Chapter 2: Survival of the Fittest

When I awoke I knew something wasn't right, I was chilled all over, I lay on a rock floor in the dark and was naked as the day I was born. I was in a cave, but from what I could see, it wasn't the cave I had been in. There was a hint of light coming from off to the right and a gray looking wall in right in front of me, but the color could be almost anything in this dark.

I also felt moisture, as I had been in Arizona where it was quite dry it felt like almost 100% humidity here. Wherever I was now, it was wet. This wasn't Kansas anymore, Toto.

I stood up carefully and took stock of myself, nude, no shoes or socks, the helmet and backpack were gone and my skin was burned as if I had been sunburned all over. I eventually decided I was not going to learn anything else sitting here so I headed towards what appeared to be the mouth of a cave.

I looked out onto another world.

The cave entrance was not vertical but more of an angled hole coming out and up into daylight. I had to walk steeply uphill to reach the entrance. What I found outside was hard to understand, all the colors were wrong.

The sky was almost white, if it had any coloring, it would be more pink than blue. Past the mouth of the cave is a patch of short blue grass, at the edge of that is a forest.

Everywhere I looked was forest the trees for the most part were huge. It was like being in the California redwood forest, except there were definite differences the trees appeared to be hardwoods, but I was not familiar with this genus.

The bark was lighter colored and more finely patterned than any I had seen except for birch, the leaves were quite different too. They were more like blue sticks coming out of the branches in clumps than actual leaves. If I had to guess, this planet was a lot younger than earth. I remembered a trip to the Smithsonian and this looked more like the vegetation from early earth days millions of years ago. There were things moving around up there in the trees, but it was so far up I couldn't make anything out.

After a few minutes of looking, reality started to set in I was naked and unarmed on a possibly hostile world, I needed to get it together. I started looking around for something to turn into a weapon. I picked up several rocks and discarded them before I found one that had some crystalline veins running through it.

By using other rocks and smacking it I was able to come up with a large piece that had a ragged edge on one end. It was more of a scraper than anything else, but it would do for now.

It would be better mounted as a stone hatchet but I had no handle or lashings as yet. As I looked around I realized that I had to move away from my these surroundings if I was to find something besides rocks. I sighted the sun and set off due east from where I was.

As I walked among the trees, I marked my trail with my stone tool by scratching two lines next to each other, a third short line on one side denoted the direction that my cave was in. I had to use the cave as a base for now, it was the only ready made shelter I had.

The underbrush was almost non existent under the great canopy, very little light got through. Wherever there was a patch of light, there was usually a sapling struggling there. One of them became my spear. Since it was a green sapling, it made a horrible spear because it was too limber and soft but, it was better than nothing. I would need to find a recent dead fall and harvest the right kind of branch for a spear.

I didn't see any mammals however what I did see threw me as it appeared this planet is all snake or lizard based. I had walked a while when I encountered a light spot just off my intended path. A short deviation brought me to the banks of a small river with both sides lined with tall rough grass. The grass was yellow in color. There was a patch of old stuff that had browned. I could tell it was fibrous and flexible no matter what state it was in. I had found something possibly worthwhile here. I started fashioning a rope right away.