Cobbles of sandstone lay in a vast sea of gravel. It was an endless wasteland with the occasional castle of chocolate-colored rock gazing over it.

As the view from space showed, this strip of desert was small. It belonged to a so-called rain shadow desert. Mountains blocked moisture from oceans, meaning that there was no rain here whilst jungles grew just a few hundred miles further south.

My bones felt like made of lead. At least the Seizers remembered giving me an airbag-like seat. I rested behind the windshield with enough space to extend my legs. The Seizers stood in the car's rear. That appeared counterintuitive since they were driving, but only because I'm so used to the presence of steering wheels. The arrangement was win-win, as the rear meant more space for them and the front meant no eye contact for me.

Underneath my seat, the car's engines roared as if they belonged to a machine from a more ancient age. How different it was from the trips on Shadowmoon. The cars and trains there were so silent, so smooth, so efficient.

Now, we were driving on uncharted terrain.

In a way, everyone in our car was in the same boat.

When I entered Shadowmoon, I was a fish out of the water while the Seizers were in their element. If "out of the water" could be compared to "at the water's shore", Crick and Helix were frogs on Shadowmoon. Now, however, the fish and the two frogs had been placed in the desert.

Okay, maybe I stretched the analogy a bit.

It was far from perfect. I mean, me going to Shadowmoon was the result of an alien abduction. Us going to Eden was more the result of careful planning and mapping.

Both Shadowmoon and Eden liked their deserts though.

My transparent helmet tinted darker, responding to the scorching Sun.

A tiny spot below the Sun glinted through my dark field of vision. It was barely large enough for a human eye's resolution. The F-star was really far away.

Why was I even staring out of the window?

We had a computer on our windscreen showing far more interesting things.

Crick had sent out insect-sized robot drones carrying cameras. Most of them got killed, as Eden's thick atmosphere was prone to storms, but we still got footage.

As seen from space, most of Eden's plants were red, presumably due to the K-star's light. The treetops resembled a field of roses.

The screen switched to show the mountains. A rain of molten debris loomed over the oblivious landscape. Its falling rocks hung on trails of dust and ember that reached into the firmament.

"Is this ... from the ship that rammed the ocean?" I asked.

"Indeed," Crick answered. "Fortunately, the mountains shield the desert from the megatsunamis. The long-term effects of the impact on the planet are difficult to evaluate."

Well, that was reassuring to hear!

The screen switched yet again.

We still peeked at a mountain, but something told me it wasn't part of the mountain range near the continent's shore. This one had rainforests growing over it.

What was more interesting was what they had highlighted in light-blue: A river flowing down into the woods. It was long and straight, without any of the meandering curves one would have expected from a naturally occurring river.

"This is a channel," Crick transmitted. "If it is artificially made, which we strongly suspect, it presents evidence, but not proof, of sapient activity."

"A straight river?" Helix asked. "Seriously? That's all you have?"

"Do you understand the natural behavior of a river?"

"Do you understand our orders? We were ordered to go after the dropship and nothing else. Why not hold another vote on this?"

"It would be pointless, given how my vote counts twice. However, given that the river is not a high-priority target, I only use one of my votes. Human is permitted to decide freely. I would prefer if you respectfully addressed me as Captain though."

This wasn't something I could answer before making sure our course was right.

I put out my stone. It wasn't even in its cage, because right now, finding out whatever it was communicating with was more important than preventing espionage. I touched it and it gave me a sense that we drove in the right direction. However, the location wasn't the same as the last time I checked.

"I vote for the dropship, Captain," I transmitted. "Its location is different from before though. About three hundred miles to our north-east."

"I see," Crick transmitted. "We will look into it. This does not require a significant deviation from our course."

As we drove on and on, the sky became cloudier, and my helmet more translucent. The desert blended into prairies and the prairies blended onto scarlet grasslands. Occasional trees guarded this landscape like sentinels. Under their shadows, tusked aliens grazed as if they were bison. Despite having only two legs, their gaits were hunched forward like that of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Despite Tock's ignorance of small talk, xe let no second pass without either a passionate lecture on any creature that passes by or an argument with Urcaw about the utility of exobiology compared to medicine.

