I told them about the Prof well I can see why they found that hard to swallow. The very idea that a respected expert like her would suddenly flip and run off chasing imaginary aliens was so unlikely that even I had trouble believing it. If I'd been a colonial they would have assumed I was a militant but I was an Earther born and bred so no one knew what to think. Everyone felt uneasy. I wasn't exactly having a great time myself, trapped in my quarters being eyed suspiciously by my crewmates but things were about to get a lot worse.

3

I'd been locked up for a couple of days when I was unceremoniously handcuffed and dragged up to the bridge. I was too shaken to think clearly but I knew one of two things was happening. Either they'd decided I was innocent or they were going to court martial me. I tried to read my fate in the captain's expression but it was unclear. He looked like he was falling apart. Worry and fear were etched across his usually boldly confident face. He soon told me why.
"Lucy. It looks like you might have been telling the truth. Ten members of the crew have gone missing. They didn't report in this morning and now we can't find any sign of them. I need to know everything the Prof told you about those aliens."
I looked at him like he was mad. I was getting good at that look.
"Captain the Prof went insane. There aren't any aliens."
He wasn't convinced. He explained his logic to me as if he was talking to a particularly slow five-year-old.
"If there aren't any aliens where has everybody gone? We've scanned the whole planet. There is no sign of any of them. If another human ship had entered the system we would have detected the wormhole. I know it sounds crazy but alien abduction is the only theory we have."
I dutifully repeated my story but I still thought that there had to be another explanation.

I was nearing the end of my little tale when Lt. Wu rushed onto the bridge. "Captain" he yelled. "We've found something. We've picked up a faint signal on the scanner."
We all rushed over to the scanner screen. At first the signal seemed disappointing. It wasn't one of ours and it wasn't from the research team. Lt. Wu explained that it wasn't a United Worlds signal at all. We all made excited noises. Was this first contact? Wu laughed and squashed our hopes. Yes I admit it even mine.
"No, it's not alien. It's an old rebel-' someone coughed meaningfully. Wu corrected himself: -...an old Outer Worlds signal."
I turned round to scowl at the cougher but I couldn't work out who it was.

I decided that I once again had to act as the voice of reason.
"Wu. No offence but this makes even less sense than the alien theory. The war ended eight years ago. Obviously there are still terrorist cells but are you really suggesting that there are OWC soldiers in the jungles of Beauty still fighting the revolutionary war?"
Wu wasn't going to have his great discovery dismissed by little old me.
"No" he explained. "The soldiers seem to be dead. There are no human life signs but whatever killed them might have killed our crewmates."
We all looked at each other nervously. Wu was implying that there was something out there preying on unsuspecting visitors. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

Normally the Captain would have sent an armed unit to investigate but he was running low on crew members. The Bulldog usually had twenty personnel. We were down to eight and the mission wasn't over yet. In order to play it safe we flew over to the site of the signal. Like everyone else I assumed that it would be easy to see where it was coming from but it took us ages to pinpoint it. When we finally did it appeared to be coming from inside a plant. We figured that on top of everything else the ship's scanners were on the blink. Just what we needed.

Four of us went to have a closer look. The scanners might be slightly off but the signal was definitely coming from that general area. We'd been searching for half an hour or so when someone suggested cutting the plant open. After all the signal might really be coming from inside. It seemed unlikely but stranger things had already happened.

It was a hideous looking thing. The thick vine like trunk was covered in some kind of transparent slime. Each of its countless branches ended in a huge dark green bud. The signal was coming from one of those buds so we tore it open. At first I didn't realise what I was looking at but it soon became painfully obvious. The overpowering stench of rotting meat was a clue. The bud contained two corpses. One of them was only half digested. The green veins of the plant were running through what was left of its grey shriveled flesh. There wasn't much left of the second body. It was just a skeleton. The bones had been scoured clean, striped of every last trace of meat.

The signal was coming from an old com' unit that had obviously belonged to the second body. It was definitely an Outer Worlds model. Lt. Wu had been right. A unit of OW soldiers had stumbled onto Beauty long before our researchers ever got there. A quick DNA scan confirmed our worst fears. The newer body was Joe's.

Now we knew exactly what we were looking for it didn't take us long to find the plants' other victims. The first plant had sisters all over the area. Between them they had finished off fifty-two OW soldiers, nine researchers and twelve of my crewmates. Technically the mission was over. We had found the research team. We could have gone home. Obviously we would have left a lot of questions unanswered but it's a big universe. There are lots of unanswered questions. A few more wouldn't have done any harm. We could have updated the file on Beauty to warn future travelers about the presence of man-eating plants. The mystery of how people ended up in the plants could easily have been filed away under someone else's problem. I wish we'd left then. I don't know why the captain decided to stay. It might have been good old-fashioned curiosity or perhaps they had already sunk their hooks into him.

