Scriptment

by

James Cameron

Welcome to JOSH SULLY'S world.

It is a century from now, and the population of our tired

planet has tripled. Finally, drowning in its own toxic

waste, starvation and poverty, the population has topped

out at a nice even 20 billion.

The Earth is dying, covered with a gray mold of human

civilization. Even the moon is spiderwebbed with city

lights on its dark side. Overpopulation, over-

development, nuclear terrorism, environmental warfare

tactics, radiation leakage from power plants and waste

dumps, toxic waste, air pollution, deforestation,

pollution and overfishing of the oceans, global warming,

ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity through

extinction... all of these have combined to make the once

green and beautiful planet a terminal cess-pool.

Josh lives in the urban sprawl which has grown like kudzu

over the whole eastern US.

His particular part of this undifferentiated concrete rat-

warren is Charlotte, NC, but you could be anywhere. Its

the same crowded, gray, trash-strewn high-tech squalor.

The walls are gray, the sky is gray... the people are

gray.

They shuffle past each other in dense crowds, shoulder to

shoulder, unwashed because of the water shortages, and

sickly looking from the bankrupt diet of cheap

carbohydrates and synthetic proteins. It looks like a

cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station.

Josh has it a little worse than most because of his

involvement in a stupid little war people barely remember.

He is paralyzed from the waist down, and his useless legs

hang twisted and shrunken down the front of his

wheelchair. Josh still wears his army jacket, and with

his unkempt beard and hair, and surly eyes, he is pretty

much ignored by the crowds which buffet him like surf.

Just another angry vet, a piece of discarded human trash.

Josh fights his way to work every day on the crowded

subway. And every night he goes home to a tiny cubicle of

an apartment in a vast government housing project. The

room is reminiscent of a cell at a federal prison, which

is pretty much what it is. The amenities look like they

are from a 747, which is to say they are efficient, space

conscious, and are about a hundred years old.

There is a single fluorescent fixture, which casts a

sterile light over the grimy walls. It flickers

constantly.

One entire wall (all seven feet of it) is a TV screen. On

it we get a wider view of the world, and it's nothing to

write home about. There is a breaking story about a fire

in a Boston subway which asphyxiated over a hundred

people. Not unusual these days. This is followed by a

feature about the death, in Kenya, of the last lion living

outside captivity. This leads to a recap of the state of

the environment overall, and it's grim.

The oceans are overfished and barren, poisoned by toxic

runoff. All whales and at least half the Earth's fish

species are extinct. On land over half the species extant

at the beginning of the century are now gone forever, with

most of the remaining endangered.

The human race, using its technical ingenuity, has learned

to keep itself alive, but it has lost almost all contact

with the natural world, which it has strangled and crushed

out of existence. There are no national parks left, only

housing projects and protein farms. Yosemite is an

upscale condo development. Most ocean-front property is

used for mari-culture, since the only food source

efficient enough to feed everyone these days is spirulina.

It's amazing the things you can do with algal protein

concentrate if you know your spices.

Josh Sully is a hopeless guy in a hopeless world, a little

guy whom the big machine has ground up and spit out.

Josh gets a call from a computer at the municipal admin

complex. The automated voice tells him politely that his

brother, Thomas Sully, has been killed in a transit system

accident in Boston, and he is required to claim the body

by 1200 tomorrow. His brother died choking in the smoke

of the subway fire which Sully had seen on the news.

CUT TO SULLY at the Boston municipal crematorium. He sits

next to a large cardboard box, about seven feet long,

sitting on the rollers waiting to go into the furnace. In

the box is his brother's body.

We see that they are identical twins.

There is no other family there.

Josh watches the attendant cover his brother's body with

the top of the cardboard box, then efficiently band it

with two plastic straps, like he's getting ready to ship

it somewhere. Then the box is rolled into the furnace,

and the burners are lit.

As he is wheeling himself through the crowded halls of the

municipal complex, Sully hears someone calling his name

and sees two guys in suits working their way through the

crowd to catch up with him. He is immediately suspicious,

wondering what collection agency they are from. His

brother must have died with some debts.

They tell him they are with the RDA, the RESOURCES

DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE. This is an international consortium

of major corporations whose purpose is to find and exploit

resources on other planets, both within the solar system,

and in the last 25 years, among the nearer star systems.

Imagine the Dutch West India Company funded by Microsoft,

Matsushita and a dozen or so of their megacorporation

buddies. Everyone just calls it "THE CONSORTIUM".

The RDA has an official charter from the ICA, the

Interplanetary Commerce Administration (pronounced eye-

kah), an international trade-regulating body run much like

the EC is today. The charter allows them to exploit the

resources of planets, moons, asteroids... whatever they

find... as long as they follow the International Space

Resources Treaty, and the other treaties which prohibit

weapons of mass destruction and limit military power in

space.

These two guys ask Josh if he knows anything about what

his brother was doing in the last year. He says they

weren't that close. He knows that Tom had made some deal

to work in space, but he couldn't talk about it because

he'd signed some kind of non-disclosure agreement.

It turns out the suits are interested in Josh because of

his genes. Tom Sully had signed up to something called

the Avatar Program. In the Avatar Program you sign a ten

year contract to work on Pandora, a planet of the Alpha

Centauri starsystem.

Like everyone, Josh has heard of Pandora, or more properly

Alpha Centauri B-4. Discovered by the first interstellar

expedition twenty five years ago, Pandora has been the

single most interesting thing to happen to the human race

in ages. The news services love to run clips of the wild

scenery on Pandora, and its bizarre flora and fauna. To a

culture which has lost all contact with the natural world,

Pandora is mysterious, primal, and terrifying.

So what the hell was Tom doing going to Pandora? The

suits take Josh to dinner, and he even gets to order real

steak. They explain what's going on.

There is, of course, a primitive humanoid species on

Pandora, as anybody who watches the news would know. They

are called the NA'VI, using their word for themselves.

The humans usually refer to them clinically as the

Pandorans, and colloquially as "the locals". Humans

cannot live on Pandora without breathing gear, because the

atmosphere is toxic. Lethal levels of ammonia, methane

and chlorine.

The Consortium is trying to bridge the cultural gap with

the aboriginal population, which has been difficult to

communicate and negotiate with. They have recently

started a program called AVATAR. They take DNA from a

Na'vi, and from a selected human volunteer. On Earth, in

company genetics labs, they create an in-vitro embryo,

which is a genetic composite of the alien and human donor.

