FCF - The Carnivorous Plant

Escape from the planet Zebra

This chapter is the first translation from Czech to English. You are welcome to rewrite it, if you make it better, I will send you 10 000 Gift Points.

Please note that I'm trying to write simplest way possible. The story is moved forwards mostly just by using various events.

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The earthlings together with a group of rolling bushes pass over a small hill. The jungle is behind them and now the ground becomes rocky, like it´s made of crushed rocks. It looks so unnatural.
Behind the hill there is a small creek, which empties into a large swamp and a gigantic bushy ball about the size of a spaceship sits there.
It's a giant Raali, which has its roots sunk deep into the swamp and moves up and down like a big fat whale that´s about to sneeze.
"So we're in deep s***, buddy." Jerry comments on the monstrous creature.
"Yep, we are."
Suddenly, on the side, where the earthlings are approaching, a part of a bush spreads to the sides and something resembling a mouth is being formed from the gelatinous mass in the centre. And indeed, it can talk!
"Come closer, strangers." The gigantic Raali says with a rough sounding voice.
Meanwhile, its smaller versions quickly move away from the earthlings and jump into his big body, as if they belong there. It is probably composed of thousands of small Raali, Sammy thinks.
"You come from another world."
"What do you want from us?"
His question, however, was rewarded with a new batch of telepathic signal, after which Jerry chokes and vomits again.
"Every time you don’t co-operate, Jerry will suffer." The gigantic Raali announces.
" You can stand it, can’t you? Do you remember that party where you got drunk and threw up for almost the entire second day?" Sammy tries to encourage him.
But his argument doesn’t really help Jerry, during his next vomit he just shakes his head disapprovingly.
"You're such a s***." Sammy says and turns to the gigantic Raali.
He has to bend backwards a lot so he can speak to it, because its mouth is as high as a five storey house.
"You know what, you won. We cannot help ourselves anyway ... so where should I start?" He asks and wanders pensively from side to side to gain time before their module arrives.
"OK. We come from the old world with lots of different tools, moving things and all that electronic stuff. Because our scientists found a way to visit new worlds, and that´s how we got here."
"New worlds?" The Raali asks surprised.
Sammy realizes that this information can be easily said because when they run away, the plant will go after them and see how they got here anyway. Unless it already knows...
"Do you ever look at the sky when the sun goes down, Raali?" He begins his explanation familiarly, while scratching his nose and continues: "So those glowing things in the sky are stars, and each of those stars is just one such sun... they are so small, because they are very, very distant. Well, our sun is so far away that you wouldn’t even see it from here."
As if something inside the gelatinous guts of the gigantic Raali moved back and forth.
"How come I can affect your friend but not you?"
This may be information that should stay confidential. If Raali finds out the fact that human can become immune to telepathy, he could make life difficult for the aliens.
"I have a partly electronic brain. It’s trained by high-frequency charging from the special outlets in our microwave ovens." Sammy makes up his answer.
"Now you tell me something about you. How come you can send whatever pleases you into the subconscious?"
"I have no idea, but it’s me who is asking the questions here!" The gigantic Raali shouts.
"Ok." Sammy answers mechanically while he understands now. The heads of aliens are really big, and yet they cannot even read. They are smart, but their schools don’t actually exist. "So you actually brought the local residents up?" Sammy asks as if they were talking about something else.
"Yes, and something tells me that you will soon be out of control." Raali replies.
It responds to the interactions Sammy didn’t mention. It won’t be too developed as it answers something they didn’t even talk about in the first place, even if it's a fact. Sammy thinks.
Any detective wouldn’t be ashamed to have Sammy’s ability of deduction.
Jerry already gets back on his feet. He is hesitant whether to speak, but he can’t resist.
"Can’t you just let us go? We from the Earth will not hurt you in any way, either way you are a new discovered species and we have laws for this."
"Yeah, and plus we have a lot of meat there and some supplies would be very useful to you, what you say?" Sammy adds.
“You are too dangerous for me with your electronics. You're not going anywhere!" Raali replies thunderously.
Jerry begins to look around, his usual movements are like an accelerated movie. He is ready and decided to say everything.
"You miss the equipment for travelling at higher speeds faster than the speed of light. You have to do some..."
But he can’t finish his sentence, because he’s knocked down by Sammy.
"I'm sorry, Raali, but I can’t let you do that."
Giant Raali’s telepathic concentration focuses on Sammy. He is theatrically waving with his gelatine tentacles, but it´s far away and it doesn’t want to hurt him physically. It focuses all his mental strength to take control of Sammy in order to know the truth once and for all.
"You can’t get out of this, Sammy. You will do exactly what I want you to!" Raali shouts.
His already gigantic sculpture swells and he increases in size to around twice as big. The roots, which were sunk into the swamp below him, pull out while the fat monster is swinging, and Sammy receives incredibly huge dose of telepathic signals.
Sammy feels that his initial control, directed at the top of his head still works, but something is changing. As the signal is going through his neural connections in his brain. He would give anything for a cigarette, coffee or any stimulant.
Sammy’s personality dangling beneath the bushy giant is gradually changing. From the arrogant expression he now has a naive childish look and the pain fades a bit, now he’s got it! The signal wakes only desires and emotions gained during life, he just has to remember how a little child would react, a little Sammy with a clear head!
While Raali telepathically saw his last functional emotional ties, Sammy starts to get bored and looks to the grass on the ground. He tears one blade of grass and sniffs it.
"Dude, that's weird. I nearly lost my sense of smell." Sammy says and tries to pass the blade to him.
"What?"
"Maybe we could play some game till you get it. How about hide and seek?"
Sammy looks around, as if he saw all that for the first time.
"You know where you are right now, Sammy?"
"Yeah, of course I know, you monster from the swamp!" He laughs childishly. "But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun, right?"
Suddenly, a hundred of Raali disconnects and quickly rolls towards the earthlings. The module just arrived!
Sammy didn’t really expect it, but quickly opens the door of the module, throws Jerry in and flies away quickly. Shortly after the start two bushes swing the module with their tentacles with full force, but the protective energy field absorbs the impact without any serious problems!
The transport module flies over the hill from which the earthlings came. Meanwhile, the gigantic Raali separates into thousands and thousands of round versions of himself about metre in size and the module is chased on the ground by a river of green plants!
The module quickly bears down behind the hill. John, still turned off with his head laid to one side is standing next to the felled tree.
Sammy quickly gets out, takes him on his back and throws him into the module. This will be very close, the bushes are quickly approaching them!
Immediately after closing the door the module swiftly rises vertically above the ground. Some Raali manages to jump, but this time they can’t reach them at all.
The module goes in the direction of the ship as well as the green river of rolling bushes.

