“Decision time,” Yirella said as she inspected the strips of a-skin on his arm. “We can’t hang around here if we’re going to make it to the foot of the mountain before nightfall. We either set off now, or we don’t do it at all. If the satellites didn’t see the fire last night, then they never will. And if we leave it another day, we’ll be a lot weaker.”

“And an easier target for the moroxes,” Dellian said. “We won’t have the fuselage to shelter us, either.”

Her face crumpled into a puzzled frown. “That’s another thing wrong. They should never have ventured so close to the fire.”

“But they did,” Xante said. “Wishing they did what they’re supposed to isn’t going to help us.”

Yirella gave him a long, disappointed look and shrugged.

For a moment, he thought she was going to say something else. “So what do you think we should do?” she asked.

“You tell me,” Dellian said urgently. “I’ll back you up.”

“I don’t know. In situations like this, you’re normally supposed to stay at the crash site and wait for the rescue teams. But this isn’t normal, is it?”

“Let’s take a look outside,” Dellian said reluctantly.

The fire had died down to a mound of embers that was barely warmer than the sand. Thick rose-gold sunlight was pouring over the tops of the hills, casting long, sharp shadows from the boulders.

Dellian carried the axe, scanning around cautiously. “I can’t hear the moroxes.”

“It’s daytime,” Xante said. “They’ll be back in their lair.”

Dellian saw Yirella shaking her head, but she didn’t say anything. He looked at the three dead moroxes. The first one, which he’d caught with the axe, had crawled fifty meters away before collapsing from blood loss. The other two were closer.

“We could eat them,” Ellici said.

“Can we?” Dellian asked. “They’re alien. Doesn’t that make them enati-…enty-…enamo—”

“Enantimorphic? No. We can eat them if we have to. Their biochemistry is different, but not by much. Their flesh contains nutrients we can use. I’m not so sure about the taste, though.”

“We’ll hold off for now,” Dellian said with as much authority as he could summon. “First we need to build a bigger fire. Maybe burn a whole tree and then add more. Yeah.” He nodded, staring at the biggest sleeper tree, standing a hundred meters away. “We’ll light that one, and chop down others, add them to it. We can do it, all of us. A fire that’s going to overload the skyfort sensors, it’s so big.”

He had them. He knew that. They were all gathering courage and hope from his determination. Even Yirella agreed.

“No walk down the hill then,” she mumbled as he divided them up into three teams, each with a weapon.