What if they weren’t here? At all? And where the heck was here?

He sank down onto the grass, profoundly, devastatingly, afraid.

The sun rose and set three times. They were three of the longest days of Denton’s life. He feared, yes, he really feared, that it was his fate to be stuck in this place, this Hawaiian Tropic ad on steroids, and to go stark, raving mad.

The dense, bright jungle seemed completely uninhabited—at least by anything that could talk back. There were plenty of small birds and mammals, some of them exceedingly bizarre. But he was no botanist, or whatever, and he didn’t care about the wildlife as long as it couldn’t hurt him—which, for all he knew, it could. The smallest thing could be deadly, so he avoided everything. The only thing he wanted to see was another human being, and he didn’t. Nor did he see any indication that any had ever been here. There were no telephone poles, no soda cans, no paths, no roads. For Denton, who felt most comfortable in the heart of LA, it was profoundly unnerving.

And it was freaking hard. Until he’d found the riverbank, walking through the uncut jungle had been like wading through quicksand. He’d grown sticky from the effort of wrestling with greenery—sweaty and covered with sap. Vines clung to his legs like beseeching lovers. And he kept thinking, in his best bunny impersonation, that he could at any time be done in by a poisonous snake or spider or a man-eating plant or a huge sinkhole. All this mondo vegetation could hide just about anything. Anything.

Once he had heard something extremely large crashing around in the distance. Thank god it had been in the distance. He’d promptly gone the other way as fast and as quietly as he could, but his heart had pounded for a good three hours. He wished he hadn’t seen Jurassic Park.

He knew, of course, that he was actually on another world. He had not stepped through time to some prehistoric version of Earth. The vegetation and even the color of the sky were too weird for it to be Earth. And he had certainly not been teleported to an other-dimensional spirit plane. It was far too corporeal and hot and gummy for that.

If he had any sense of adventure or any curiosity about his extraterrestrial journey, it was not making itself known. All he wanted—all that kept him going—was the idea, an obstinate hope, that he would run into people. Any kind of people. He couldn’t have justified this hope, didn’t even try, just ignored any logic to the contrary. The truth was, he could eat fruit from a dozen trees and the water of the river had not yet made him sick. But even so, he would be dead in a couple of months and he knew it. Denton Wyle was not made to live without other people. This place was smothering and absorbing his very identity into its dense silence, and soon he would not exist at all.

He found a riverbank by following the sound of water, and there he stayed. He had an easier time making his way along the relatively clear beaches—they were soil, not sand, and tuffed with mosses. He also moved easier on the second day, and way easier on the third, because his cuts and bruises were improving rapidly. He felt like he could walk for hours and hours, and that was good, because he had no reason to stop. He kept his mind from pressing the panic button with show tunes, sung sotto voce to avoid attracting beasties.

On the third day the river widened and became tumescent. He followed it, the path growing more treacherous, until the water turned white and fell over a precipice. Looking down from the top of that waterfall, Denton saw a valley below. And he cried.

The vista was mind-blowing. Directly below, the river continued its wide course, splitting a world of green lushness in two like a peach. In the distance were purple phantoms that might be mountains. In the foreground was a swath of lower hills, plateaus, and valleys that ran perpendicular to the cliff. And the sky was deep aqua far above and pink at the seams. The light made the world look translucent.

But Denton had seen awesome scenery for three days now, and he’d just as soon chuck it all for a day at Disneyland. What moved him to tears was smoke. Below the cliff was a horseshoe-shaped gorge in among the lower hills. It was almost perfectly round—a valley bordered by the high salmon-colored walls of a plateau. At the back of the gorge was another waterfall, sparkling like crystal in the light. And that smaller tributary, which ran to meet the river that Denton had been following, came from the narrow, open end of the horseshoe so that the valley formed a protected little sphere of jungle with the river flowing from it like a tail.

And there were a dozen or so small trails of smoke rising up from the middle of it. People.

By the time Denton reached the horseshoe gorge it was almost dark. The sunsets went on forever here, and Denton had made his way, with the speed of a desperate man, through turquoise, pink, orange, red, and purple light, respectively. Finally, with the world around him fading like a bruised grape, he stumbled upon the opening.

There was no mistaking it. It was as remarkable close-up as it had been from afar. The walls of the plateau were steep enough to escape all but the most incessant forms of life—some lichen and a few scraggly climbers. Their salmon color towered over the sea of green. The walls here were shaped like the ends of pichers, rounded to points. The entire opening to the gorge was only about a hundred feet across, half of that taken up by the river that flowed out of the valley like a snake leaving its hole.

It was very pretty. Denton paused for breath, leaning one hand against a tree. He was charmed by the sight, charmed by the happy thought that people would, indeed, pick such a place to live. If there was a creature with a brain in its freaking head anywhere on this entire planet, in fact, this is the spot it would choose to nest. And as he looked around, he found further proof. There was a clearing here, an area deliberately cleared of vegetation. Trees had been cut down, long ago, so that only a half-dozen or so large specimens remained upright, almost like totem poles, in the middle of the clearing.

Definitely man-made. Denton straightened up and took a step back to appreciate it, his heart swelling with relief so strong it hurt. He wanted this to work out so badly!

But then, in that fading purple light, he saw something odd about the trees. They looked… scarred, their bark all torn up. And even while he was thinking that, he noticed that his hand, the hand that had been leaning on the tree, felt a little odd. Sticky. Even stickier than usual.

He lifted it close to his face and in the fading light saw blood.

Denton screamed. It was a short, intense little burst, coming from the gut. It had no sooner come out than he clamped his lips shut. Announcing his presence was the last thing he should do. All the headhunters, the nasty cannibals out there in the forest, were even now pricking up their ears and heading this way. His eyes darted left and right in a panic.

Too late. Maybe it was his imagination—he didn’t stay long enough to find out—but he could have sworn he heard movement behind him, back the way he’d come. Denton ran into the gorge.

He crashed along, his fear making him clumsy. There was a path here, and he followed it with feet that kept tripping over each other in their panic. But after a short while, his ears and eyes on constant alert, over the dimming light, over the sounds of his own breath, he slowed and became aware of where he was.

He was on a path. Oh, there were definitely people. This was not a path made by animals heading to the river to drink. Huh-uh. This was a virtual road through the jungle. He paused, trying to hear if he was being followed, jogged ahead, paused.