The recombinant embryo is grown in-vitro during the flight

to Pandora, which takes 3 years (ship-time/ 5 years Earth

time... it's a relativity thing). In that time it reaches

near adult size, since the locals mature fast. When it is

"born" (or more properly de-canted) as a post-adolescent,

it looks like a Na'vi, and can live comfortably on

Pandora, but it has enough human neurophysiology to be

used as an Avatar, or surrogate body.

The human volunteer then becomes a CONTROLLER. Using

PSIONIC LINK technology, the human controller can remotely

control the avatar body out in the wilds of Pandora. The

controller receives all sensory input, and provides all

motor control to the body. Essentially, the controller

lives through the avatar, and is completely unaware of his

own body while linked. Each avatar is genetically keyed

to its respective human controller.

By communicating with the locals through these avatars,

which are less alien to them, the RDA has had some success

teaching them English and basic skills.

So Tom was going to be one of these controller guys?

That's right, they tell him. His embryo has been growing

in vitro at the lab for several months. This is

significant since only one in a hundred volunteers

actually produces a viable composite. Each viable embryo

represents an investment of over 20 million dollars.

So they are offering Josh the same contract they gave his

brother. Since he is genetically identical, he can step

into his brother's shoes, and become a controller. The

next mission leaves in three weeks, so he will have to go

through a crash training course, but it's still better

than wasting a good avatar.

The agents grin like jackals. The pay is great, and it's

a chance to be part of the great adventure.

Josh tells them he went for that line about it's not a

job, it's an adventure once already, and it cost him the

use of his legs. And ten years is too long a stint to

sign up for. The army taught him a couple things. He

tells them to take a hike.

One of the Consortium agents leans close to him. He says

that as an avatar he will have legs. Long powerful legs,

and he can run again.

PUSH IN ON JOSH, thinking about that.

And you see in his eyes... he's going to go for it.

SPACE/ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM, 2103 AD.

The I.S.V. PROMETHEUS flies backwards through the void,

blasting out the fire of the gods like a cosmic blowtorch.

Its hybrid fusion/antimatter engines hurl out incandescent

plasma a million times brighter than a welding arc, with

an exhaust plume twenty miles long which stretches out

ahead of it, slowing it as it nears Alpha Centauri.

INTERSTELLAR VEHICLE PROMETHEUS is finishing up a month

long deceleration from its peak velocity of over nine

tenths the speed of light, still pulling 5 gees.

It's a big bastard... half a mile long. Most of that is

engine and fuel, though the fuel tanks are almost empty.

Alpha Centauri is the nearest starsystem to Earth, at 4.5

lightyears away. A lightyear is the distance light

travels in a year, and since light travels 186,000 miles a

second, this is a long way. To get an idea how far this

is, imagine the Earth is a grain of sand in my driveway in

Malibu. On that scale the sun is a cantaloupe 50 feet

away. And Alpha Centauri is in New York.

I'm pointing this out because it's necessary to understand

the kind of energies it takes to get there in any

reasonable amount of time. You have to go really fast.

Almost as fast as the absolute laws of physics permit.

And you have to use more energy to reach that speed (and

then slow back down) than all of human civilization is

currently using in a year. So the bottom line is... the

bottom line. Money. A lot of money.

About a million dollars a pound, to get something from

Pandora back to Earth. The object of the game is not to

go there and mine coal. You want to find things that

don't exist in our solar system at all or are incredibly

rare, and then you want to refine and process those raw

materials, so that what you send back is the finished

product. The least mass for the most buck. So what you

want to do is build up an industrial infrastructure on

Pandora... you want to tame it. You want to civilize it.

And you need workers to do that. Only you can't use

humans, because:

A) They cost too much to bring.

B) They die in 30 seconds without a breathing mask.

So colonization, in the classical sense, won't work. But

wait... you have an indigenous population there. They're

primitive, but they have brains and hands, and maybe they

can be taught to do the things we need done. We can teach

them, and give them cool technology to improve their

lives, so they can be healthy and smart, and can all have

TV, and in return they will be so grateful they'll not

only work in our factories, they'll even build them for

us. Groovy.

These are the basic principles of interstellar

imperialism, circa 2100 A.D.

Ahead of Prometheus we can see the trinary system of Alpha

Centauri... three stars orbiting each other. In the

middle, close together, are Alpha Centauri A and B, two

yellow main-sequence stars very much like our own star.

About 900 billion miles away (a mere stone's throw by

interstellar standards... a couple of light-months) is the

third star, Proxima Centauri, a runty little red-dwarf.

Standing on Pandora (as you will soon) you can see two

disks of light on the horizon at sunset, but never the

third, since Proxima is too far away and just looks like a

star.

Inside Prometheus, everybody's asleep except for a four

man flightcrew who look very haggard. The rest, a hundred

or so passengers, are all in medically induced

hibernation. With certain drugs people can be caused to

hibernate like bears and other mammals, dozing away the

years at low temperature, and with minimal mental

activity.

We see Josh in his hibernaculum, his skin a bloodless

blue-white. To combat the sustained brutal acceleration

and deceleration, he is suspended in liquid, like a fetus

in the womb. A cold womb of dreamless sleep between

worlds.

His head is fitted into a helmet-like device... a PSIONIC

LINK INTERFACE which senses and transmits his mental

energy, as well as filling his brain with the return

signal. This is usually called, simply, the LINK.

He is under the link because he is spending the voyage

linked to his avatar body which is nearby in its own

container. Like two twins in the womb they are communing

at a deep level of pre-conscious intimacy, with the

results that the avatar's brain has been imprinted with

the patterns of Josh's cerebral cortex. The biological

equivalent of initializing the hard-drive in a computer.

Josh's AVATAR BODY floats in its plastic womb, curled in a

fetal position. The avatar is bigger than a human. It

would stand about eight feet tall, if it uncurled. Its

skin is blue... two shades of blue in a banded pattern

like a snake of lizard (though the skin is smooth, not

scaly). An iridescent cyan blue, almost robin's egg, is

contrasted with a deep ultramarine which borders on

purple. The darker color is almost solid on the back, and

down the backs of the legs.

The body is, strangely, almost human in most ways. The

waist is narrow and elongated, the shoulders very wide,

giving a V shaped upper back. The neck is long (maybe

twice as long as an average human, or a little longer than

some Vogue models) and, we will see, can turn almost 180

degrees, like an owl. The body overall is more slender,

proportionately, then the average human, reminiscent of a

Masai or Watusi. The musculature is sharply defined,

given no sense of emaciation despite the thin proportions.

