Project 880 was James Cameron's original idea and scriptment for Avatar that he wrote in 1995. There are a few extra characters in the script that did not appear on-screen, and some character names are different. The name 'Project 880' was used as a working title for the first film, until around 2006.

Contents show]

Character Name Differences Edit

Script Exclusive Characters Edit

Dr. Brantley Giese: the base xenoanthropologist, and the head of the Avatar Program.

Hegner: former xenobiologist and avatar driver, now working in the mess hall; in psychiatric treatment since his avatar was killed while they were in link.

The Avatars Edit

The concept for the avatars is very different:

They are in link with their drivers the whole time they are growing on the ISV, enabling the driver's mind to guide the development of the avatar's so that they will be in synch.

The newborn avatars are represented as able to move a little on their own and as having at least a rudimentary consciousness, capable of feeling terror at birth and taking comfort in the driver's presence. (Some trace of the former idea may be seen in the film when Jake's freshly-decanted avatar twitches a foot while awaiting Jake's first link.)

Original 880 Script Edit

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, overdevelopment, 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 Pharaoh'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 1980s. 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, short-lived. 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 compound fence. It is coming straight toward him. Everyone is firing at once, trying to bring down the twenty ton creature. The ground is shaking in time with its galloping gait. It hits the outer fence, smashing right through it. A powersuit runs forward, striking a firing position, and opens up with its cannon. The GAU 90 rips into the hammerhead, blowing divots out of its shoulder and head. The creature bellows in pain and rage and keeps on coming. Josh pulls his pistol and adds his firing to the general thunder of guns.

The hammerhead hits the inner fence. In a blaze of high- voltage arcing, it bulldozes through the chain-link. It stumbles, tripping on the wreckage of the fence, then rises and thunders forward again, filling Josh's vision. BOOM!!! The cannon roars again and the titanothere topples forward, plowing into the ground. It flips and skids, coming to rest in a cloud of dust ten meters from Josh. There is a beat, then... Over the creature's body flows a cat-like shape, big as a tiger. It hits the ground in a ripple of muscle and bounds straight toward Josh.

It is a SLINTH. Its venom-injecting spear-like head is cocked back on its powerful neck, ready to strike. Josh raises the pistol, which CLICKS. Empty. He faces his death. Suddenly beside him is N'deh, drawing and aiming his bow in one swift move. The two meter long arrow flies straight into the slinth's throat. It coils over itself in agony like a snake. N'deh knocks another arrow and lets fly. The slinth shudders and lies twitching. N'deh walks forward, stepping on the needle-like head while he removes his arrows.

JOSH/AVATAR: N'deh. Thank you.

N'DEH: Luck. (he holds up an arrow) Fishing points not good for killing slinth.

The high tech troopers stand around with their blasters, looking at the stone-age arrow that killed the beast. N'deh looks at the dead slinth, then at the body of the titanothere which cleared a path for it all the way into the inner compound. His expression is enigmatic. N'deh takes the blood of the slinth on his finger and draws a line under one eye, then under the other. Honoring the slinth, and its purpose for existence. He starts dragging the carcass to the Samson.

Nearby somebody screams. Several hideous insects, almost a foot across, are leaping from the body of the titanothere and trying to fasten their hook-like legs into some of the troopers. With the host dead, the parasitic WOLF-TICKS are looking for a new ride. A frantic burst of firing breaks out, as the soldiers jump around, trying to kill the fast-moving parasites. Nasty place.





THAT NIGHT Josh/Avatar stands at the compound fence, looking out at the forest primeval. Tomorrow he is going out there for the first time, and he is scared. There are light moving out there, single flitting ones, and larger patterns indicating big creatures. Some of the trees glow very faintly, or have phosphorescent patterns in their foliage. Josh sees eyes, low to the ground, moving just behind the treeline. Several pairs. And then an unearthly wailing cry. Viperwolves. Christ, what am I doing here?

IN THE SAMSON, the next day, they thunder over the treetops with a roar of turbofans. Below them the purple rainforest unrolls. The human pilot and the trooper escort sit in a sealed front cabin, while Josh/Avatar, Grace/Avatar and N'deh ride in the back compartment with the side doors open. They land at Grace's direction, in a grassy meadow. They get out as the pilot shuts down the turbines. Their escort, CORPORAL LYLE WAINFLEET, steps out wearing mask, helmet, armor and rebreather. He is carrying an almighty big automatic rifle. Josh is wearing shorts and a T- shirt. Grace insists that he go barefoot, so his baby- blue feeties will toughen up with thick callouses like hers.