4

The captain still thought that the Prof might have been onto something. The plants couldn't move so they obviously couldn't attack anyone but they had somehow managed to eat quite a lot of people. He had decided that the idea that intelligent aliens were feeding people to the flytraps made as much sense as any other theory he had heard. I was seriously beginning to worry about his sanity.

I ended up on guard duty that night. Entrusted with the solemn task of making sure that no little green men sneaked on board looking for plant food and making sure that nobody decided that a midnight stroll in the jungle would be a nice idea. I settled in for a long night completely convinced that nothing was going to happen. After a couple of hours I fell asleep. If I'd thought that having someone on guard was going to do any good I would have tried harder to keep my eyes open. The next morning Lt Wu angrily shook me awake.
"Lucy wake up. The captain has gone missing. Did you hear anything or have you been asleep all night?"
It took me a couple of minutes to take in what he was saying. It was ridiculous.
"How can the captain be missing? Where has he gone?"
Lt. Wu clearly thought that was a stupid question. He snorted in disgust.
"You want to know where he has gone? Well I don't know for sure but my guess would be that he's gone to the same place all the other people who mysteriously disappeared on Beauty went to. For God's sake Lucy why couldn't you stay alert?"

Thankfully Wu was a practical man. He soon moved on from trying to place the blame. It is such an unproductive reaction to a crisis. He came up with the idea of searching the captain's cabin for clues. We were hoping to find some answers but we just found new questions.

The most recent entry in the captain's log was mostly about the events I've told you about but the last section was completely different. It went something like this.
"My wife Kelly has followed me to Beauty. I thought I had lost her forever but she has come back to me. I am so happy. This is exactly what I have been longing for. I always knew she would return. She has asked me to meet her out in the jungle. Obviously from a safety point of view it isn't the best idea but I have to see her again. I've resorted to the slightly underhand trick of drugging tonight's guard so I won't have any problems getting off the ship. Kelly seems to know more about the aliens than I do. She promised that they wouldn't attack me. She is being very mysterious about it all."

Part of me was relieved to hear that I had an excuse for falling asleep at my post. The rest of me was busy feeling confused, worried and scared. We had to try to look at the situation rationally. Was the captain's wife really on Beauty? It seemed unlikely. Assuming she wasn't, were aliens impersonating her or had the captain gone mad? Madness seemed to be a common problem on Beauty and its victims seemed to end up as flytrap fodder.

I often wonder what I could have done differently. Maybe if I'd gone down to the engine room and spoken to McCourt we would have been OK. Maybe the madness only really took hold when you were alone. I didn't go and talk to him. It didn't occur to me at the time. I thought I had more important things to do. So the madness took control of my boss. We'd been analysing the captain's log for an hour or so when McCourt charged onto the bridge brandishing a gun, swigging from a bottle of tequila and singing old revolutionary songs. He paused in his singing long enough to call us a bunch of imperialists and quislings. I could feel my blood boiling. I have deeper reasons than patriotism to hate all that rebel bull. I let the rage take over my body. I picked up one of the captain's ornaments and hurled it at McCourt. The clay pig smashed into his head and fragmented into a million pieces. Looking dazed he retreated back to his beloved engine room.

After a while the ship's intercom burst into life and his gruff voice filled the bridge.
"Hi there comrades. That wasn't very friendly Miss Lucy you goofer beechwhack. You are lucky I'm in such a good mood or I'd teach you some manners. I've got great news comrades. The revolution is here, again. This time we are going to win. No more back stabbing treachery. Everything that has happened here was part of our plan. We used the plants to wipe out the research base. We've known about those ugly green critters for years. They ate one of our units during the last war. The researchers were working on a secret weapons tech program. It's all very hush hush but I'll tell you this much, now we've got our hands on that stuff Earth is going down. I'm sorry some of our crewmates had to die but we couldn't trust them. They would have sold us out. It's different with you. I told the others that we should give you a chance. The war is back on. It's rematch time and this time we are going to kick Earth's butt. No more wishy-washy compromises, we will finish the job. Come and join us. If you don't take me up on my kind offer don't come crying to me if things start going badly for you. Mars will rise again."

You are too young to hear what I said in reply. The gist was that we weren't interested in his offer but I used slightly more forceful language. I hated militants. They killed my family. My parents and my brother were blown to pieces by a bunch of uppity colonials.

