Nick went over and over his plans for the alien day while he waited. He rearranged the meager food stores a few times. He thought about snacking, but was determined to be careful and do his very best to survive. That meant rationing the food to make it last as long as possible. Besides, it was barely midmorning for him. Maybe noon by now—it was hard to tell.

He kept peeking at the position of the blue nebula, the most obvious sight in the sky. After what felt like a couple of hours he got a surprise: a moon rose. It was clearly tracking faster through the sky than the stars; possibly two or three times as fast. The moon was small, more than a pinpoint but much smaller than Earth's Moon appeared. It was, however, very bright.

In fact, it was so bright that Nick started being able to perceive colors, faintly, and the hillside was noticeably easier to see. The moon cast obvious shadows as it rose higher, and Nick decided to brave the chill wind again and try to survey his surroundings. He climbed back out of the Explorer, putting a couple of packets of fig bars in his pocket as an emergency snack. He was getting paranoid about mishaps.

NASA probably has, like, years of classes devoted to surviving on an alien planet, even though it's all still hypothetical—for them, anyway. Me, I've got a handful of science fiction novels read and watched some cool movies. Plus, I'm no genius. I need to bring my A-game, because stupidity will probably get me killed real fast.

He took his first real look around.

He was on a hill surrounded by other hills as far as he could see. Nick couldn't detect any curvature to the horizon, not that he expected one. Since he could breathe, the planet had to be big enough to hold air, and therefore to spawn the local version of flat Earthers. Flat...? Nick realized that he needed a name for this planet.

He planted a foot on one of the tires of the Explorer and struck a pose. “I, Nick Tomsun, claim this planet, and name it Planet BigBall, in the name of humanity, but only the cool humans.” He pointed at the overly bright little moon and declared, “I dub thee Rudolph, the Moon of BigBall!”

Nick looked over the surface of BigBall, and was not impressed. The hills were all fairly whitish, as if they had been bleached. He bent down and picked up one of the rocks, peering at it closely. What is this stuff, anyway? Chalk? Limestone? I don't know anything about rocks. It looks like the...what was it...the Cliffs of Dover? In England.

Too bad I have no idea what the Cliffs of Dover are made of.

It bothered Nick that he didn't see much of anything on the hills. No sign of trees, animals, or even rocks of different colors. There wasn't any obvious water either—no ponds, lakes, rivers, streams... He looked up. No clouds, even. Is this a desert planet? Am I on Dune or Tatooine or something? The air didn't seem super-dry.

Maybe I should climb to the top of the hill.

It was a goal, at least. Nick set out at once, moving to keep himself warm, rubbing his arms occasionally. He kept an eye on the sky as he walked. Rudolph was definitely outpacing the blue nebula. He was determined that he would not get lost on Planet BigBall. He would stay on... call it Bare Hill.

Bare Hill rose probably about a thousand feet above the lowest point he could see. The Explorer was maybe halfway up. A 500 ft climb was not exactly trivial, so Nick decided to go just a bit farther up than where the portal had appeared, and then maybe walk around the hill for a while.

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Some of the rocks were smooth, some weren't. Nick didn't know anything about geology, so he wasn't sure if that was significant. Man, I miss search engines already. Maybe the wind or rain smooths things? If I'd known I was going to come here, I'd have studied harder in science class!

Something moved in the corner of his vision.

Nick whipped his head around, but couldn't spot whatever it was. Aliens? Monsters? He held still, searching his field of view, wishing for more light. There!

Nick ran towards the fluttering motion. He covered about half the distance and then slowed down. There was no sense in charging blind at some local life form. He was like that Greek philosopher, Xerox or whoever, with the getting halfway there and then half of that and then half of that... Finally he stopped and squinted.

It was a piece of paper.

The wind was trying to blow it away but it kept catching on rocks and some kind of little side winds. Nick walked up to it and grabbed it, then squinted at it, trying to read it by Rudolph-light. It took a minute, but he recognized it. This is that form the doc gave me for the referral!

Nick felt hope surge in him. My backpack is here!

It must have gotten blown through the portal at some point. But his backpack had been closed. Something opened it. That was worrisome.

Immediately, Nick started searching for the backpack. He walked upwind, turning his gaze this way and that, and after a minute spotted another piece of paper. He grabbed it. This one turned out to be a receipt from the grocery store near his house. He folded the papers up and tucked them in a pocket. He might need them for something.

Did some space monkey go through my bag and dump everything out? Nick began to hurry, even as he worried. He picked up a rock suitable for throwing, just in case.

He spent a long time searching. Rudolph was getting pretty high up in the sky by the time he finally found it. His backpack looked as if a ninja had sliced a piece of it off, and a piece of everything inside as well. The edge looked scorched.

Maybe it hit the edge of the portal on the way through? And it sliced through it just like a lightsaber. Man, that is really unsafe. It's got to be some kind of OSHA violation.

Nick took a minute to look through the contents, though he would need better light to do it properly. Reaching in, he gave himself a shallow cut accidentally and yanked his hand back, licking the wound nervously. It turned out that his laptop had about an eighth of it sheared off and was now a very expensive paperweight. Nick decided to keep everything, and carefully picked up his bag. He did his best to find his way back to the Explorer, using Rudolph and the blue nebula as navigation aids. There was an annoying sameness to a lot of the hillside, so it took a while. Finally he found the car again.

Relieved, Nick climbed inside and sat down. He wasn't terribly cold now. Maybe the wind was less biting? He wasn't sure. In the relative safety of his little shelter, he held the pack up to the moonlight and started going through it. He looked first for the absolutely most important thing.

His pill case was there, intact, closed, with his pills still inside. It was Tuesday, so he had pills in the boxes for Wednesday through Saturday. Four days. Four days of being motivated. Less, if I want to save some for a later emergency.

Second priority was his phone. It was in there, too. Unfortunately, not only was the screen cracked, but it was just about out of battery if he recalled correctly. He didn't even bother trying to turn it on until he had a reason to.

He had seven-eighths of a laptop, i.e. a big flat brick. Well, it had metal in it so it might still be useful for something. It could be a tray, at least. Plus it had a proven very sharp edge.

The rest of the contents of his bag included about four-fifths of a notebook and a couple of half-pens, a small Swiss Army Knife, a bunch of rubber bands, a couple of washcloths, a toothbrush and toothpaste (intact), a tiny puzzle cube on a keychain, some expired breath mints, and sixty-eight cents in loose change.

Not a lot to conquer an alien world with.

The sky to the east was beginning to brighten. Before long, the pre-dawn sky was plenty bright to see by, and Nick fumbled to unzip the pocket of his windbreaker and to squeeze out the alien rock. It was time to see what he could figure out.