A beach, planet Paxx, Paxx’Ondor system
He froze, quickly opening the other eye. At first, because it was upside down, he thought the dark scaly face was a Klatt. But he quickly discounted that, as the more he studied the facial features, he realised this was another dark scaly humanoid race, but new to him.
The slitted eyes were bigger and the nose and mouth protruded further, in a similar way to a monitor lizard, but not nearly as far. It had holes for ears and where the Klatt’s scales were brown and small, this race had pure black scales, they were much larger and rounder than anything Ed had seen before.
None of this overly concerned Ed, but the double-headed spear with vicious-looking reversed barbs kinda did. He eyed his rifle, lying half a metre away, but discounted making a grab for it, as this was probably a first contact sort of occasion and he didn’t want to make a bad first impression.
He chose to sit up slowly and swivel round to face the local humanoid. On doing so, it became apparent the newcomer wasn’t standing on a high bit of dune or anything as Ed had presumed, he was genuinely over eight foot tall and the spear longer than that.
The local remained completely stationary, his large unblinking eyes and expressionless face considered Ed with an eerie coolness. He didn’t seem remotely afraid, but just remained rooted to the spot.
Ed, surmised he’d seen a spear similar to that before on Earth and remembered that the design was for fishing and not for combat.
He smiled and nodded at the man – well, he presumed it was a man, but he’d been wrong before with some of the strange races that made up the GDA.
‘Hello,’ he said, in Ellinika and getting no response, he leaned over slowly and retrieved two protein bars from the food pack.
‘If language doesn’t work, next best thing…food,’ he said, smiling at the newcomer, who still remained motionless and silent.
He unwrapped the two bars, placed one as far in front of him as he could reach and sat back. Taking an exaggerated bite out of the other bar, he pointed at the one he’d placed and then at the local. He smacked his lips and made a few hmm noises as he chewed. It was a kind of chocolate flavour, or the GDA’s equivalent of chocolate anyway, but Ed thought it was worth a go and hoped lizard man wasn’t allergic to it or something; he didn’t want to unwittingly start a war.
After a few moments, Ed detected a slight relaxing in the local’s demeanour and sure enough, he slowly reached forward and picked up the bar with four long clawed scaly fingers. Standing straight again, he sniffed it a couple of times and before Ed could stop him, popped the whole bar in his mouth with a clop.
Ed froze. ‘If he chokes on it I’m in the shit,’ he thought. But he needn’t have worried, the lizard man swallowed it and remained standing. Nothing changed in his demeanour though, he just returned to standing and staring.
‘Want another one?’ Ed asked, turning to find another bar. He rummaged in amongst the ration packs as he knew there were always plenty of those. Finding one, he turned back to find the man had vanished. He looked left and right up and down the beach, across at the tree line, but there was no sign of him.
‘Fuck me, I’ve just met Usain Bolt,’ he exclaimed, remembering his dad’s favourite athlete from his childhood.
It reminded Ed that he ought to sleep in the sealed-up mini-me at night, ‘That’s if this planet has nights here,’ he thought. ‘It might be like Scandinavia.’ He didn’t like the thought of sleeping in a bolt upright sitting position, but reminding himself of that long spear and how quick and silent the lizard man had been made it a necessary new house rule. A second rule was to always have his rifle slung over his shoulder when walking around with his personal shield activated.
‘Right,’ he said, picking up the rifle and water bottle. ‘Time for a siesta.’
It had quickly dawned on him that he could have a long wait for rescue and loitering around in the full glare of the star was a fast lane to heat stroke. He lay down behind and on the shaded side of the hull, checked his shield was activated, and had a doze.