The cold didn’t bother Steffon Drake at first; the isolation, though, almost drove him mad.
Above, red hot streaks of debris continued to rain—remnants of his exploration pod. Only the escape vessel had worked properly. It steamed in the ice and snow behind him as he took in the alien world.
Blinding whiteness. Drake dimmed his helmet lenses, then oriented himself south. He could calculate his latitude after sunset, but he figured a minimum of four months’ walk to clear the glaciers and reach his colleagues at the equator.
Drake hoisted a rudimentary survival pack, sighed, and started walking.
Author’s Note: This story came from an image of a group of colonists landing on a new planet, only the landing goes awry for one of them. Perhaps it’s a snippet of something larger.
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