Martian Sex-Seed

“How much longer until we get home?”

“Not long now—six months, or three maintenance cycles. Look on the bright side: soon enough, we’ll be back in our stasis pods.”

“Can you picture us getting back to the surface? We’re going to be famous—fucking alien life, right there in that incubator!”

The light shield was lifted. Rows of eyespots immediately began to greedily scan the surroundings. Beyond the thick, transparent plastic shell stood four bizarre lifeforms: long, cylindrical bodies encased in blue fibrous shells, with two tentacle-like appendages extending from each side and a hairy protrusion at the top—presumably housing a central nervous system. It stroked the plastic wall before it with tiny feelers. It did not know why it was there or what those four creatures outside were, but it knew one thing: in this cramped, cubic space, there was no room to grow, insufficient nutrients, and—crucially—no host for laying its eggs.

“By the way, Earth says they want to have a video call with us in a little while. How should we introduce this thing to them?” Susan gazed at the object inside the incubator. It currently resembled a blob of milky-white foam, with iridescent specks shimmering on its surface and tiny, wriggling tentacles along its edges—a rather repulsive sight. “We really ought to give it a name.”

“Hmm... true.” Yang Ping, seated at the pilot’s console, turned around, adjusted her glasses, and glanced at the lifeform. “How about ‘Mars One’?”

“I say we just call it ‘Phlegm’.” Alena, the blonde, didn't even look up from the game of Tetris she was playing on her terminal. “It looks exactly like something someone spat out.”

“Oh, come on. We have to show it to those kids. ‘Phlegm’? I can’t believe you’d suggest that.” Susan rolled her eyes.

“How about calling it Viridenga? The name comes from the Atharvaveda; she was an asura woman. When Indra was subduing demons on earth, he fell for her, and they each took on male and female forms respectively...” Priyanka, who had been calculating the spacecraft’s trajectory with Yang Ping, suddenly grew animated and launched into a spirited explanation, her thick accent coloring her words.

“I don’t agree.” Yang Ping cut Priyanka off curtly and turned back to the control panel.

The clamor from the four creatures ceased; "its" eyespots swept over them once more. Social behavior—meaning these creatures possessed a high level of cognition. Interesting. In the long-dried-up sea where "it" had been born, "it" and its kind had been the only ones to achieve sentience; "it" had never imagined there could be another species capable of genuine social interaction.

“...Hey, I’ve got one: how about calling it ‘Semen’? Doesn’t it look like a puddle of the stuff a guy leaves behind...” Alena looked up with a sneer, breaking the awkward silence.

“Haha, that’s hilarious. So this is the one-in-ten-thousand pick the Russian Federation came up with to join us on the Mars mission.” Susan rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Give me a break! I was trained by the Russian Federation, after all—and it’s not like the money being spent here is Israeli!” Alena scoffed. “Who do you think you are, acting like the boss?”

“If you two want to bicker, I’ll open the airlock and you can go argue outside.” Yang Ping frowned. “We’re making this much of a scene just over naming this thing?”

“How about calling it ‘Virpushka’? In Hindi, that word means…” Priyanka blinked.

“I object.” One of the other three cut her off in a low, gruff voice.

The ship's day cycle had ended, but Yang Ping remained in the laboratory module, her silhouette motionless against the soft blue glow of the incubator. The creature inside had grown. What had once been a palm-sized blob of milky foam now filled nearly a third of the transparent shell, its translucent body undulating in slow, hypnotic waves. Bands of iridescent color rippled along its length—pale green, violet, a sickly gold—and its rows of eyespots were fixed on her. All of them. Unblinking.

She had been standing there for ten minutes. Maybe longer. She wasn't sure anymore.

The door hissed open behind her. She didn't turn.

"Yang Ping, you've been staring at the incubator for ten minutes. What's wrong?"

Yang Ping's reflection in the transparent shell was pale, her glasses catching the creature's shifting iridescence. Her lips pressed into a thin line. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, controlled—but there was a tremor beneath it, like a fault line under pressure.

"It's watching us. Not like an animal watches. Like it's... waiting for something."

She turned, and for the first time, Priyanka could see the dark circles under her eyes, the tension in her jaw. She had not been sleeping. None of them had, not really. But Yang Ping looked worse than the others—like she had been fighting something and losing.

"I want a full bioscan of everyone on this ship. Tonight."

She stepped away from the incubator, and the creature's eyespots followed her movement with an almost mechanical precision. Its body pulsed once, a slow, rhythmic contraction that sent a wave of color rippling from one end to the other. It was beautiful. It was obscene.

"Have you had the dreams? The ones with the light? The warmth?" She didn't wait for an answer. Her eyes flicked back to the incubator, and something in her expression shifted—fear, yes, but something else too. Something she didn't want to name. "I have. Every night. And every morning I wake up... I check myself. For marks. For anything that wasn't there before."

She turned back to Priyanka, and her voice hardened into the cold, commanding tone of a mission leader.

"Bioscan. Tonight. No arguments. If one of us is compromised, we need to know before it's too late."

Behind her, the creature in the incubator pulsed again. This time, the light was brighter.