The avatars in their womb-like environment are at their

normal metabolic rate and grow rapidly. Their muscles are

constantly electrostimulated, so that they develop

normally.

The hands are graceful, with three very long fingers, and

one opposed thumb. The fingers curve smoothly, bending

without joints. This sounds off-putting, but it is really

quite beautiful.

The faces are exquisite... with cheekbones high as any

Pharoah's and large wise eyes, maybe twice the size of

ours. When open they dominate the face, like those of a

cat, or a lemur. The mouth is also large, but essentially

human, with a faint cat-like bifurcation of the upper lip,

and a coloration like permanent deep purple lipstick. The

teeth are white, with pronounced canines, upper and lower.

These guys are clearly carnivores, or at least omnivores.

Did I mention the tail? They have a tail. Long and

slightly prehensile, but more like the tail of a panther

than a monkey.

A complex pattern of iridescent dots and lines, perfectly

symmetrical, runs over the body, almost following the

lines of the nervous or circulatory system. These are

bioluminescent chromatophores, and they glow in the dark

like fireflies. The alien can communicate with these, and

in fact they usually are shifting and changing color to

indicate mood and emotion, without conscious control.

The body has no hair whatsoever, though there is what

looks like a black pony tail, or queue, originating in the

back of the head and hanging down almost to the waist.

This is not hair, but actually an external part of the

nervous system, and more on this later.

ON THE FLIGHT DECK the haggard pilots start the shutdown

of the fusion/antimatter engines.

OUTSIDE, the arc-light ceases abruptly. The entire drive

module glows cherry red with radiant heat, and the exhaust

nozzles are almost white. The ship creaks and groans as

it begins to cool.

Prometheus drifts against the stars, nearing the

surprisingly Earth-like Pandora.

INSIDE, in weightlessness, the passengers begin to emerge

from their hibernacula. They look like handmade shit...

hungover badly from the hibernation drugs.

Josh sits up groggily and looks around. His hair has been

cropped back to a brush-cut, and he is cleanshaven.

An announcement is telling them what to do and where to

go, and that they will soon be entering orbit around

Pandora. Josh pulls himself out of his capsule,

maneuvering nearly as well as the other passengers in

zero-g, even with his inert legs.

Moving hand over hand, Josh floats over to the tank

containing his alter ego, the avatar body. He is amazed

to see the growth in the three years which have elapsed on

the ship.

The avatar stretches, catlike, extending to its full

height, dwarfing Josh. And as it turns in the amniotic

fluid, Josh sees the face of his avatar... and it looks

like him. Despite the alien proportions, the features are

definitely reminiscent of his.

A tech tells him he has time to get some breakfast and

still make it back to "see himself born".

THE BIRTH. Technicians in plastic suits and breathing

equipment enter a bright sterile chamber through an

airlock. Josh, similarly attired, follows them in. They

seal the door. One of them tells him that the air is a

match for Pandora's... a poisonous brew of ammonia,

methane, CO2, oxygen and nitrogen. Even a little hydrogen

cyanide. In the center of the chamber is the tank housing

Josh's avatar. Josh is nervous and unsure what to do, but

they tell him it's always best for the controller to be

present at the birth.

Using a flexible collar, like a synthetic sphincter, to

retain the amniotic fluid in zero gravity, they ease the

body out of the tank into the birthing room. It looks

exactly like a giant baby being born from a glass and

rubber womb.

The avatar kicks feebly, and everybody is grappling with

the slimy newborn body. The technicians ask Josh to help

hold it. Like an overwhelmed father, he looks like he is

about to faint. The pure raw shock of life, struggling

into existence, effects him far more than he would have

thought.

Josh struggles to help give birth to himself.

They suction its mouth and it coughs, taking its first

breath. Josh looks on in wonder as the avatar starts to

wail, clenching its fists, its face contorting at the

terror and pain of the outer world. It grabs Josh's arm

and he winces in pain at the strength of the thing. It

opens its eyes and looks right at him. He stares into its

eyes, which are his own eyes. Its terror passes. It

stares blankly at him, taking in shuddering breaths of the

poisonous air.

Josh pulls his arm free.

TECH

Congratulations. It's a boy.

Josh glances down along the avatar's body, his expression

growing even more amazed.

ISV PROMETHEUS goes into a low orbit around Pandora. We

get our first good look at the new world. It is

magnificent. Almost another Earth, at first glance, with

white cloud whorls over a blue and brown surface. But the

continents are all wrong, and the proportion of land to

sea is much greater. The blue is a little different too,

with a cyan tinge to it, suggesting the different air.

But you can just tell, even from orbit... this is a planet

that has life. It's got the look.

The most amazing thing about Pandora is that it doesn't

actually orbit its sun directly, but is actually in orbit

around an enormous planet, a gas giant almost twice the

size of Jupiter, which in turn orbits the yellow sun of

Alpha Centauri B. This monster planet has been named

POLYPHEMIS, for the great cyclops of Greek myth. This is

because, like Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, Polyphemis

has a vest cyclonic storm like a great dark pupil in its

vast disk.

The eye of an angry god looking down on Pandora. Pandora,

despite being almost as big as Earth, is technically a

moon of the giant planet.

Polyphemis has thirteen other moons, some closer in, some

farther out. Depending on what's where in its orbit,

Pandora can have two or even three moons in its sky at

once. Pandora and the other moons cast large black shadow

dots on the parent planet, like beauty marks.

DESCENT. Tiny relative to Prometheus, one of the trans-

atmospheric shuttles separates and drops down toward the

planet. The LOCKHEED-SAAB TAV-37 "VALKYRIE" CLASS SHUTTLE

is actually a heavy lifter, a workhorse several times

larger and many times more powerful than today's space

shuttle.

As the shuttle plunges through high-altitude cloud

formations, Josh presses his face against the tiny

viewport, eager for a look at the new world. Below he can

see mist-shrouded mountains, growing as they descend. The

pilot tells them they are over the so-called "Horn" of

Australis, the great southern continent, which juts up

into the Equatorial Sea.

Josh can see volcanic buttes and mesas towering above a

lower cloud blanket, like the Tepuis of Peru. Streamers

and whorls of shredded cloud swirl around the mesa tops.

Then the pilot tells them that they may get a glimpse of

the MONTES VOLANS, the famous "flying mountains", which

planetologists say are the rarest phenomena in known

space.

Also called the HALLELUJAH MOUNTAINS, they are like

floating islands among the clouds.

Literally floating. Mountainous chucks of rock, some over

ten miles across, hovering thousands of feet above the

ground.

