A large beast stood, silhouetted against the dawn. It rose far above the first rung of branches and it devoured the leaves from the top tiers of the trees with its long neck.
“An herbivore,” he said under his breath.
It was good news. He would be no match for an animal of that size, especially one that might hunt him. With his rife he might have been able to down it, but that belonged to the swamp now. It was only him and his sidearm, a repeater with a fuzzy sense of accuracy.
He stopped still in his tracks and waited. The creature ate for another few minutes and then moved on to the next grove where it found a large orange fruit.
When it was safe he moved forward, toward the mountains. From where he stood, they stretched upwards like a jagged row of teeth. A scar marked the side of the range, in a way that let his imagination believe some ship had crashed against it.
But falling from the sky had been on his mind for the last two days.
He stopped at a small brook to fill his water packs. The nozzle at the end of each pack filtered the luke-warm liquid as quick as ever, but the heat of it did nothing to relieve him from the sun. He dared not stand around near the stream, though he wished he could take time to clean off. On the outer worlds, creatures more dangerous than the plant-eater thrived. They dwelt in the forests, unknown by and unafraid of humans.
His pace livened with his new supply of water, but his blood sugar soon fell, leaving him weak. His sugar tablets helped some, but the grumbling in his stomach was worse after the spike of insulin.
He pushed on, his eyes fixed on the mountains ahead. For as much as he scanned them, he could see no sign of the outpost. And then, as if they had built it between blinks, it was there. In the distance, it seemed motionless, devoid of life. But it was too far away to know for sure.