The ship's day cycle was in its third hour, but the usual hum of the environmental systems was undercut by a strange, rhythmic thrum—so low it was almost felt rather than heard. Alena sat alone in the common module, hunched over her terminal, the glow of the screen casting harsh shadows across her face. The game of Tetris had been abandoned mid-screen, the blocks frozen in an impossible tower. Her fingers were pressed flat against the console, not moving, not typing. Just trembling.

The incubator was in the adjacent laboratory module, but its presence seemed to bleed through the walls. The air in the common room was thick, humid, wrong. Alena's blonde hair was plastered to her temples, and her jumpsuit was dark with sweat at the small of her back. She hadn't noticed Yang enter. Or maybe she had, and she just didn't care.

"Alena, you're sweating. Are you feeling okay?"

Alena flinched, her head snapping up. For a fraction of a second, her eyes were wide, glassy, unfocused—then the familiar sneer slid back into place, though it looked brittle, like a mask about to crack. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing sweat across her brow.

"I'm fine. It's just... hot in here. The life support must be acting up."

She tugged at the collar of her jumpsuit, the zipper sliding down a few centimeters to expose the sheen of sweat on her collarbone, the swell of her large breasts pressing against the damp fabric. Her eyes flicked toward the laboratory module, then away, too quickly. Her jaw tightened.

"Don't fucking hover. I'm not a child."

But her voice wavered on the last word. She shifted in her seat, pressing her thighs together, and a soft, wet sound escaped—barely audible, but unmistakable. Her cheeks flushed, not just from the heat. She looked down at her terminal, but her eyes weren't tracking the screen. They were staring at her own reflection in the dark glass, and for just a moment, something moved behind her pupils. A faint, iridescent shimmer, like oil on water.

Then it was gone. Alena blinked, and the sneer returned, harder this time, more defensive.

"Seriously. Go run your diagnostics somewhere else. I've got work to do."

But she didn't move. Her hands stayed flat on the console, her knuckles white. And beneath the table, her thighs pressed together again, a slow, involuntary rhythm that she seemed powerless to stop.

The laboratory module was quiet, save for the soft, wet susurration of the creature shifting inside its incubator. Priyanka stood before the transparent shell, her reflection ghosted over the creature's translucent body. She had been there for over an hour, her tablet forgotten on the counter behind her, her lips slightly parted. The creature's bands of light pulsed in slow, rhythmic waves—violet to green to a sickly gold—and Priyanka's breathing had unconsciously synced to that rhythm. Her small breasts rose and fell beneath her jumpsuit in perfect time with the creature's undulations. She didn't turn when Susan entered, but her head tilted slightly, as if she had known they were coming all along.

"Priyanka, what happens if that thing gets out?"

Priyanka's eyes lit up with a mix of excitement and unease. She turned, and for a moment, the iridescent glow from the incubator seemed to linger in her pupils—a trick of the light, surely. She took a step toward Susan, her slender fingers tracing absently along the edge of the incubator's control panel.

"It's a ctenophore, or something like it. It has no hard parts, no obvious digestive tract. But those tentacles... they're not just for show." She bit her lip, lowering her voice, as if sharing a secret she wasn't supposed to know. "I found something in the samples. A structure that looks like... an ovipositor. But that's impossible, right? It's just a blob."

She laughed, but the sound was thin, nervous. Her hand drifted from the control panel to her own stomach, pressing flat against the fabric of her jumpsuit. She didn't seem to notice she was doing it.

"On Mars, back when there were oceans, it must have needed a host. Something warm. Something with a body cavity." Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she took another step closer, close enough that Susan could smell the faint, sweet musk rising from her skin. "Can you imagine? Being chosen like that? Having something alive growing inside you?"

Her eyes flicked back to the incubator. The creature had pressed itself against the transparent wall, its rows of eyespots fixed on the two of them. Its tentacles—dozens of them, thin and translucent—writhed against the shell, leaving faint, glistening trails. Priyanka's breath hitched. Her thighs pressed together, just slightly, and a flush crept up her neck.

"I've been running simulations. If it got out... it wouldn't kill us. It wouldn't need to." She turned back to Susan, and her smile was too wide, too bright. "It would just... make us want to help it. That's what parasites do, isn't it? They make the host love them."

She laughed again, but this time it caught in her throat, turning into something that sounded almost like a moan. She caught herself, blinking rapidly, and stepped back, her hand flying to her forehead.

"Sorry. I'm... I'm fine. Just tired. The dreams have been..." She trailed off, her eyes going distant for a moment before snapping back to Susan. "You should get some rest. I'll be here a little longer. I want to run a few more tests."

But she didn't move toward her tablet. She stayed where she was, swaying slightly, her hand still pressed to her stomach, her eyes drifting back to the creature as if pulled by an invisible thread. The creature pulsed again, and this time, the light was so bright it filled the entire module, washing over both of them in a wave of impossible color. Priyanka sighed, soft and shuddering, and for just a moment, the outline of something long and sinuous seemed to coil beneath the skin of her forearm before vanishing.

"Just a few more tests," she repeated, her voice barely a whisper. "Then I'll go to bed. I promise."