While they argued, the car's computer screen depicted a peaceful lake in the grass.

"You're still dodging the question," Helix transmitted. "Where's the point behind your research?"

"The point, my fellow Doctor, is foundations," Crick answered. "Without exobiology, current evolutionary biology lacks its foundation. No evolutionary biology means no biology which means no medicine."

"Seriously? Like, seriously? I can cure people perfectly without knowing if some alien's brain is in its ass or not."

Ugh. Academic bitch-fighting. One super smart person will just annoy you with lectures, but two in the same car with limited space? Please no.

Suddenly, the screen before us turned black.

"One more destroyed drone," Crick transmitted.

"So?" Helix asked. "Could have been the wind, as usual."

"You do not understand. It died near what Human told us is the dropship's location."

That gave everyone a pause.

"You mean they have security?" I asked.

"Possible," Crick answered. "It is more likely that we are being misdirected, though."

The car slowed down. Amazing, how one could already see the thicket of the jungle in the distance. Without the mountains, one might have gotten the impression that the plains were the result of aliens cutting down trees.

Only two trees guarded the lake we just saw on video. The trees were matches from our vantage point while the lake was a mere coin in size.

"As you can see, there is no evidence of a dropship here," Crick transmitted.

There were craters near the rainforest. However, given that they formed outside of the mountain's protective shadow, it was most likely due to debris.

"The Firefly's rocket has landed, too," Crick elaborated. "It is likely that its crew has been tasked with keeping us away from the dropship. We are walking into a trap."

"So what?" Helix asked. "Even investigating possible traps is more important than a damned river. Just send a robot!"

The lake returned to the screen. In the film, it wasn't any larger than through the windows.

Unsurprising, as the drone that filmed it had just taken off from our car's roof. It was hummingbird rather than insect-sized, but still small enough that I wondered just how many of those we had.

Our car followed the drone, stopping at a respectable distance from the lake. This time, the trees were barely larger than my hand.

On the screen, however, they soon filled the entire field.

As much as I'd have liked to watch through the windows, the drone had already left my field of sight. With the thick, misty air, the sight was more of an issue than on Earth anyway.

The screen went black.

"Replay the last moments," Crick ordered telepathically.

The screen reviewed the events before the drone's death in slow motion. A fist-sized rock hit our machine at the speed of a cannonball. Its source lurked behind a tree.

Throwing rocks? Really? Were our alien enemies kindergarten kids with slingshots?

"Combat robots, go!" Crick transmitted.

Our car approached the lake, albeit slower than the combat robots. Those "combots", as I called them, might not have been larger than Bobbie cars, blame the limited space, but with their compact, tank-like builds and cannons, we had little to fear.

The rocks thrown from behind the tree barely left a dent. By contrast, a single shot from their magnetically propelled cannons was enough to incapacitate the enemy.

To finish it off, a combot fired a net made of ultra-tough carbon nanotube ribbons, as Crick kindly explained, to tie the enemy against the tree.

Our car arrived at the scene of the fight.

Tied to a tree was a tripodal, three-armed organism the size of a bear. Its body was pyramidal in shape and its apricot, leathery skin sported flaming blotches.

Its head had the shape of a hammer and, contrary to my expectations, housed only two eyes. Strange, given how every other part of this alien was divisible by three.

Those aliens were weird.

We got out of the car. Normally, I'd have done what one usually does when exiting a car after a long drive. You know, taking a deep breath and stretching.

This time, however, I was primarily occupied with gravity and atmosphere shock. I could hardly even breathe, let alone stand. The gravity was as far above Shadowmoon's gravity as Shadowmoon's was above Earth's. While Shadowmoon felt like perpetually climbing stairs, I doubted I could even run on Eden.

