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that the beasts weren’t much like homeworld pack predators: this thing’s mouth split into three jaws, two that opened laterally, one from beneath. Each jaw with its own set of teeth.
    He’d seen pictures. These were skags. Like the ones that had almost killed Rans. And they were coming his way. They’d seen him—were running at him, now, picking up speed.
    Was this it? Was he to die within minutes of landing on Pandora, torn apart like a rabbit in the jaws of a coyote?
    Not without a fight.
    Zac turned and jumped down into the impact crater, ran toward the burning DropCraft, feeling its heat on his face as he got nearer. He dodged around behind the blazing wreck, coughing from the fumes, hoping to hide there, hidden by the smoke …
    But the skags spread out around the rim of the small impact crater, roaring down at him. There was no hiding from them. He unzipped his coat, slung one end of it through the flames over the DropCraft, caught it on fire, kept swinging it so the flaming cloth met the skag charging at him down the crater’s slope. The flames snapped like a whip into the animal’s gaping maw—it squealed in pain and writhed back from the flame. Another skag came at him, roaring, slashing with its talons at his right hip, tearing fabric and skin—he whipped the burning jacket into its face, and it yipped, backed away, lowering its head. A third skag charged him and he jumped aside, so thatit ran headlong into the burning wreckage, shrieking in pain, bounding off in confusion.
    Then something struck Zac in the middle of the chest, making him stumble back. A tongue had struck from a skag’s gullet—they could use their long, strong, leathery tongues as secondary weapons.
    Zac fell on his back, close enough to the burning wreckage that it seared the side of his head—he kicked at the roaring, looming skag, caught it square in its trisected mouth and it squealed and took a step back. He jumped to his feet—but the skags were closing in on him.
    Then two gunshots boomed, and the nearest skag fell on its side, writhing, blasted through the back of its head. Zac looked up with a sudden surge of hope to see three men standing on the rim of the crater. The heat near his head distorted his vision—he saw their forms rippling, twisted with smoke. Another gunshot banged, a third, and the skags turned and rushed the gunmen. A hail of shots, and the skags went down—one of them with its head on the boots of the biggest of the three men, as if it were an affectionate pet. The big man kicked the body out of the way and took a step down toward Zac.
    The stranger was large as a bull, his eyes hidden in goggles, head shaved but for a fin of hair, his mouth covered with a dark surgical mask. In his hands was a combat rifle—and it was pointed down at Zac’s head. He said something to the other two men—Zac couldn’t it make it out through the muffling mask and the crackle of flames. The smaller men came down to Zac, each of them in identical leather jerkins, glowing red goggles, faces covered in dust-filter masks; they wore high leather boots, and therewas a red stripe centered on their helmets. They pointed pistols at him, and dragged him up to the crater rim between them.
    Zac stood wobblingly, coughing from the smoke drifting up onto the crater rim, as the three men looked mutely at him. Their weapons were directed at him from almost point-blank range. “Fellas,” Zac said, between coughs, “I was never so glad to see anyone. Another thirty seconds and I’d have been skag chow.”
    They just stared at him, their goggles reflecting smoke and flames.
    “Yeah, sooooo … thanks. I’m, uh, from … from a starship in orbit. I … was just … just, you know, sightseeing and uh …”
    “You search for the Vault,” said the big man in the surgical mask in a voice like a belt sander. “You search for what is to be ours one day.”
    “Actually—no!” It was true, anyway, that he wasn’t looking for the Vault.