Here's how it works: Polyphemis (the massive planet around

which Pandora revolves) has a mother of magnetosphere... a

naturally occurring magnetic field a million times more

powerful than Earth's. As Pandora rotates and revolves

through this field, its molten iron core generates its own

field, with "cells" or vortices which are small regions of

intensely powerful magnetic force at the surface.

Added to this unique phenomenon is another... Pandora is

blessed with a naturally occurring substance a million

times more precious than gold. Its joke name of

"unobtanium" has stuck, over the years. Unobtanium is a

rare-earth mineral, formed volcanically, which is a room-

temperature superconductor.

The room temperature superconductor has been the "snark"

of modern materials science... a substance which transmits

electricity with zero resistance, but at normal

temperatures, rather than the liquid-helium cooled

superconductors of human science.

Unobtanium does not exist in our solar system. It is

unique to Pandora. And it is the reason to go there...

the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow bridge.

Another interesting property of superconducting materials

is that they will levitate in a powerful magnetic field.

This magnetic levitation, or maglev, effect has been used

to lift trains and run them without wheels since the late

1980's. On Pandora the effect causes huge outcroppings of

unobtanium to rip loose from the surface and float in the

magnetic vortices. These floating islands circulate

slowly in the magnetic currents, like icebergs at sea,

scraping against each other and the towering mesa-like

mountains of the region. The Pandorans call them the

Thundering Rocks, and the entire area is sacred to them.

Which could be a problem, since the humans have come to

mine these mountains and get rich. Which is why they are

called the Hallelujah Mountains.

Josh stares in awe as they pass over a few of the floating

mountains, less than ten miles away on his side of the

ship. They float like clouds made of rock, amongst the

fixed mountains and swirling cloud structures. Where they

are in clear sunlight, they cast hard shadows on the land

below.

They are overgrown with foliage at the top, and a straggly

beard of vines hangs down beneath them like the roots of

an air-fern. The sides are shear cliffs. Waterfalls,

originating on the mesa-like tops, stream down the sides

and dissolve into spray at the bottoms like upside-down

geysers. The local peaks and mesas actually project above

the level of the craggy underside of the few floating

mountains Josh can see, so it's obvious that collisions

are inevitable.

Twinkling like tiny flecks of ash on the wind are what

look like birds... manta-like flying creatures of various

sizes. Josh doesn't get too close a look at these.

Standing like a wall behind some of the smaller islands is

MONS PROMETHEUS, the largest of the floating mountains.

Known colloquially as THE BIG ROCK-CANDY MOUNTAIN, it

alone is worth hundreds of billions in revenue to the

Consortium. Its flanks and top are wreathed in streamers

of clouds... cloaked in mystery.

He sees it for only a few seconds before a thunderhead

blocks the view, and the shuttle plunges into gray murk.

Now the shuttle is passing lower and lower over the

highland rainforest. Just as the plants on Earth are

green with chlorophyl, the plants of Pandora, based on a

different biochemistry, are mostly purple. The tones

range from purple-blue, through violet to magenta.

Josh catches glimpses of the rainforest through the clouds

as they skim over the endless purple carpet. Other than

the color the trees look like trees. They have trunks and

branches and leaves... though some of the shapes are

strange, and the proportions are wrong. There are

waterfalls feeding highland rivers, and Josh sees more

flocks of the bird-like things.

They pass a few small patches of open grassland. The

magenta grass ripples in the wind like wheat. Josh sees

some moving shapes... large herd-beasts running. Then

clouds again.

Josh, coming from his gray concrete urban sprawl, is

amazed by the sheer scale of this lush, virgin world.

Finally he starts to see the hand of man. They fly over

what looks like a small refinery. This is the DEUTERIUM

PLANT, an automated facility for extracting the heavy

isotope of hydrogen from the local water supply. The

deuterium is used to fuel the fusion engines of the

starships for their homeward flight, as well as to run the

base generators and the shuttles.

The shuttle makes its turn on final approach. We get our

first look at the human colony, called HELL'S GATE. It

looks like a giant cookie cutter took a chunk out of the

rainforest... a disk of naked ground two miles across

where the trees were razed and the earth scraped bare.

Nearby, connected by a broad gravel road, is a gaping

wound in the earth, a strip mine where metal ores for

construction are extracted.

At the center of the cleared circle of Hell's Gate is a

cluster of squat concrete and steel structures.

Surrounding the central complex are two high fences of

thick chainlink, one within the other, with concertina

wire at the top. The whole thing is electrified. At the

corners of the complex are concrete towers, their tops

bristling with searchlights, scanning gear, and automated

SENTRY GUNS. The reason for the no-man's land between the

fences and the dark wall of forest is clear... it is a

killing ground.

The shuttle lands and Josh dons his full-face exomask and

rebreather pack. There is a hiss and a popping sensation

in his ears as the pressure equalizes to the outside, and

then the doors open.

Josh struggles with his wheelchair on the steep loading

ramp of the shuttle. When he gets to the ground, he moves

with the others toward the nearest building. His mask

fogs with his exertion, and he feels a tickle of fear

knowing how deadly the atmosphere is. If he took his

exomask off he would be unconscious after the first few

breaths, with irreversible lung damage in less than a

minute.

Josh sees the new avatars being unloaded. They are

brought down the ramp on gurneys, unconscious, getting

their first lungfuls of real Pandoran air. They are taken

to a holding compound outside the Science Module (SCIMOD).

Around him is the roar of equipment as huge tractor-like

machines thunder past. There is loading equipment, and

massive earth movers, mining equipment, and bulldozers

almost two stories high. He sees construction workers in

heavy environment suits. A tractor, its wheels as big as

a house, rumbles past, dwarfing the new arrivals. Beyond

it, two VTOL vehicles take off. Armored and heavily

armed, they are KAWASAKI AH-19 SCORPION gunships.

Nearby Josh sees several TROOPERS of SECFOR, the RDA

security force, a kind of private army operated by the

Consortium. The troopers wear full helmets, rebreathers,

and body armor, and carry heavy AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. They

look constantly outward, toward the perimeter. They are a

hardened bunch of men and women, who live by the

philosophy that sharp eyes, fast hands and a warm gun are

the keys to survival on Pandora, the most badass bush in

history.

Among the arriving passengers are twenty new troopers.

They double time down the ramp, carrying their huge packs

and kit bags. They smartly salute the hardened SECFOR

troopers, who eye the new meat with smirking disdain.