Josh stares at the wall of trees surrounding them. Up close, the trees are enormous, as big as sequoias at the base, and even taller because the gravity on Pandora is less than Earth. Lesser trees, the size of mature oaks, are like underbrush in between the colossi. Lyle is like a birddog on point, hyperalert, scanning the gloom beyond the meadow. A flock of stingbats crosses far above them. He tracks them with the rifle, but they ignore the strangers.

Grace hates the troopers clomping through the woods with her. They disrupt the animals, and smash the plants, and make too much noise. And they tend to attract the larger predators, to whom they appear to be injured or defective animals. They grab the cases of equipment and N'deh leads them into the trees. Josh stares all around like a tourist in hell... rubbernecking and fascinated, but scared shitless. Josh expects every dappled shadow to hide a razor-fanged predator, but their entry into the forest is uneventful. Josh is jumpy and on guard. Swatting at insects. Soon he has gathered quite a cloud of buzzing attackers.

Grace uses a machete to hack open the bole of a low, cycad-like plant. She takes the viscous sap from the inside and starts briskly rubbing it all over her exposed skin. She recommends that he do the same, unless he wants his bones picked clean by every insect in the forest. He quickly complies. The insects move off, like magic. Grace explains that the Na'vi use plant extracts for all sorts of things... to relieve pain, purify water, reduce fever, limit or improve fertility, promote wound healing, counteract stings and poisons, attract useful insects, kill external and internal parasites, prevent sunburn, and repel or attract larger animals.

As a xenobotanist, her work has been vastly accelerated with their guidance as they help her see the greater relationship between things in the forest. Josh gazes around him in wonder as they move deeper into the primeval gloom. The bark of the giant trees is alien, like big hexagonal fishscales. Moss covers the lower parts of the trunks, and lainas and other vine-like structures lace around them, and hang between them like fallen power lines.

The roots of the greater trees are like mangroves, and they form clusters of pillars, each thick as a normal tree trunk, which join far above their heads into a single massive trunk. These root-trunks actually wind around each other, forming a kind of braided cylinder, which then rises a hundred feet above the ground before it forms branches.

They move on. Grace starts giving him survival pointers. How to avoid the things that bite and sting and suck. Phalanxia, the deadly projectile plant, shows up bright as a neon sign in the ultraviolet-sensitive avatar vision. No problem. Give it a wide berth. She shows him the nests of Hellfire Wasps... the wasps don't like the sap they have rubbed on, but don't push your luck by coming near the nest.





She sees a SNAKETREE and brings him as close as she can. It is a hydra-like, ambulatory plant twice Josh's height. It moves into place, then freezes so that it resembles a gnarled, dead tree. When prey moves within range, it comes suddenly alive and strikes with one of six fanged heads. The animal is digested in a pitcher-like bole, and the half-stripped bones ejected to lure more prey. Josh sees the bones lying around the base of the tree. Some of them are from animals at least as large as a man... or an avatar. Grace, the xenobotanist, is very excited to share the snake tree with him.

They move on. Josh has never been in a forest before, since they are mostly gone on Earth. He is scared, but dealing. It's kind of interesting. She continues to give Josh pointers... touch this, don't touch that. They startle a small creature which crashes away into the underbrush. Further up the trail, N'deh signals them to stop. Grace motions, and they crouch down, watching through the leaves as something moves through the woods parallel to them. It is a small six-legged herbivore called a HEXAPEDE, about the size of a tapir. N'deh points at something else, and Grace whispers to Josh.

GRACE: Look. A slinger. It's stalking the hexapede.

GRACE: Watch this.

The slinger's neck snaps forward, and its long, pointed head detaches, flying through the woods as a self-guiding venomous glider... a smart-dart. The hexapede senses the dart and bolts, bounding in evasive zigzags. The dart tracks it unerringly through the trees and buries itself in its flank. The hexapede staggers. It stands, its muscles spasming, then falls over. The dart starts emitting a series of high-pitched squeals, which allow the body to home in on it blindly. The neck bends down, and is rejoined to the dart. Josh catches a glimpse of hair- like tendrils lacing together... some kind of neural interface. Then the slinger starts to rip the hexapede apart.

Grace explains that the slinth, with its striking head, is the evolutionary precursor of the slinger. The slinger's primary brain is in the dart, so if the body and the dart are ever permanently separated, they both die. The dart cannot feed itself.

The body and dart are actually mother and child... the dart is an immature form. When it grows too big to fly, it will mate, then drop off and metamorphose into a small complete slinger, with its offspring already in place, forming the new dart. Each new generation is the brain for the previous one. Sounds backward, but it works. Josh watches the feeding slinger in awe. He has never seen anything like this... so raw and primal.