He didn't stick around to hear my rant. About halfway through he left the ship and headed out into the jungle. I launched into a second rant about how cowardly he was but I was interrupted. There was a sudden flash of blinding light and I was hit by a wave of unbearable heat. The ship shook frantically like a seed in a maraca and then there was darkness.

I don't know how long I was out for but when my mind crawled back into the light of consciousness I thought for a moment that I had died and gone to Hell. Flames danced all around me. Sparks flew everywhere, deadly fountains of light spewing forth from clumps of twisted wreckage. Lt. Wu's lifeless eyes stared at me accusingly from the other side of the bridge. How I was I supposed to know McCourt would act quite so quickly? The pilot's body had been sliced neatly in two by a piece of debris. There were other bodies that were too burnt to be recognisable. I knew instinctively that I was alone. I dragged myself down to the engineering bay and somehow managed to activate the ship's emergency power. A quick scan confirmed that I was the only survivor. I wasn't at all surprised. Frankly I'm still not sure how I survived that blast. McCourt had overloaded the engines. Half the ship had briefly been flooded with superheated plasma. Nobody should have lived to tell this tale. I guess I just got lucky but I didn't feel very lucky at the time.

Once I'd turned the emergency power on the ship's automatic systems managed to extinguish the fire. The immediate danger had passed but I was still in trouble. I was almost certainly completely alone on a hostile alien world, cowering in the ruins of my ship. Of course the really worrying thing was that I couldn't be sure that I was alone. Maybe McCourt really had gone to join a band of militants who had orchestrated the whole thing or maybe there really were hostile aliens out there. Both possibilities seemed crazy but I had no way of knowing what was really going on and it did seem that someone was feeding people to those things.

I sent out a distress signal but I knew that it was almost certainly a futile gesture. What was left of the ship didn't have anything like enough power for proper interstellar communication. Thankfully I wasn't relying on someone picking up my SOS. Command knew where the Bulldog was. I knew that if we didn't report in they would eventually send another ship. All I had to do was survive until some help showed up. How hard could it be?

5

I made myself a little nest in the ship's mess hall. I had plenty of food and water and somewhere to sleep. It is amazing how quickly you adjust to thinking about life in terms of the bare essentials. I tried to get some rest but the relentless noise of the jungle invaded my little hideaway. I had managed to maintain my composure during the day. I'd just kept telling myself that I had everything I needed to survive and help was probably already on its way. As the night drew in my cozy little plan began to seem like a laughable delusion. Terror rose up to devour me. My fears were like vultures circling a dying animal but in the end they were my salvation.

The Bulldog was a pile of scrap metal. The poor old girl could easily have collapsed in on me at any time but the alternative was far worse. There was no way I was going out into the jungle. The very thought of it made my blood run cold. It wasn't just the plants. It wasn't just the memory of those bodies being slowly digested right in front of me. It wasn't even the aliens or the militants. It was the jungle itself that terrified me. It had become for me a source of nameless dread. I had always hated jungles but Beauty turned a vague sense of unease into paralysing terror.

I had only just managed to sink into a troubled sleep when I was woken up by a strange sound. It wasn't part of the eerie background noise of the jungle. It was closer than that, much closer. It was definitely coming from inside the ship and it sounded almost human. It was almost like someone whispering. I suddenly realised what it was. A second later I was completely awake and anxiously staring into the gloom. The dim hellish red glow of the emergency lighting was more unsettling than simple darkness would have been.

"Lucy. Lucy."
Someone was slowly whispering my name and it sounded like they were very nearby.
"Lucy, Lucy. Lucy."
I couldn't understand why I couldn't see them. It sounded like they were right next to me.
"Lucy."
I quickly spun round convinced that someone must be standing behind me but there was no one there.
"Lucy."
Once again the voice sounded like it was coming from behind me and it sounded familiar. I slowly turned around again until I found myself staring into the eyes of my dead brother. My mouth shaped his name but no sound would come out.
"Jake" I said soundlessly. I had seen him blown to shreds by those militant scum. I had watched him die but here he was standing right in front of me as if he had never been away. I managed to choke out his name.
"Jake. Oh Jake. I've missed you so much. How? How?"
For a second I worried that I was going mad but then he smiled his old smile and I thought that everything was going to be OK.
"Don't worry Lucy. I realise this is hard for you to take in but there is no time to explain. Mum and Dad are waiting for us in the jungle. We have to go and meet them."
I struggled to grasp what he was saying.
"Mum and Dad? You mean you are all alive? You have all been alive all this time?"
Tears streamed down my face. I was incredibly confused but I was also incredibly happy. I had my family back. I had been so lonely without them for all those years. So very lonely, so very empty.

