The spaceship enters a desolate planet’s orbit, a year after the opening scene, crashing into a lake in the middle of a mountainous desert. This is the 'Forbidden Zone', a place still haunted by the aftermath of nuclear war. The astronauts awake due to the flashing red lights. Taylor, Dodge and Landon, get out of the cryo beds but then notice that Stewart has died of old age through an air leak in her sleeping chamber. Taylor and his two surviving companions abandon ship as they discover that the hull is sinking into a large lake. The men escape on a raft, make for land, and theorize that the planet they are stranded on may be in orbit around the star Bellatrix in the constellation of Orion. They walk through great stretches of mountains and desert, at last finding an oasis guarded by what