The ship's day cycle was in its seventh hour, but the common module felt smaller than usual, the recycled air thick with an unspoken tension. Susan Armstrong sat at the small table near the galley, a cup of cold coffee untouched before her. She wasn't reading. She wasn't working. She was just sitting, her back straight, her hands folded on the table, her eyes fixed on the far wall. The faint, rhythmic thrum from the laboratory module pulsed through the bulkhead like a second heartbeat, and Susan's jaw was set so tight the muscle at her temple twitched.

She didn't look up when Alena entered, but her shoulders shifted—a subtle acknowledgment, the way a soldier acknowledges another presence in a foxhole. Her flight suit was zipped to her throat, regulation-tight, but there were dark crescents under her eyes, and her short, dark hair was damp at the temples, as if she'd just come from the ship's cramped shower. The air around her smelled faintly of soap and something else—something warm and faintly sweet, like ozone after a storm.

"Susan, you're the only one who hasn't been acting strange. What's your take?"

Susan leaned back against the bulkhead, arms crossed, her gaze steady. For a long moment, she said nothing, her dark eyes searching Alena's face as if weighing how much truth to offer. Then she exhaled through her nose, a short, humorless sound that might have been a laugh under different circumstances.

"Strange is relative. We've been in a tin can for eighteen months. Everyone's a little off."

She paused, her jaw tightening. Her fingers curled against her biceps, the knuckles whitening. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, rougher—stripped of the usual dry sarcasm that armored her words.

"But I'll tell you this: I've had the same dream three nights running. Something warm, pressing against my stomach. And when I wake up... I'm wet."

She met Alena's eyes without shame, her gaze unflinching. The admission hung in the air between them, raw and undeniable. She didn't fidget. She didn't look away. She just waited, her body still as stone, as if daring Alena to flinch first.

"That's not normal. Not even for me."

She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. The movement was deliberate, controlled, but there was a tension in her shoulders that hadn't been there before—a coiled readiness, like a soldier bracing for impact.

"I've been in combat. I've gone without sleep for seventy-two hours. I've watched people die and eaten a meal twenty minutes later. I know my own body." Her voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "And I know when something's inside it that shouldn't be."

She reached up and pressed two fingers to the side of her neck, just below her jaw, as if checking her own pulse. Her eyes flicked toward the laboratory module, then back to Alena.

"The others—Priyanka's too curious, and Yang Ping's too busy trying to control everything to admit she's losing control of herself. But you asked me, so I'll tell you straight." She leaned closer, close enough that Alena could see the faint sheen of sweat on her upper lip, the way her pupils had dilated just slightly too wide. "That thing in there isn't just a specimen. It's a predator. And it's already inside one of us. Maybe more than one."

She sat back, her expression hardening into something cold and determined.

"I don't intend to be its next host. And I don't intend to let it take anyone else. So whatever you're thinking, whatever you've seen—now's the time to say it. Because if we don't act soon, there won't be anyone left to act."

Her hand dropped to her side, reaching for a sidearm that wasn't there. But, there wasn't anything to attack. Just the hum of the ship, the pulse of the creature, and the weight of her words settling over them both like a shroud.

The ship's night cycle had begun, the corridor lights dimmed to a low amber. Yang Ping moved quietly through the laboratory module, her tablet tucked under one arm. She had told the others she was running diagnostics on the environmental controls. A lie. She was following Priyanka.

Earlier that evening, she had watched the biologist linger by the incubator long after the others had left. Priyanka had pressed her palm flat against the transparent shell, her lips moving in what looked like a whisper. The creature inside had pulsed with soft, rhythmic light—matching the beat of Priyanka's own heart, Yang realized with a chill. Then Priyanka had turned, and for just a moment, Yang could have sworn she saw a faint iridescence shimmering in the doctor's eyes.

Now, Yang stood outside the medical bay, listening. The door was slightly ajar. Inside, she could hear the soft rustle of fabric, a wet, sucking sound, and Priyanka's voice—low, breathy, almost reverent.

"Yes... yes, I can feel you. You're so warm..."

Yang's jaw tightened. She pushed the door open.

Priyanka was sitting on the edge of an examination cot, her jumpsuit unzipped to her waist. Her small breasts were bare, her nipples dark and hard. Her hand was pressed low on her belly, fingers splayed, and her eyes—her eyes were closed, but beneath the lids, something moved. A faint, shifting glow pulsed under her skin, traveling from her navel to her sternum and back again.

The incubator was empty. The transparent shell stood open, its seal broken from the inside.

Priyanka's eyes snapped open. They were not her own. The irises had turned a milky, opalescent white, shot through with veins of iridescent color. She smiled—a slow, dreamy smile that did not belong on her face.

"Yang Ping." Her voice was thick, as if she were speaking through water. "You came. I was hoping you would."

She stood, swaying slightly, and took a step toward the pilot. The glow beneath her skin brightened, and Yang could see it now—something long and sinuous coiling in the shadows of the medical bay, its body a translucent ribbon of light. It had been waiting. It had chosen its first host. And now, it was ready for another.