Juna awoke to darkness and confinement. She was inside some kind of damp, leathery sack. She tore her way out and found herself staring down at a fifty-meter drop. She moaned and clutched the tree branch she was on, her claws sinking deep into the bark. Claws?

Her fingernails were gone. Instead sharp, catlike claws protruded from the ends of her fingers. Her skin was a brilliant orange. Juna closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again, her hands would be back to normal. But she could feel her claws pulling against the tips of her fingers. This was an incredibly vivid and realistic nightmare.

She rested her forehead against the rough bark of the branch. The last thing she remembered was lying on the ground in the middle of an alien rain forest, struggling to breathe through her constricted airways. She had been dying of anaphylactic shock. Before that had been the flyer crash, followed by a forced march through the jungle in a desperate attempt to make it back to the Survey base. Now she was fifty meters up a tree, hanging on for dear life to a slippery, wet branch as big around as her thigh. A steady warm rain was falling. This wasn’t a dream. She was alive, impossible as that seemed. She clutched onto that thread of hope, and felt her terror ease.

Why had she survived? Humans were profoundly allergic to every living world the Survey had found. This world was no exception. The air was loaded with pollen, molds, spores, and microscopic organisms. They couldn’t infect humans, but their alien proteins caused violent allergic reactions. Test animals from Earth exposed to the atmosphere usually died within hours.