GRACE: Welcome to the food chain.

N'deh leads them past the feeding slinger, which is preoccupied with its kill. Josh's heart is pounding. He's still scared shitless, but this stuff is amazing. He feels more alive than he has ever felt. They enter a clearing with a partially built structure in the middle. It is made of heavy timbers, cut from the local wood. This is the school and meeting center that Grace and Dr. Giese were trying to build. They had gotten the Na'vi to build this much, working alongside them, before they had retreated from human contact. Now the vines and moss are reclaiming it. Stingbats roost under the eaves.

N'deh makes a high-pitched clicking sound between tongue and teeth, and several of the stingbats flutter down toward him. He holds out some small fruits he has picked on the trail, and the stingbats perch on his arm and shoulders, munching noisily.





Josh knows that the stinging tail spines are lethal. He gives the stingbats a wide berth as he helps Grace with her sampling equipment. Grace goes to work on some equipment that has been left here for remote sensing. She changes power cells, collects data disks, and does other housekeeping chores. Grace chops through a thick liana with her machete and drinks from the dangling vine. Josh tastes it. Water... clear and slightly sweet. Like drinking from the teat of the rainforest.

Back at the Samson Lyle is idly tracking a bansheeray circling far above him with the scope of his rifle. The bored pilot is betting him ten bucks he can't hit it. He is about to fire when he catches sight of some movement out of the corner of his eye. He motions to the pilot to keep still, and they watch as three DIREHORSES emerge from the trees to munch grass in the meadow.

DIREHORSE are herbivores, vaguely horse-like in design, with very long necks and tiny heads. They have long, moth-like antennae with feathery tips, which are constantly moving, touching the tips of other direhorses' antennae as they move near each other. They stand about three meters at the shoulders, or about half as big again as the largest Clydesdale. They have bold striped patterns on their bodies, and glinting, chitinous armor over shoulders and along the back of the neck and head.

Lyle moves forward in a predatory crouch and rests his rifle across the fuselage of the Samson. The direhorse munch unconcerned. Fifty bucks says I nail all three, Lyle says. You're on, says the pilot.

POOM!

The lead horse, the male, drops like it was pole- axed. The other two spook, rearing... POOM! One of the females drops, kicking its legs in the air as it writhes on the ground. The third one bolts. Lyle tracks with it... POOM! It crashes forward, it neck bending back double as it goes end over end. The second direhorse struggles to regain its footing. It pathetically tries to drag itself toward the sheltering forest with a severed spine, its back legs useless. POOM! A blast of dirt, next to it. It hobbles further, honking like a Canadian goose, its signal for distress. Lyle fires again, rushing the shot. Misses.

LYLE: Shit!

PILOT: (laughing) Doesn't count if it makes it to the treeline.

LYLE: Start reachin' for your wallet.

He flips the weapon to full auto.

P-P-P-P-POOM!!

The crippled direhorse disappears in a cloud of dust as gouts of earth explode all around it. Treetrunks are blasted, foliage and underbrush ripped into confetti. When the dust clears, the direhorse is an inert carcass. ON LYLE, turning toward camera, grinning... the three dead animals BG. A blue hand slams into frame, grabbing his rifle. Grace rips the gun out of his hand and flings it cartwheeling over the Samson, then twists his arm behind his back. She viciously torques it almost to the breaking point, doubling him over. She forces him to his knees, jamming his facemask into the mud.

GRACE: Little boys shouldn't play with guns.

Lyle is cursing a blue streak. Grace kneels on his back and grabs his breathing mask.

GRACE: I oughta rip this thing right off. Give you some fresh air.









Lyle squawks and pleads with her not to. She disgustedly gets off him. She is already walking away, toward the felled creatures, as Lyle gets up. Josh sees him going for his sidearm. Lyle has it aimed at Grace's back and is about to pull the trigger when Josh hits him like a freight train. He slams the trooper against the cowl of the ship, twists the pistol out of his hand in one lightning move, and then picks him up bodily. Josh is amazed at how easy it is to hurl the human twenty feet away, even weighted down by his full battle dress. Lyle crashes in a heap, breaking his arm, and lies there moaning. Josh picks him up with one hand and leans close to his mask.

JOSH: Lyle, look at me. Lyle! You looking? You do that again, I'll bite your throat out.

Josh bares his pointy teeth in a vicious snarl. Lyle's eyes go wide with primal fear.