Josh sees more of the troopers, and realizes they are

forming a loosely deployed guard around the new arrivals.

There is a sudden ROAR as the sentry gun in the nearest

tower opens fire. A stream of bright tracers arc out to

the no-man's land of bare earth beyond the fences, and

there is an ungodly shriek. Josh cranes to see, but his

view is blocked by the shuttle.

There is a sense that the place is under siege. The dark

line of the forest is suddenly more ominous. Above the

functional concrete bunker of the nearest building, the

crescent shape of Polyphemis looms like a malevolent eye,

seeming to cover half the sky. Another sentry gun

thunders briefly as Josh goes into the complex. Josh's

expression says it all.

My God, what have I gotten myself into?

INSIDE THE BASE they hold the arrival briefing. Station

supervisor CARTER SELFRIDGE welcomes them to Pandora and

Hell's Gate, then quickly lays down the rules of survival

here. He says the local ecosystem is a minefield of toxic

plants, lethal stinging insects, and large venomous

carnivores. Everyone must be armed at all times when

outside the structure, and firearms training and drilling

are scheduled for all base personnel. All forays outside

the perimeter must be accompanied by one or more SECFOR

troopers, and must be authorized by his office, and

scheduled with the head of security.

He tells them the stiff penalties for any violation of the

base security rules, as well as for the use of illegal

drugs, fighting, misuse of firearms and so on. There is a

frontier town mentality, as well as an overwhelming sense

of us against them. Us being the humans, and them being

anything that draws breath on Pandora.

It's not all grim here, he says. As of today you will

never get another cold or flu. We don't get them here.

Pandora has somehow reacted to the introduction of our

viruses by creating a countervirus for each which wipes

them out. In fact, the Consortium has the patents on

these counterviruses, and when the FDA approves them,

everybody on Earth will be buying them. That's the sort

of thing we're looking for here. So please stay alert to

the commercial possibilities of your research.

Selfridge is a smart, forceful, charismatic man who is

utterly focused on the success of the operation on

Pandora. His calm, almost breezy style belies an absolute

ruthlessness in the pursuit of his goals. Like his

historical prototypes, the governors of Spanish and

English colonies in the Americas, his mission is to

overcome all obstacles to gain a foothold in the new

world, and more importantly, show a return on the

staggering investment.

Selfridge introduces ROB PARRISH, the BIOETHICS OFFICER.

He works for the Environmental Protection Department of

the ICA, and is therefore usually called the "EP guy". On

the dying home planet the environmental parties have grown

strong as the Earth has grown weak, so these officers are

sent to make sure that the new worlds are not ravaged by

the economic imperative of the megacorporations.

Rob looks the very image of a studious, concerned "green"

activists, with his beard and birkenstocks. In fact, the

EP guys are all bent, deeply on the take and making a

killing by turning in token reports of infractions while

turning a blind eye to the greater violations.

Josh notices a woman using a stereocam to record the

meeting. She pans the crowd of new faces like a

documentary film-maker. Selfridge introduces her as

MARCIA DE LOS SANTOS, the FREEMEDIA OFFICER. It is her

job to send home the inspiring footage used for corporate

advertising and recruiting, though technically she is

keeping a full and impartial record of the operation at

Hell's Gate. Selfridge heavily edits her downlinks to

Earth, claiming the "expense" of data transmission, but

really it is ironfisted censorship.

Selfridge introduces COLONEL MILES QUARITCH, the SECFOR

commander. Quaritch is a humorless man, thicknecked and

barrel-chested, with one side of his face twisted by the

scars from an encounter with some Pandoran predator. He

hates Pandora, but loves the fight. Quaritch epitomizes

the antipathy between humans and the world they have come

to conquer.

Quaritch adjourns the briefing, to the chagrin of DR.

BRANTLEY GIESE, the base XENOANTHROPOLOGIST and the head

of the Avatar Program. He scrambles to the front of the

room as the meeting breaks up, calling for the new

controllers to report to him in SCIMOD. Quaritch sneers

as he pushes past Giese, and we see that there is no love

lost between these two.

Quaritch stops next to Josh and says he read Josh was

marines. Josh confirms it, and Quaritch wants to know if

he was wounded in combat.

Fell out a window, drunk, at a base party, Josh tells him.

Quaritch is a little put off by Josh's attitude, but tells

him that when he is done wasting his time with Giese and

his meat puppets, he can use him in SECFOR. The ops

center and the armory are understaffed.

ON HIS WAY TO SCIMOD Josh gets a look at the base from the

inside. There are six primary modules, laid out along a

central trunk called the UTILIDOR, through which all foot

traffic, and all utility lines and conduits run. This has

two levels, the subterranean one being narrower and

primarily an access-way for maintenance.

CONMOD is the control module, containing communications,

administration, flight control, dispatch, and SECFOR

command.

HABMOD is the quarters, and also contains the laundry,

food services, gym, and recreation areas. Josh finds his

room and throws his bag on the bunk.

In the upper Utilidor, Josh bumps into NORM CHEESEMAN, a

spindly guy who is one of the new controllers Josh

recognizes from the ship. Norm pushes Josh down the

corridor as they look for SCIMOD.

They pass GENMOD (power) and STORMOD (storage), as well as

the vehicle maintenance module, called simply the GARAGE.

They reach SCIMOD which is a multistory building, full of

labs and arcane equipment. None of it means anything to

Josh.

They catch up with the tour, just as Giese is showing the

new controllers into the LINK ROOM.

Here we see the veteran controllers in a long row of what

look like high-tech dental chairs. They have the link

gear over their heads, and are tied into the distant

bodies of their respective avatars. They seem to be

sleeping, or in a trance state.

It actually resembles REM sleep, with the eyeballs

tracking rapidly under the lids, and the fingers twitching

occasionally. Technicians monitor the body functions of

the controllers, and track the positions of the avatars on

screens. Giese shows them how the same implanted chip

which allows the remote link to the avatars also gives

them a minute by minute position on them out in the bush,

or around the base of the mine, wherever they might be.

Giese tells the new arrivals that they will each be

assigned to a veteran controller, who will supervise their

first link-up with their avatars.

One of the working controllers breaks her link contact,

and lifts the hood, climbing wearily out of her chair. It

is the end of a long work day, and her body is stiff with

disuse.

Giese calls Josh forward and introduces DR. GRACE SHIPLEY,

the controller he is assigned to. Grace Shipley is a

gruff xenobotanist in her mid forties, somewhat dumpy, and

gravel-voiced from too much smoking.

