The Time of Cold

A crashed airship survivor wakes beneath three suns and must improvise with scant colony rules—marking direction, finding shade, and rationing a pistol—while enormous translucent, shape-shifting predators called liquid scorpions patrol the rocks. Alternating perspective follows a hungry liquid mass named Xen as its tactile, vibrational, and mysterious sensing abilities guide it toward plant prey and warn of approaching hunters called Stings. The account contrasts human survival tactics with alien feeding drives, emphasizing environmental hazards, limited resources, and tense encounters among different life forms on a mineral-rich, hostile world.