JOSH: Understand?

Lyle nods, and Josh shoves him into the Samson. Grace is staring at her new assistant. He is a fighter. There's hope for him yet.

Meanwhile, N'deh has gone to the bodies of the direhorses. A foal, only a few days old, has been hiding in the ferns nearby. It emerges and honks for its mother to get up. It licks her face and honks again, pitifully. N'deh pulls something from the tube across his back. It is a piece of gut-twine with something on the end... a carved wooden cylinder. He starts to whirl it round and round, above his head and as it builds speed, it emits a powerful ululating wail, like a siren. It works like the "bullroarer" of the Australian aborigines, though the pitch is different and N'deh is somehow able to modulate it into a more complex sound.

The sound of the bullroarer echoes off through the trees for miles.

CUT TO THE SAMSON lifting, banking away above the treeline. Its turbofan roar fades. Then there is only the sound of the forest. We see shapes among the trees... figures which blend with the foliage. The banded patterns on their bodies make them hard to see in the dappled light.

Close on one of the dead direhorses. A blue hand enters frame, stroking its face. The foal is lifted, still honking feebly, and carried away on strong blue shoulders.

BACK AT HELL'S GATE Brantley Giese is on the carpet in Selfridge's office. The incident with trooper Wainfleet couldn't have come at a worse time. The Avatar Program is on shaky enough ground, without this sort of thing. Now Quaritch is out for blood, and Carter Selfridge is considering restricting the number of scientific sorties he approves, and confining the avatars to base. Giese is barely able to get him to loosen up, reminding him of all the things they've learned about Pandora from the Na'vi, and how much money there is to be made from the drugs and biochemical compounds as yet undiscovered in the forest. He reminds him of the money the Consortium has made from the countervirus.

Think how great it would be if they could get the Na'vi back to the table, trusting us again. And how it's the troopers running around blasting everything in sight that caused the rift with them in the first place. Selfridge and Quaritch don't understand a primitive culture which lives close to the soil, close to the daily cycle of birth and death. They don't understand, and they don't want to. Quaritch thinks the natives are lazy and stupid. You give them a gun so they can hunt better, and they give it back. How smart is that?

Giese tried to explain that the Na'vi consider it unfair and obscene to hunt with a gun... a dishonor to the spirit of the animal and its purpose for existence. They believe that everything has a purpose, and sometimes the animal's purpose is to feed the Na'vi, and sometimes the Na'vi's purpose is to feed the animal, and determining which is which is what makes them both strong, fast and perfect. They don't want to change.

Selfridge says that if that is true, the Na'vi will never help them build factories and strip-mine their own planet. They are useless to us. And Giese knows he has said too much. He is trapped in his own argument. He tries to buy time, saying he can get the Na'vi to cooperate.

NEXT WE SEE Giese raking (human) Grace and Josh over the coals in her lab. Josh says he had to do something, that jarhead was going to blow Grace's avatar away. Giese holds his head in his hands. Would any court, anywhere, let him get away with equating a human life to that of a genetic construct... a living artifact created in a lab? Giese says he knows what it feels like... he's spent enough hours in the bush, in avatar form. It's intoxicating, it's the greatest experience imaginable... but they have to remember what they are here for.



And what is that?

Giese is furious. He tells them both he doesn't want them around the base for a while, until things cool down. He wants them to go out to SITE 26. They can spend a couple of weeks in the boonies collecting, up in the Hallelujah Mountains, while he tries to get things patched up. He warns Grace that she is "going native" and dragging her assistant into it as well. And that way can lie madness. Look what happened to Hegner.

A SAMSON roars high above the rainforest, climbing into the mountains. Josh and Grace are sitting up front with the pilot, TRUDY CHACON. N'deh rides in the open back compartment with a single trooper, CORPORAL BILL ONOZUKI, and the unconscious avatars of Josh and his boss.





JOSH: So what happened to Hegner?

Grace tells him that Hegner's avatar was not just killed by a slinth. He let the slinth take him. Suicide. He was dying of a broken heart, and being in the avatar body without his loved one was just too painful. He managed to fall in love with a Na'vi girl, some say they were married... and she was killed. She was one of the five killed by the SECFOR troopers in the incident which caused the big rift between the two species. And Hegner went crazy.

Her name was Li Na.



There are many dangers on Pandora, Grace says, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much.





JOSH: Not so far.