She scowls at Josh, telling him to meet her in her lab at

0800 tomorrow. She ignores Josh's proffered hand,

wheeling around to yell at the monitor techs that she

needs a goddamn cigarette.

The next morning Josh is waiting in the biology lab at

five to eight. One wall of the lab is observation

windows, beyond which are large terrariums holding some

Pandoran flora and fauna. Josh peers into a chamber

filled with fern-like violet plants, unable to see if

there is anything else in there.

He moves to the next chamber, which is an aquarium filled

with murky water. The window is huge, but he can see

nothing in the gloom. He turns as Grace Shipley comes

into the lab. With shocking suddenness a dark shape, much

bigger than him, materializes out of the murk and slams

against the glass. BOOM!! Josh whips around to see the

head of a hideous armored fish, its huge jaws snapping

shut, clacking razor-sharp teeth against the glass.

GRACE

I see you've met our Dinicthys. She

loves to do that.

Grace goes to the glass and looks the big fish in the eye.

It swims away.

GRACE

Just a baby, but at the rate she's

growing, we're going to have to put

her back in the lake by next week.

OVER THE NEXT FEW SCENES it will become clear that Grace

is to be Josh's reluctant mentor.

Reluctant, since they are so understaffed that she was

really counting on the trained skills of his brother.

Josh isn't really qualified for anything on the base

except kitchen staff. She needs a real assistant, a

scientist. Hell, even an undergrad. She's pissed off at

the situation and sees it as just another way the company

is screwing the biologists and the Avatar Program. They

don't really want to know what's going on here, they just

want to strip mine the goddamn place. They'll have it all

plowed under before they even know what's out in that

bush... and they'll miss the real treasure. The Earth is

doomed because its biodiversity has been killed. It may

take centuries to die, but it's only a matter of time.

Out there are wonders they can't even imagine, and all

they do is cut funds, and send her useless assistants.

Josh interrupts her rant and tells her that he didn't come

lightyears out into space, didn't get shot up with drugs,

inoculated against god-knows-what, and frozen for three

years, just to come here and be her punching bag. If

she's got a problem with him, tell the base supervisor,

otherwise take a pill, lady.

Grace looks at him for a long moment. Finally she cracks

a wicked grin.

GRACE

So. A live one, huh?

Having lodged her complaint and put Josh on notice, she

takes him to the linkroom for his first session.

JOSH'S FIRST LINK SESSION. In this scene we see Josh go

under the link for the first time, and take over control

of his avatar body.

We cut to the JOSH/AVATAR in the training compound, an

enclosure behind SCIMOD in which the fledgling avatars are

taught to function and survive. It looks like a kids'

playground, with parallel bars, hanging rings, balls to

throw, monkey bars, and various other structures that will

be used in his physical patterning. He is watched by

techs behind a glass wall.

Josh/Avatar opens his eyes, and looks around with amazed

awareness. He blinks, the strange hues of the alien

vision flooding his brain.

He moves awkwardly, sitting up. He takes a deep breath

and smells the air. His nostrils flare with the flood of

new alien smells.

He looks at his hand, staring at it, working the fingers.

He looks down and stares at his body, then touches it with

one hand. Feels the skin. Smooth. Warm.

A tech tells him over the PA to check his motor control.

Try to touch his fingertips together. He does, missing

like a drunk at a sobriety checkpoint. He tries again,

face screwed up in concentration. His fingertips touch

clumsily, shaking slightly.

Can he see, the voice asks. He nods yes. Breathing okay?

Yes. Speech check. Try to talk.

Josh/Avatar's throat works, and an inarticulate croak

emerges. He tries again, and it sounds like a baby trying

to imitate speech. The tech tells him to try crawling.

He rolls to his stomach. Pushing up with his arms, he

gets his knees under him. He is unsteady as a newborn

antelope, his arms and body shaking as muscles clench and

nerves fire spasmodically. He crawls clumsily, like a

baby, to a plastic chair nearby. Josh/Avatar gets one

hand on the chair and tries to pull himself up. After a

lot of effort, he is almost standing... hunched over like

an ancient man.

Finally, he is standing on shaking legs. He lets go of

the chair. Swaying, he stands free. He grins, baring

slightly pointy teeth.

Then falls right on his ass.

Hearing laughter, he looks up.

A statuesque female avatar walks up, standing over him.

The first female he has seen. She is magnificent, with

powerful panther thighs, a flat muscular stomach and small

but firm athlete's breasts. She is wearing shorts and a

T-shirt, and in human years would be about 25. Her face

looks somewhat familiar... Josh manages to croak out his

first sentence.

JOSH/AVATAR

Whooo... are... yu-you?

FEMALE AVATAR

Who do you think, dumbshit? How

quickly they forget.

The voice is very recognizable. It is Grace. Now that we

know, we see her face in the alien features. She grins at

him, and cocks one hip.

GRACE/AVATAR

Ain't I a babe?

Grace/Avatar helps him to his feet, and supports his

weight while he tries to walk, just like a mom holding a

baby's hands. She faces him, holding his hands, and steps

backward. Josh, the toddler, takes his first steps. She

slowly lets go of his fingers, letting him balance

himself. He takes another step.

Josh stares down in amazement at his feet. His face holds

a childlike wonder.

JOSH/AVATAR

I'm walking.

GRACE/AVATAR

You sure are, kid.

Josh's eyes fill with tears. Grace sees one running down

the blue skin of his cheek.

GRACE/AVATAR

Yup, looks like everything's working

just fine.

CUT TO Josh being interviewed by Marcia de Los Santos, the

Freemedia Officer. Josh is explaining how his training is

going. He's walking fine, and has started running and

climbing exercises. His coordination is already equal to

a human five year old. She asks him a question she has

asked all of them... what it's like to wake up in another

body. Josh tries to tell her, but he can't. Just that it

is a wonder. And in his case, a great gift. He says the

air smells like cinnamon.

JOSH, under the link. In CU we see his eyes tracking,

like he is dreaming.

JOSH/AVATAR runs to catch a ball thrown by one of the

other trainee avatars, Norm Cheeseman. We barely

recognize skinny Norm, since his avatar body, like all of

them, is powerfully muscled.

MONTAGE:

Josh/Avatar taking a drink of some green liquid, which

spills down his chin. By his expression it obviously

tastes great.

Norm/Avatar showing off to the techs, using the window

like a mirror to shoot bodybuilder poses.

Josh doing a running cartwheel, jumping up and catching

the monkey bars, and pulling himself rapidly across hand-

over-hand.

