The Editor's Choice for the November 2023 prompt: Feasts with the Beasts

As a child, I used to save slugs while I waited for the school bus back on Earth. My parents’ home had a blacktop driveway, and I knew what would happen if those little squirmers got caught halfway across when the sun climbed over the trees. Mom didn’t like me going to school with grimy fingers, but it felt like my calling as a ten-year-old budding conservationist.

 

The slugs on this planet are a lot like those, slow and slimy — but huge. How they sustain their massive bodies eating only moss and lichens is a mystery.

 

The specimen I’ve been studying all morning is the size of a hippopotamus. Its gray-green skin glistens under the harsh light of the system’s young star, just 28 million miles away. The creature has oozed its way about forty feet over the planet’s rocky surface in the past three hours. And my patience is beginning to wane.

 

I decide to cheat a bit on protocols and take a few steps closer for a better look. Immediately, the slug begins gulping air, puffing itself up like a toad before a cat. I’m shocked by the sudden display of energy, and also by the appearance of this sort of defense mechanism. It’s a small planet, and our cursory sweep of the surface didn’t turn up many predators — none of the size that could threaten an animal like this.

 

It's another mystery I’ll relish the opportunity to solve. Moments like this are exactly what I dreamed of when I chose to study xenobiology.

 

The sound of the slug's explosive deflation is like a massive sneeze and coincides almost exactly with my suit’s containment breach alarm. I look down and am terrified to see a tiny pinhole over my thigh. The pain I feel behind it is barely enough to register through my surging adrenaline — less than a bee sting.

 

I check the diagnostic screen on my sleeve and realize my panic is premature. The leak is tiny, and I have plenty of air. But then why am I already feeling light-headed?

 

When I look back up, the slug has turned my way and is moving... not fast — but with purpose.

 

I spin on a heel and try to double-time it back toward the hab, but my legs are heavy and uncoordinated. I trip and go down after a couple steps, smacking my faceplate hard against the stone. I only waste a few moments struggling to regain my feet and then shift all my energy on just staying awake, because suddenly I’m very, very tired. But that, too, proves impossible.

 

* * *

 

I come to in time to scream once before my head follows my body into the slug.

 

So, they don’t just eat moss and lichens. And puffing up wasn’t a defense mechanism. And this planet does have large predators. That’s three mysteries solved in the last three seconds of my life. Not bad.