CUT TO SITE 26, a remote research station. It consists of a "shack"... a single air-lift module, about the size of a Winnebago, which is perched on the flank of a mountain, near the Montes Volans. Here the trees are gnarly and much shorter, their roots gripping the rocks like arthritic hands. In the clear space around the shack are packing cases and instrument packages left by previous research groups. The station is uninhabited. A few of the nearer flying mountains are visible a few miles off, among the clouds.

A Samson lands near the shack. Grace and the pilot get out, wearing masks and rebreathers. They get Josh's chair out of the back, then help him out of the ship and into it. Their trooper escort does nothing to help unload, merely scans the area, his gun held at the ready. N'deh stays in the back compartment of the aircraft with the unconscious avatars of Josh and Grace. They enter the shack, which is dark and musty. Grace starts the genny and turns on the lights and equipment. There are bunkbeds, a cramped clutter of scientific gear, and two link chairs.

Trudy jokes about being alone in the mountains for a couple of weeks with two men in such cramped quarters. Josh says the only threat he poses is body odor, indicating his useless lower body. Once Grace has checked out the link transmitters, she and Josh go straight to the chairs. Outside, at the ship, their avatars blink and sit up. They get out of the Samson and stand, breathing the cold mountain air. Streamers of cloud wreath the nearby mesa-tops, and partially obscure the floating mountains nearby.





They go out the next day to place instrument packages among the floating mountains. Josh and Grace go under the link in the shack at Site 26, while N'deh and the avatars ride out in the Samson. The reason a mobile controller station was set up in the first place is that the magnetic flux around the Montes Volans interferes with the link signal from Hell's Gate. They need to be closer. The Samson is tiny moving among the vast floating islands of rock. Bansheerays and other smaller flying species circle next to the cliffs in the sunlit shafting between the clouds. Waterfalls plunge thousands of feet down the sheer walls, then dissolve into nothingness below the bottoms of the mountains.

Trudy pilots the Samson under one of the floating mountains, and we see the upside down forest of vines dangling from the underside. They pass between falling streams of water. It is dreamlike and surreal. Josh, sitting in the wind in the open door of the Samson, sees a bansheeray cruising near them. It studies them a moment, beating its huge wing membranes to keep up. It lets out a piercing shriek (hence the name) and then banks away, diving like a jet fighter. Trooper Onozuki, wearing mask and armor, sits in the other doorway, leaning on the sling of the door-gun.

Grace names the floating mountains as they pass. Mons Veritatis... Truth Mountain. Mons Tiburon. Mons Damocles. Icarus. Daedalus. And finally, the biggest of the superconductor mountains, Mons Prometheus... The Big Rock-Candy Mountain. A hundred billion dollars worth of pure unobtanium. They land on the mesa-top of the Big Rock-Candy Mountain. Trooper Onozuki deploys rapidly, scanning, his rifle ready. The others get out and go to work. The mountaintop is shrouded in a blowing cloud bank. Occasional shafts of sunlight play across it, but it is mostly gray mist.

Josh carries his instrument package away from the ship. He sets it up at the edge of a cliff, per Grace's instructions. Below, through gaps in the clouds, he can see purple forested slopes, half a mile down. Josh sees more bansheerays circling below. A couple pass nearby, giving him the eye. Like reef sharks they will size you up, but seldom attack something their own size unless it is in distress. Mist closes around Josh as he walks back to the Samson. Visibility is only a few meters. Without warning, a curtain of what looks like slimy ropes emerges out of the mist. They are hanging down from above, their source unseen, and are dragging over the ground with a faint swish. Josh whirls in time to see them, but he is enveloped.

They are translucent tentacles, only a couple of inches in diameter. But they react instantly on contact with him, curling around his limbs and body, and zapping the hell out of him with electric shocks. Josh is entangled and dragged, struggling, across the mountaintop. He shouts, and the others run toward him. The trooper aims his gun up into the mist above Josh, hoping to hit the source of the tentacles, but Grace stops him from firing. We don't know why yet. N'deh sprints toward him, drawing his machete. Josh sees the cliff edge approaching, beyond it nothing. N'deh won't reach Josh in time.

Josh is swept off the edge, his feet dangling over space. N'deh throws him the machete, and Josh catches it by the handle. N'deh almost falls, but Grace grabs him, pulling him back from the edge. They watch helplessly as Josh is carried away. Then Grace runs like hell toward the Samson, yelling to Trudy to fire it up.

Josh, still getting zapped by electric shocks, tries to get a look at what is holding him. The cloud bank falls away, and he sees an enormous transparent canopy above him, glistening in the sunlight. It looks like an impossibly huge jellyfish, like a cross between a Portuguese man o' war and a blimp. Its clear membranous sac, or bell, is filled with hydrogen, produced by an internal biochemical process. The bell is 15 meters across, and the tentacles over 30 meters long.