Grace/Avatar, taking a picture of him with an instamatic

camera as he eats an unfamiliar Pandoran fruit, getting

the juice all over himself.

Josh/Avatar drawing and firing a large pistol, blowing big

holes in paper targets.

Josh/Avatar lies down to sleep for the night on a futon in

the training compound. Some of the other avatars are

already asleep nearby. We can see their bioluminescent

spot patterns glowing in the dark.

Josh/Avatar stares up at the alien sky, seeing mighty

Polyphemis rise against the stars. His catlike eyes are

wide with the wonder of this new world. He hears the

chatters and shrieks from the forest, that black wall out

beyond the compound. The sentry guns fire and there is a

piercing scream, shortlived. Soon he will be out there.

His eyes close, as sleep takes him.

The human Josh opens his eyes in the linkroom a moment

later. He climbs stiffly from his chair, pushing himself

across to his wheelchair. He sits rubbing his temples

with fatigue. Even in the lesser gravity of Pandora, his

human body feels like a deadweight after his exhilarating

hours in the other body. Grace, looking tired and

rumpled, climbs out of her seat nearby. She looks down at

her doughy body.

GRACE

At midnight I always turn back into

a pumpkin. Come on, let me buy you

a drink.

IN SELFRIDGE'S OFFICE, Quaritch is complaining that he

doesn't have enough men to escort all the scientific

sorties, cover the mine, the base and also the new

construction. Selfridge tells him he will cut the escorts

on the scientific teams back to one man per sortie.

Quaritch nods, but says that the number of major predator

attacks on the perimeter has steadily increased, and there

have been five major breaches of the outer fence this

year. One of his men was killed by a SLINGER last

Tuesday, and two are on medical report because of HELLFIRE

WASPS. One of his gunships was attacked by a LEONOPTERYX

near the deuterium plant, and almost crashed.

He's lost six people already this year, twice the number

for the same time last year, and is already over his ammo

budget. It's getting worse, not better.

Selfridge says he will order more men and weapons on the

next starship, and cut back on the scientific package.

They just have to make it to then. He orders Quaritch to

clearcut a wider safety zone around the new construction.

CUT TO the clearcutting operation, out at the edge of the

safety zone. Massive tractors and bulldozers are ripping

into the treeline, toppling the huge trees. Now we see

why the equipment is so big... the trees are enormous.

The dozers have plasma cutters which rip into the trees,

slashing through their gargantuan bases in a spray of

fierce light and burning wood-shrapnel.

The larger trees are blasted with high explosives, raining

kindling down for hundreds of yards. The tractor drivers

are safe in armored cages, and Scorpion gunships prowl

over the tree-line, looking for large predators which

might be approaching.

ANGLE FROM INSIDE THE RAINFOREST, as the tractors

relentlessly approach. It is the POV of somebody or

something watching.

REVERSE, tight on a pair of eyes. The catlike eyes of one

of the humanoid PANDORANS, FILLING FRAME.

A GLIMPSE of figures moving through the foliage, their

skin-markings acting as almost perfect camouflage. We can

barely see them. Just an impression of graceful, lithe

forms. Then nothing.

A MASSIVE METAL FOOT crashes down into frame.

CUT WIDER to see that it belongs to Miles Quaritch wearing

a POWERSUIT. This is a robotic walking machine, bipedal,

about 4 meters tall. Though massive, it is gyroscopically

balanced and quite agile, able to duplicate most human

motion. It is heavily armored, and armed with a huge

rotary cannon, a GAU 90, built into one forearm. Quaritch

uses a psionic link to control the machine.

Under his bubble canopy, the Colonel scans the gloom of

the forest. He glances up as two Scorpions fly overhead.

One opens fire one something, its tracers streaming down

into the trees. The Scorpion pilot tells Quaritch that a

pack of VIPERWOLVES are heading his way.

Quaritch scans among the trees, seeing vague infrared

shapes moving on his screens. Ahead, in the gloom, he

sees black shapes squirting from shadow to shadow like

blobs of living ink. They seem to dart across the ground,

then move through the trees from limb to limb... sometimes

seeming doglike, other times more like monkeys.

Quaritch opens fire with the GAU 90.

It hogs a horizontal swath through the forest, splintering

everything in its path into wood chips. Trees crash to

earth, and flapping things called STINGBATS rise into the

sky with shrill calls. We hear a horrible yelping whine,

which goes on and on, getting more distant... Satisfied,

Quaritch crashes forward through the bush, scanning.

A one-meter stingbat smacks into his canopy, its tail-

stinger screeching on the glass. He crushes it, with one

hydraulic hand, almost unconsciously, like someone

swatting a mosquito.

A shrieking BANSHEERAY hurtles at him from above the

trees. It is a small one, less than a three meter

wingspan. Shaped like a manta ray, it swoops through the

trees on translucent wing membranes. We get a glimpse of

glassy fangs unfolding from its mouth like cat-claws, then

the cannon blows it into chunks. Quaritch's canopy is

showered with blue Pandoran blood.

He passes a large plantform called PHALANXIA which fires

nettle-like projectiles at him. They ricochet off the

armor, leaving drops of glistening venom. The Pandoran

fauna and flora clearly share the philosophy of us versus

them. This is one nasty place.

Behind Quaritch two troopers in powersuits follow him into

the bush ahead of the wall-like blades of the bulldozers.

Quaritch blasts something else. We see that he enjoys his

work. Takes a personal interest that things are done

right.

IN THE UTILIDOR Rob Parrish is walking with Carter

Selfridge. Parrish is complaining that Quaritch and

SECFOR are going too far. Now they want to burn large

sections of the forest, to clear it of predators. How can

he be expected not to report that?! Selfridge tells him

that he should just do what he always does... shut up and

take the money.

IN THE COMMISSARY Josh is eating with some of the other

controllers. You can see definite territories staked out

by the various groups. The SECFOR troopers stay on their

side of the room, and don't mingle with the civilians

much. And the scientists have their own area. Within

that, the controllers have a little corner reserved for

them, but whether they are the elite, or the pariahs, is

not clear. A little of both, actually.

The controllers are a scruffy, smelly lot. They generally

spend as many hours a day as they are allowed to (up to

16) under the link, and as their stint goes on, they get

less and less interested in personal hygiene. They are

like junkies, with unkempt hair and beards, bad skin and

poor appetites.

There's a crazy guy bussing the table named HEGNER.