He grabbed my hand and led me through the labyrinth of wreckage. He stepped out of a gaping gash in the hull and set foot on the dark soil of the jungle floor. In that moment the spell was broken. There was no way I was going into the jungle. I nearly choked on my fear. I took a few steps backward and frantically shook my head at my brother. He was smiling quizzically at me and gesturing for me to follow him but it wasn't him any more. Don't get me wrong he still looked the same but now he was off the ship he seemed to be on the jungle's side not mine. He wasn't my brother anymore he was part of my faceless and remorseless enemy. Until then I had accepted his return in the same way that you often unquestioningly accept impossible things in dreams. My fears woke me up. I took a good look at him and realised what was wrong.
"Jake. How old are you?"
He looked confused and impatient. He obviously wanted to get going but I wasn't going anywhere. Seeing that I was waiting for him to answer he told me.
"I'm fifteen Lucy. You know that."
I took another step back.
"You were fifteen when I watched you die. Ten years ago."

I run into the heart of the ship. Not looking behind me or hesitating for a moment. I was convinced that I now knew the flytraps' dark secret. There were no militants or aliens the truth was even stranger. Ghosts lured people into the plants. The OW soldiers, the researchers, my crewmates, they had all been visited by their dead. They had all followed their ghosts into their jungle. The captain saw his dead wife. McCourt saw his fallen comrades. The Prof was harder but maybe the restless spirits of some long dead alien civilization had visited her. Who knows what the others saw? Long dead lovers or friends who had died in their arms during the dark years of the war.

You can imagine my state of mind. I was alone in a hunk of tortured metal surrounded by corpses. My fear of the jungle hadn't subsided and I was convinced that my dead family was trying to kill me. I drove myself towards the edge by obsessing over why they would want to do that. Maybe they wanted us to be together again. Maybe being dead wasn't good for your sanity. Maybe someone or something was making them do it. I shivered and tried to block my own thoughts but they were relentless. I kept thinking about how much better my life had been before the bombing. Before I had been left alone. Maybe they were right. We did belong together. Why was I so afraid of the jungle? Why should I fear anything now I knew for sure that death wasn't the end? On the other hand I didn't fancy hanging around on Beauty for all eternity.

As I said when you came in this isn't the first time I've told this story but there is one detail I usually leave out. As the morning light began to sneak into the ship I gave in. I got up and walked towards the nearest hole in the hull. I didn't want to be alone anymore. I was just a few steps away from the jungle when the sky filled with fire and light. A powerful rush of air nearly knocked me over. I held my hands up to my eyes to see what it was but I already knew. The rescue team had arrived. Usually I go on about how relieved and grateful I was but part of me was disappointed. They had come to take me back to my lonely life.

If I was telling this story in a bar I'd leave it there but then when I tell it in a bar I leave out the more personal stuff and make myself sound braver. In that version I'm a sassy, sexy, all action heroine not the scared overgrown kid I actually was.

Epilogue

There were no ghosts of course but you knew that. The plants made me hallucinate. They make everyone hallucinate. Pheromones or something similar, I'm not sure, I'm not a botanist. They don't show you your ghosts. They show you your deepest desire, whatever you want most in all the worlds and then they use it to lead you to your death. The Prof's lifelong dream was to find intelligent alien life. I'm not sure about Joe but I got the impression that he saw himself as a bit of a ladies man. The captain wanted his wife back. She wasn't dead. She'd left him for a ski instructor from Titan with a bad fake tan. McCourt wanted his revolution back. The cause he'd sacrificed his youth to. The cause he'd seen his friends die for. What did all the others see? Well, I'm not sure. Use your imagination. What do you think you would see?

What about me? Well my deepest desire was to see my family again. I thought I was tough but deep down I was still the frightened little girl who'd watched their shuttle burst into flames, powerless to help, knowing that her life would never be the same again. Seeing my brother's ghost on Beauty made me grow up. I learnt to open-up to other people without being put off by the fear that I might lose them.

Everyone else who set foot on Beauty died but I survived. Do you know why? It's because I was a coward. My fears kept me away from the Psiren plants. That's their official name but I still think of them as the flytraps. My fear of the jungle was so terrible that it overcame even my deepest desire. Life is often a struggle between fear and desire. Usually giving into fear leads to death or to the terrible half death of a life unlived, but just this once letting my fears overcome my desire saved my life.