The bell pulses to give some directional control, but mostly they drift with the wind. It expels gas to descend, and expels water from trim bladders to rise. Josh sees a whole school of these things, like a fleet of ships, emerging from the clouds on both sides of him. Apparently they sweep the tops of the mountains for prey, stunning it with their electric shocks. Josh looks up and sees that the contracting tentacles are bringing him much closer to the pulpy mouth.





In the Samson, Grace and the others search the clouds for Josh. They see the fleet of gas-bags, and move toward them. Grace says they are AEROCOELENTERATES, genus MEDUSA. These are X. Medusa gigans, not too common this far east. She tells Onozuki not to fire because they are full of hydrogen and will explode like the Hindenburg. Josh is hacking at the tentacles with the machete. They are tough and rubbery, hard to cut. His distress encourages some circling bansheerays to attack.

As they dive toward him, we see the distensible jaws unfold, revealing glassy dagger-like teeth several inches long. Josh hacks at the first one, slashing it right across the face. With a shriek it veers off. The jaws of another snap inches from his leg, and he chops into it with the machete. It flutters off in a descending spiral, the shoulder of one wing hacked open. Some of the others follow it down, ripping it apart. Trudy maneuvers the Samson closer.

WHAM!!!

They are slammed by something from above. The ship drops and she fights for control. Onozuki is almost pitched out. They pull him back in. A huge shadow... then they see it. Like a bansheeray, only several times larger. It is the king predator of the air... the GREAT LEONOPTERYX. Striped scarlet, yellow and black, with a midnight blue head... it is iridescent and beautiful. It feeds on bansheerays, munching them like salted peanuts, and the occasional medusa when it's really hungry... but this fight isn't about hunger, it's about territory. It sees the Samson as a competing predator, and it's pissed.

The great leonopteryx swoops away, climbing with unbelievable speed, disappearing up into the sun. Trudy loses sight of it. Grace tells her to take evasive action. Fast! Trudy banks and dives. And we see the leonopteryx plummeting right behind her in a full delta tuck, like a hawk stooping. They build up airspeed and Trudy jinks left, then right, trying to throw it off. Josh sees them go out of sight behind the flank of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and knows he's screwed. He chops harder at the tentacles, hacking through another one in a spray of violet blood.

As he gets nearer to the pulsing sphincter of a mouth, he starts to hack at the gas bag overhead. He chops through the membrane, and hydrogen whooshes out, spraying him with a mist of blood. Josh hacks again, widening the tear. With a thin scream, like a tea-kettle whistle, the medusa starts to descend. The great leonopteryx outmaneuvers the Samson, slamming into it with a bone-jarring crash. It flaps away with a piece of the engine cowl, and the Samson plunges, smoking, toward the ground.

Amid alarms and flashing lights Trudy fights for control. The cabin is full of smoke. The ship hits the treetops with a series of splintering crashes, and sails out over a clearing, crossed up and spinning. It plops down into a huge gray mud-spot. It has come to rest in the middle of an area of volcanic springs, where terraced pools of mud plop with steam from below, and geysers shoot up nearby. Visualize Yellowstone with purple trees, and a few floating mountains in the background.

Everyone inside is okay, though shaken. Bloody noses, bashed knees. Onozuki jumps out into the mud, in a rage, and slogs his way to rocky ground. He runs up a rise, screaming at the leonopteryx, which is a crimson kite banking away. He opens fire with his rifle. Grace has come out, shouting something to him, which he can't hear over the thundercrack of his weapon. FROM A HIGH ANGLE we see the trooper as a tiny dot on the rocks below. The POV rushes downward. A huge shadow can be seen, rippling over the ground, rushing toward Onozuki, who is firing in the other direction, his backed turned. We rush right down to him, meeting our shadow... the shadow of wings 15 meters across.

WHAM!!

Angle on Onozuki as he is jerked up out of frame. His gun and helmet plop into the mud near Grace, and a terrifying shriek echoes across the landscape.

GRACE: I tried to tell him they always hunt in pairs.

SEVERAL MILES AWAY, Josh is plummeting toward the rainforest, still wrapped in the tentacles of the deflating medusa. The trees claw up toward him, and he enters a snapping, slashing hell of purple foliage. He is jerked to a stop, the wind knocked out of him, and his machete clatters down into the forest below him. He finds himself hanging ten meters above the ground. The tentacles go limp as it dies, and he slips down, trying to hold onto them now. But they are too slick. He slides down this greased rope, falling the last two meters to the ground, where he lands on his butt.





