He had always heard that death was like walking into a bright light. Alik Morikan was beginning to believe it. When the pirates had dumped him semi-conscious on this god-forsaken rock he thought he was dead. 'Why did they even bother putting a suit on me?,' he thought as he tried to stagger back toward the shuttle. One of the pirates waved at him from the hatch as the little boat lifted off, marooning him. At the last moment before the hatch closed the pirate through something to the ground. Morikan half staggered, half crawled to recover the object. It was a small cheap revolver. The pirates had kept Morikan's own, much better gun. He quickly inspected the cylinder and saw they had left him a single round. At the time he considered using it on himself, presumably the pirate's intent, when he heard the signal. It was a weak warbling coming from, as his suit's limited RDF informed him from due east. If he couldn't get to the source of that signal before daybreak and if there wasn't some source of food, air and shelter available there he would soon die, so he started walking. As the sun rose above the horizon, the much louder snarl of the radio signal brought him back to the present. He looked up at the sunrise. Within minutes he was hot, the suit's cooling system overloaded. Even a tiny red dwarf like Carl's Star was a prodigious source of heat for a planet this close. He realized when he heard the much louder sound what it was. It was the radio scream of the star itself. The pirate's had intended this as a long, drawn-out murder. He sagged to the ground, hopeless. He pulled the revolver out of his pack and gazed at it, considering. As he dropped out of the immediate glare of the sun he heard another signal. Much fainter. He thought he heard a human voice. He stood up and the signal was instantly drowned by the star's incessant caterwauling. He dropped to the ground and took a bearing on the source with his RDF. North, almost perpendicular to his path. He walked several dozen meters toward the line of hills to his left and ducked down behind the next bit of shade offered by a rock to let his suit cool. The fierce heat of the sun was increasing as it rose. The signal was still unintelligible but it was noticably stronger. The source must be just over the hills. He set off toward it, hope renewed in his heart.