Meanwhile, the atmospheric pressure was comparable to what scuba divers faced. My suit, however, adapted and allowed me to breathe. I drew in so much air, I imagined it went down to my toes.

"Our first prisoner of war," Crick transmitted. "Doctor, take scans and biological samples from it like we did with Human when he arrived. The evaluation will take place in the car. Then, tranquilize the enemy and leave it for future expedition teams to interrogate. We do not possess the equipment for a translator device right now."

Helix took out a terminal without even saying so much as "Yes, Captain".

In all fairness, they were on a more equal footing with Crick than I was.

I sat down on a boulder near the lake with my tube and enjoyed the sunset. A spider-like critter cartwheeled between fern-like plantoids. Then, a flying creature resembling a bat swooped in to catch it. The flying creature had only two limbs, meaning its wings doubled as grasping tools.

Thinking of those alien animals reminded me of far more important extraterrestrials though.

I rose from my boulder and went back to Crick. Time to learn how to suck up to my boss.

"Captain!" I transmitted. "Do you happen to have any new hypotheses on the occurrence of sapient life on this planet yet? I get that our data is limited, but even a guess from a fantastic exobiologist like you should be enough."

"There are indeed possible hypotheses to be made," Crick replied.

The rest of their reply was wordy and full of self-congratulation, so I'll summarize.

Crick argued that their trilaterally symmetric body shape was different from the bilateral anatomy that was common here. Plus, they scanned the ship that dropped me on Shadowmoon and its interior looked just right for a fellow like the one tied to the tree. Their working hypothesis was that Eden was a low-tech world within their greater civilization that had most of its original fauna intact.

Common sci-fi cliché. Settling down on a foreign planet where you can return to your natural ways.

I was right with Eden being an alien national park in space.

"Any ideas on why it was hostile, Captain?" I asked.

"Loyalty to its civilization, most likely," Crick answered. "This is likely a protected gardenworld and-"

"Hate to interrupt you," Helix transmitted, "but when taking my scans, I just found something in the grass. Might be interesting to you two, but especially to you, Human."

I turned to Helix.

They walked closer and stretched out a tentacle. When I offered a hand, they dropped what they had picked up into my palm.

A cut-off human finger as white as chalk.

I shivered.

Don't drop it, idiot! I told myself.

The finger remained red at its base long after the bleeding had stopped. Other than that and the pink in its nails, it was devoid of color though.

Layla was black, wasn't she? If so, this must have been Kira's finger. This alien ripped it off and carried it around with it. Without any other human body parts here, I presumed she was still alive.

I clutched the finger.

Then, I put it into my pouch and took out my singularity stone.

"Kira is here," I transmitted. Then, I clarified, "One of the two humans I was supposed to interrogate is here. And that human is what my singularity stone has been communicating with. She was here, at the lake. Then, she ran into this alien and fled into the forests. I can feel it."

I put the stone back in my pocket.

"I see," Crick transmitted. "Human, describe the second human's location in as much detail as possible and then give your biological sample to Doctor. Doctor, finish all research left and follow us into the car."

"Biological sample". What an oddly technical way to refer to a disembodied finger.

Crick then transmitted a map into my visual cortex. A teal strip of land extended from West to East below an elevation. It was locked within an azure ring surrounded by an indigo sea. The different shades of blue indicated humidity, the more intense the blue, the more intense the precipitation. Teal meant desert, azure meant grassland - which was where we were. The indigo sea, naturally, referred to the rainforests.

On this map, I was supposed to show where I believed Kira was. Clutching the singularity stone in my pocket, I focused and pointed at the Eastern grassland-forest border. An expired volcano towered nearby. Probably where she was heading.

The map disappeared. I scanned the distant forests in search of the volcano.

Found it.

A vast, dark elevation surrounded by trees as red as the evening Sun.

How far was it to the forest? If I had to guess, maybe fifty miles? It was just a few hours ago when my stone told me Kira was near the lake.

She was pretty damn fast for a human. This must have been, like, two marathons in record time and atrocious gravity.

Let's hope our car could keep up with that.