He jumps to his feet and scrambles away from beneath the medusa. Panting, he looks up at it. It's still dead. He finds his machete and stands surveying the gloomy forest around him. Alone in the bush, miles from nowhere. Great. He feels an overwhelming sense of doom. Josh backs away from the medusa, then turns to look behind him. CHOMP!! The striking head of a snake-tree snaps its jaws shut inches from him. He jumps back as several of the other heads lunge. CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! He stands there panting, just out of range of the hydra heads.

JOSH: This place is like a goddamned Roadrunner cartoon.

At the downed Samson Trudy has called the base. She tells Grace that they can't send a ship for a couple of hours, everything's committed. And Quaritch won't send one of his gunships to pick up civilians. Prick. Grace picks up Onozuki's rifle and tells Trudy to get back to the ship. Josh is walking through the forest, moving in and out of patches of sunlight. He slaps at bugs. He finds the plant Grace used for insect repellent and cuts it open, smearing it on himself.

POV FROM NEARBY. Something is watching him from behind a curtain of leaves.

REVERSE... TWO EYES watch from the dappled shadows. Na'vi eyes. Piercing gaze, FILLING FRAME. A soundless motion, the eyes are gone.

Josh walks on through the forest, skittish and hyperalert. He keeps his machete gripped tightly. Something small rustles away through the ferns near him. He hears distant shrieks, chirps, grunts. There is a crash and an explosion of splintered wood and flying leaves.

A BULL HAMMERHEAD TITANOTHERE emerges into the clearing ahead of him in a shower of foliage. Its baleful eyes lock onto him. Josh is frozen. The titanothere bellows and lowers its ten foot wide sledgehammer of a head. It charges. The ground shakes. Josh, in desperation, screams at the top of his lungs, spreads his arms wide and runs straight at the thing. It stops its charge abruptly, with an oversized bleat.

ANGLE ON JOSH. He is amazed the gambit worked. He grins. Makes a face at the titanothere. Something rises up behind him out of focus...

RACK FOCUS to it, revealing... A MANTICORE. This is what really stopped the Titanothere's charge.

The manticore is the most fearsome of Pandoran predators, and by the look of it might be the toughest carnivore in the known universe. This thing could eat a T-rex and have the Alien for desert. It is a black six-limbed panther from Hell, the size of a tractor trailer, with an armored head, a venomous striking tail, and massive distensible armored jaws. Its shiny black skin looks like polished leather, and is banded with thin stripes of yellow and scarlet.

It has four powerful legs forming a base for a torso which angles up, centaur-like, to a powerful shoulder girdle. Folded against its chest are two long forearms like the striking limbs of a praying mantis. Curving up over the back is a muscular scorpion tail which ends in a scythe- like stinger, over a foot long. The locals call it "Palulukan", which translates as "Dry Mouth Bringer of Fear".

Josh, still unaware of the silently advancing manticore, yells "boo!" to the Titanothere. It wheels around, trumpeting in fear, and thunders off down the trail. Imagine Josh's surprise when there is an earsplitting snarl behind him and seven tons of rippling manticore launches over him, landing between him and the titanothere. The hammerhead is shaking the ground at a full gallop, but the manticore runs it down in half a dozen powerful bounds.

It leaps to the titanothere's shoulder, seizing it in the powerful front limbs, and then the muscular tail arches over, slamming the foot long stinger through the beast's armored neck. The neurotoxin venom is pumped in with one contraction of the muscular tail, and the titanothere topples to the ground with a crash, shaking the forest. Josh gapes as the manticore rips into its prey with massive jaws lined with distending fangs 9 inches long. Josh backs slowly away, trying to be invisible. He slips behind some foliage, then runs like hell.





CUT TO JOSH chopping at a sapling he has cut down, fashioning it into a long spear. He hacks at the end, forming a crude but sharp tip. His motions are jerky and manic with fear. He sticks the machete through his belt and carries the spear two-handed as he moves through the forest like it's a minefield.

THE POV AGAIN, through the leaves. And the eyes, bright in a slash of sunlight. Golden irises like a cat, in a feral blue face. They duck away as Josh approaches.

Josh passes a tree, and on our side of the tree we see a figure, standing utterly still, listening to him pass. A NA'VI WOMAN. She is young, and lithe as a cat, with a long, slender neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts... a statuesque vision. Let's not mince words here... she is devastatingly beautiful. For a girl with a tail. In human age she would be in her late teens. In the sun dappled shadows, her banded markings make her invisible. Josh passes less than a meter from her and never knows she is there. She watches him, frozen, only her eyes moving.

