The desert planet looks empty from the air. On the ground, it is anything but forgiving.
After a violent crash leaves him stranded far from the colony, Curt faces a brutal trek across rock and sand beneath three blazing suns. The rescue ship might arrive soon—or it might not find him for days. His injured knee slows every step, the heat drains his strength, and the one native predator the colonists know about can dissolve a man in seconds. The only hope lies somewhere down the valley where caves promise shade.
But Curt is not alone on the desert floor.
Watching him from the rocks is Xen, a native lifeform the colonists have never truly understood. Xen is not solid like the creatures he senses moving across the ground. He flows, spreads, and gathers again like living liquid, guided by vibrations and instinct. The strange being limping through the valley confuses him. It fears the sun, hunts the deadly Stings that rule the desert, and moves with stiff, uncertain motions that make no sense at all.
As Curt pushes himself toward shelter and the heat tightens its grip, Xen follows the unfamiliar creature with growing curiosity. Hunger urges one choice. Fear suggests another. Yet the longer Xen watches the struggling stranger, the harder the decision becomes.
“The Time of Cold” is a tense alien-world survival story that unfolds from both sides of an encounter neither species fully understands. What begins as a desperate struggle against heat and distance becomes something far stranger when one alien mind begins trying to make sense of another.
Mary Carlson wrote only one known science fiction story, “The Time of Cold,” published in the September 1963 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction. The story stands out for its unusual dual perspective, presenting the same crisis through both a stranded human colonist and the alien lifeform quietly observing him.