The transport module is already close to the spaceship and gets down in a hurry to open the door.
All three crew members are on their feet and run to the ship as fast as their legs can carry them.
"John, connect to the control panel and quickly prepare the launching sequence!" Jerry screams on the way into the cockpit.
"Wow, that was close." States a relieved Sammy.
"We haven’t won yet. The sensors indicate a horde of strange living creatures, headed straight at us!"
That was fast. They really won´t give up.
"How come we haven’t taken off the ground yet?" Jerry asks while controlling data from the detector.
Sammy quickly starts the launching sequence by crossing virtual displays. One after another appears and asks for information.
"It's a hell of a lot of buttons and screens, Jerry." He excuses naively.
What's wrong with him? Jerry wonders.
"They're here! But the energy shield should easily manage a couple of swings of their whips."
Sammy doesn’t answer and at a terribly fast pace flips the displays back.
"I said the shield should handle it, or don’t you think so?" Jerry asks nervously.
Sammy's on the page with options to turn the automatic defence on.
"I forgot to turn it on somehow."
"What?" Jerry jumps up from his chair. "Come on, contact in 3 seconds!"
The first Raali followed by a horde of other, jump up, holding out the whip and flagellates it around the ship. The steel surface without the energy shield bends under the whip and it has a first hold.
Meanwhile, the crew tries to activate the defence mechanisms of the ship.
"They're here! How come it didn´t immediately activate after the module landing?" Jerry asks urgently.
"You know how bad the ship starts with an activated shield? I would have to confirm 6 other options about redirecting the energy circuits... unnecessary work." Sammy knocks on his forehead. At that moment he thinks that Jerry is an idiot.
"You're so irresponsible! If they get into the ship, we are dead!"
In the meantime, inside the ship they can hear ominous booming sounds, as if it was jumped on by one thousand whips at the same time.
From the outside the ship is literally wrapped by hundreds of Raali bushes, who jump on and bent the steel structure with their strength.
"Don’t freak out, you asshole. I've got you out of the mess, right? So it won’t be a problem for the second time, look!"
Sammy enables the energy shield, a deduction to its full participation started.
"Ten seconds to turn on the shield." Jerry says with his voice cracking with fear.
"These f***ing tubes take ages to warm up." Sammy rolls his eyes.
"What's wrong with you, Sammy?"
"It's okay, dude."
Jerry doesn’t think that their situation is funny.
On one side of the ship, the Raali managed to break through the hull.
"The shield is turned on," Jerry exults.
"There are two intruders in the zone of the ship." John announces mechanically from the controlling panel.
Two shrubs passed through just before closing the cockpit shield. Outside, it hisses as the shield absorbs more swings of his whip.
The ship is cracked, so only reaches about two kilometres in height.
"We took off, now what do we do with these two in the ship?" Jerry asks.
"They have tentacles stronger than me." Sammy shakes his head, watching his hands.
But the shrubs just circle round and round in the unknown maze of corridors. Yet they aren’t too far from the cockpit.
"It looks as if they couldn’t orientate themselves." Jerry watches their track.
"Close the cockpit, they can be sucked out through the hole to the universe, what do you say?"
"Finally, a good idea." Jerry replies.
The space ship picks up speed and moves away from the planet. Both astronauts anxiously watch the path of the two groping shrubs. Twice they were just outside their door and rolled away again.
"If they weren’t so dangerous, we could take them with us, they look funny when they are helpless." Sammy says.
Nobody answers.
In another moment the atmosphere gets thinner and they are immediately in the orbit of Zebra. The shrubs aren’t sucked out but they die in place without air.