Moving slow and vacant-eyed, he's obviously doped up on

something prescribed by the base psychtech. Grace tells

them that Hegner used to be head of Xenobiology until his

avatar got killed... ripped apart by a SLINTH. The slinth

is a large predator, fast as a cheetah, that spears its

prey with its head, which is like a venomous lance. The

prey wobbles off and collapses, alive and conscious but

unable to move because of the neurotoxin. The slinth eats

it alive. Hegner felt himself die, and he hasn't been

right since. Added to the trauma is the loss... the loss

of his other life, the one lived in his avatar body.

Like many of the controllers, he came to see it as his

real life, with his human life taking on the feeling of a

boring dream.

Grace tells Josh that they are going out to her worksite

tomorrow, and he'll be meeting a local, named N'DEH, who

is her guide. Giese says N'deh is one of the few who will

still work with them, after what those SECFOR jarheads

did.

Apparently there was an incident, a year ago, between the

nearby aboriginal people and some SECFOR troopers who were

trying to clear them out of the construction site for the

new deuterium plant. It seems the site was sacred ground

to the TSUMONGWI.

Josh says he thought they were called the NA'VI. Giese

says that's right, the whole Pandoran race is called the

Na'vi. They are all Na'vi, all around the planet, because

they all seem to have the same root language. It

translates, approximately, as "The Seeing People".

Their word for Pandora is NA'AT, "The People's Mother".

Curiously, it is the same word they have for forest. So

to them, the forest is the world. Which is nearly right,

since there are no deserts or veldts, and all the

landmasses are uniformly covered with forest, right up to

the permanent polar ice.

The local clan is called the Tsumongwi, "The Blue Flute

Clan". Anyway, Giese and his avatar group were having

some success with the local clan, teaching them some

English, and how to use some of our power tools. Their

own technology is neolithic... bows and spears, clay pots,

animal skins, that sort of thing. No written language.

They were helping to build a school in the forest, near

their home villages, when SECFOR pissed in the soup.

The clan patriarch has protested against the "Sky

People"... us... clearing the trees at one of their sacred

sites. They have never liked us cutting down the trees

anywhere, and it was all I could do to get Selfridge to

stop his safety zone at the size it is... he was just

heading for the horizon with it. They mourn the spirit of

a tree when it dies. It's quite touching.

Anyway, when the tractors showed up at the sacred site,

which was just a clearing in the woods, the Na'vi

attacked. They attacked the tractors, not the men. Set

the tires on fire. Shot a few poison darts at the

engines.

Quaritch ordered his men to fire into the forest, knowing

the Na'vi were there. Show them who's boss. Five Na'vi

were killed. Since then we haven't seen hide nor hair of

them around here. They will meet with us in the forest,

sometimes, but never here. And things are very strained.

N'deh has been invaluable, and there are a couple of

others. It's almost like they drew straws to see who

would get the shit-detail of dealing with us hairy sky

people. And N'deh drew short.

AT DUSK, OUT IN THE COMPOUND, the tractors are returning

from the construction site. Troopers keep a loose guard

cordon between the gravel road through the rainforest and

the compound fence. A couple of Powersuits stride among

them, dwarfing the troopers and the civilian construction

workers in their masks and hardhats.

The twin suns of Alpha Centauri A and B are fat red disks

just above the treeline. Stingbats, bansheerays and other

flyers are silhouetted against the orange sky.

Josh/Avatar, inside the compound, walks to the fence and

watches the machines returning. Behind him they are

loading up a VTOL utility vehicle about the size of a Huey

helicopter. It is an AEROSPATIALE SA-2 SAMSON. The

Samsons are armed only with a door gun, and are the prime-

movers of air operations here. They are used by the

scientists to reach their remote worksites, and by the

construction and mining teams to move personnel and

supplies. Hell's Gate operates ten of these workhorses,

and they are under civilian command.

Josh looks up. Silhouetted against the twin suns, sitting

on top of a cargo container nearby, is a real honest-to-

God alien... a Na'vi. He looks like the avatars, of

course, but the difference is in the details. He is

wearing a beaded loincloth of animal skin, and has a

leather tube slung across his back. He is squatting,

still as a statue, holding what looks like a long spear,

which stands upright against the sky. Josh sees that it

is actually a bundle of long fishing arrows, with the

unstrung bow held alongside them.

The Na'vi turns his head all the way around, like an

owl's, and the eyes bore into Josh.

JOSH/AVATAR

N'deh?

The Na'vi rises, then steps off the container, dropping to

the ground like some kind of liquid, and almost silently.

He regards Josh with curiosity, coming quite close to

him. He walks around him, looking him up and down.

Sniffs him slowly.

Grace walks up and introduces them formally, using N'deh's

complete name: N'deh Hermequeftewa. N'deh makes a curious

gesture with his hand, touching one finger to his forehead

and flicking it gracefully toward Josh. Josh nods.

N'deh is older than Josh. In human terms we would guess

him to be in his late thirties. Next to him, we realize

that Josh's avatar body is very young... a boy in his

teens. Maybe 17.

Grace quietly speaks to N'deh in the Na'vi language,

surprising Josh. It is the first time he has heard it

spoken. It is musical and lilting, and by the sound of it

very complex. Grace seems quite fluent.

By subtitles we understand that she is asking him to help

her load the sampling equipment into the Samson.

N'deh closes his eyes for a half second, which we will

come to see means the same as our nod of agreement. They

walk toward the Aerospatiale together.

Josh hears shots and turns. There is a commotion out on

the killing ground. Near the tractors, an enormous animal

has burst from the treeline and is charging for the fence.

In the dust raised by the giant machines, and with the

number of men around, it is difficult for the troopers to

get a shot. To make matters worse, the sentry guns have

been deactivated in that sector while they bring in the

heavy equipment.

Almost twice the size of an elephant, the beast is called

a HAMMERHEAD TITANOTHERE, and it is like a six-legged

rhinoceros. It has a massive, low-slung head with blunt

transverse projections of solid bone which give it the

look of a hammerhead shark. It is a herbivore, but like

the rhino, elephant and hippopotamus, it can be aggressive

and deadly. Troopers fire there rifles at the monstrous

silhouette charging through the dust clouds, but the

rounds have no effect on the armored head and shoulders.

A trooper in a powersuit strides between the tractors,

trying to get a shot with the GAU 90. Suddenly the beast

appears out of the dust at a full thundering charge, and

the powersuit is knocked down before the cannon can swing

to bear. The bull hammerhead smashes the canopy with one

foot as it charges right over the powersuit, pulping the

trooper inside.

Josh sees the hammerhead close the final distance to the

c