It does not take a xenobotanist to know that the flora here is wrong.
The grass does not sway, it breathes like a living thing, rising and falling with each breath from the planet's subterranean diaphragm. As if they were taught to be wary of strangers, the too-vibrant flowers recoil from a foreign touch, yet, shyly curious, lean toward the echoes of their presence, lingering.
Vines, thick and serpentine in nature, have already begun to strangle nearby trees, and Pavel cannot help but think that if they get too close, they will lunge and coil around their necks.
I have a sinking feeling we are the ones already lost.
Selfishly, part of him wishes Hikaru were down here with them, filling the unsettling atmosphere with a smile and more commentary about the local plants and what, precisely, makes them weird than Pavel would have once assumed possible for one single man to know.
The rest of him, the rational side of him, is glad that Hikaru is back on the ship, far away from the labyrinth this planet has become.
"This may be the captain's way of getting back at you for the other day," Pavel says, smirking slightly as he glances up from his tricorder. Why he keeps checking it as if anything will change, he is unsure—that is the definition of insanity, isn't it?—but it is a familiar comfort nevertheless, even if their instruments struggle to make heads-or-tails of the terrain.
Perhaps this is a sign that they have made a mistake disregarding those warnings.
Pavel rolls his eyes at the tricorder and slots it back into his belt.
"But that is the gist of it, yes. I think going back would be stupid." And why, he cannot precisely say, but he is as certain of this as he was the course he had plotted to get them here—call it a gut feeling; something he has been encouraged to trust in by the captain over the years.
"If they managed to get a signal out, they must have other equipment we can use to help us pinpoint the others." Assuming they are still lost by then. "We may also be able to hail the ship."
He pauses. "And hopefully, they can tell us something more about this strange planet."