The pair return from the dessert heat, unharmed...

The sun was starting to set over the sand dunes of their makeshift camp. Getting anxious, Lieutenant Santos had decided to sit out into the tarp covers of the pod the rest of the crew had made into a sleeping shelter. He made it very clear that everyone should remain inside during the day to avoid the blistering heat and only go out at night when the sands were cool. It essentially threw everyone’s inner clock of night and day over its head, but it was for the best. Sitting outside and keeping his hand over his eyes to see over the horizon.

Franklin and Rebecca still hadn’t come back after heading out to find the fourth pod that crashed further away, it had been almost 8 hours which was far too long than he would have allowed. “Come on, where ARE you two?” After a few minutes he managed to spot a couple of forms out in the dessert heat. At first, he thought it was a mirage until they finally came into view. Standing up from his spot and rubbing the aches out of his legs, Lieutenant Santos waved the pair over and sighed a breath of relief when he found them unharmed. If anything, they seemed perfectly fine, strangely so since being out in the dessert sun and heat they should have suffered intense sunburn at worse and a dark tan at best. Him standing out by the tarp covering the pod door had left the 40 something man with a darker skin tone.

“Where the hell have you two been? You’ve been gone all day!”

Franklin and Rebecca sheepishly looked to each other before showing their lieutenant a bundle of the cacti they found at the site, using the strips of cloth meant to guard their eyes as a makeshift sack or cornucopia. “We managed to find the ID tags of some of our crew mates, 5 in total… We also found these buried in the sand at the crash site.” Answered Franklin, offering the tags to his superior before showing the bundle of green round cacti.

“We think they grow naturally under the sand… Like potatoes, but they’re cactus.”

Taking one out of the bundle, Santos gave it a look over. It was as if someone had merged a lime with a cactus; round and smooth with green dimples it had edges lined with inch long quills that seemed easy to pluck out. “You hadn’t been eating these have you?”

“No…” Answered Rebecca, sharing a look with Franklin.

“Good! Even on Earth, Cacti are toxic unless they are fried or boiled, and I don’t trust the local plant life for anything nutritious at all.” Putting the cacti back in the sack, Santos pointed back at the pod with his thumb. “Get inside and have yourselves checked out by Lisa, you had me scared half to **** out here.”

“Yes sir.”

Watching them head back to the pod as the rest of the crew slowly prepared for their ‘morning’ when the sun went down, it didn’t miss his attention that the two still had the bundle with them. Once inside the pod, Lisa who had been chosen by the lieutenant to act as medical officer waved to the pair as they checked in. “Hi, you two, geez you’ve been gone a long time, where did you go?”

“We went to check on the fourth pod that crashed, also found these out in the sand.”

“Really? Let’s give you a lookover.” Over the course of a few minutes Lisa gave the pair a thorough check up. The short brunette had checked for any kind of burns on their skin but found nothing of that in any way on them, if anything she found their skin almost cool to the touch which confused her considering how long they were out in the dessert. Feeling up their arms she paused when she peeled a paper-thin strip of skin from Franklin’s arm. “What is this?”

“I don’t know…”

Shrugging her shoulders, Lisa offered them both a cot at the end f the pod, had she noticed when her back was turned, she would have noticed the pair take a cacti from their catch and bite into it like an apple.