CLOSEUP on the Na'vi girl. She sniffs the scent Josh has left behind him in the air.

AT THE CRASH SITE the rescue ship as arrived. Trudy climbs aboard the hovering Samson, but Grace and N'deh say there are going to look for Josh. The VTOL craft banks away. Grace looks to the west as she walks to the treeline. The twin suns are setting behind a black wall of alien trees.

DUSK IN THE RAINFOREST. Josh, moving through the quickly darkening forest, has got problems. In the deepening gloom he sees black shapes moving with liquid grace among the shadows behind him. He is being stalked by a pack of VIPERWOLVES. Josh catches movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes one of the things is moving up to a flanking position. He sees a glint of eyes, a slinking black movement... then nothing. Darkness. And behind him more glints... pairs of eyes. Then a hideous sound, more like a hyena's maniacal laugh than a dog growl.

Josh starts to run along a game trail he has been following. He catches glimpses of the viperwolves bounding through the woods, staying with him. His running has made them bolder. They sense his fear and they are closing in. He sees another on his opposite flank now.

The forest has come alive with bioluminescence as the day fades. Spots and patterns, ghosts and galaxies of blue- green light dance before his eyes, disorienting him... seeming to surround him with the glowing cat-eyes of the viperwolves. Their psychotic laughing barks become more intense as they signal each other, getting excited. He can see the shadows of the viperwolves moving through the undergrowth, leaving a tell-tale trail of flashes as they brush against the sensitive plants.

Finally one makes a run at him. He senses it angling in on his legs from behind and he whirls, whopping it with the flat of the spear. It yips and goes past him, but instantly another moves in. He jabs it with the business end of the spear and it yelps, retreating, baring its fangs. Josh realizes that he is making his final stand. The viperwolves circle and Josh gets his first good look at them. He doesn't like what he sees. They are like wolves painted by Francis Bacon...

Hairless, with shiny skin that looks like overlapped leather armor. They are mostly black, banded with vermilion and thin lines of iridescent blue. Earless low- slung heads, with chitinous neck shields like a triceratops. Bright, intelligent eyes. And the same distending, snake-like jaws as the bansheerays, glistening with fangs that look like they are made of glass. Most disturbing are the creature's paws, which are like leathery black hands... almost human in shape, with a thumb for gripping. These things can hunt in the trees as well as on the ground.

There are half a dozen of them, maybe more in the shadows. Josh feels a rush of adrenaline, or whatever does the same thing in his avatar body, like he has never felt in his life. It goes through him like a lightning bolt and the fear is gone.

JOSH: (shouting) You want me? Come on! Come and get some!

With sharp snarls and a blur of motion they attack. Josh plants the spear in one, striking true, but the speed of its attack wrenches it from his hands. He draws the machete and chops at another, just as a third sinks its teeth into his arm. He yells in pain and fury, slashing across with the machete. It cuts deep into the throat of the one on his arm, and it lets go.

He sprints, trying to escape, but one of the viperwolves grabs him by the ankle with its powerful fore-hand. Josh tears away, but goes sprawling. He looks up in time to see four viperwolves lunging toward him. The nearest leaps at his throat. THUNK!! An arrow appears in its chest. It lands on him, already a dead weight. He pushes it off in time to see a blue figure wade in among the remaining wolves. It is the Na'vi girl.





She cracks her bow down on the skull of one of the wolves. Then grabs another and picks it up bodily, hurling it against a tree. The last one leaps at her and she drops under its weight, but rolls somehow, coming up on top of it with a knife in her hand. The knife flashes down, buried to the hilt in its heart. The last two viperwolves, stunned by her blows, retreat yipping into the black woods. Josh gets up, amazed to be alive... amazed by this girl... this vision. She recovers her arrow from one of the dead wolves. He speaks to her, not knowing if she understands him. Finally she speaks, in halting English.

He knows she must be one of the Tsumongwi clan, the ones taught by Giese's people how to speak English. Her name is ZULEIKA TE KAHA POLENOMA. Josh thanks her for killing the viperwolves. Zuleika's eyes flash with anger. This is not a thing to thank someone for, she says. It is a sad thing, and it is his fault. She blames him for the unnecessary deaths of the wolves. If he had known what he was doing they wouldn't have attacked. But he is clumsy and stupid as a baby. These are unnecessary deaths. She touches the fangs of the wolves respectfully. She murmurs to them in her language, asking them to forgive her. And to forgive this stupid alien man.

What shou