Paul uses heightened, Mentat-like perception to read the storm’s turbulence and finds a vortex that lifts the damaged ornithopter out of danger. Jessica realizes they have survived by yielding to the storm rather than fighting it, while Paul senses that the spice, the litany against fear, and his altered awareness are bringing him toward a terrifying revelation.

With the ornithopter damaged and surrounded by desert rock, Paul lands on sand near an escarpment and orders Jessica to run for the rocks because a worm will come for the craft. The landing wrecks the ornithopter, but Paul and Jessica reach the rocks just as an enormous sandworm destroys and swallows the evidence of their landing. Paul recognizes that they have entered the Fremen desert and notes that his present reality differs from an earlier prescient vision in which Duncan Idaho had still been alive.

Paul and Jessica travel by night through the rocks, conserving strength and water while looking for a way across a wide stretch of open sand. They rest near a cliff, eat energy capsules, drink from their stillsuits, and discuss how the Fremen might cross by using a thumper and walking without rhythm. As dawn nears, Paul decides they must descend into a fissure to camp before daylight.

While descending a sand slope, Jessica is caught and buried in a sudden slide. Paul calms himself using Bene Gesserit training, reconstructs the slide in memory, finds Jessica in bindu suspension, and pulls her free, but the pack containing their spare water and stilltent is buried beneath the sand. Paul briefly despairs, but Jessica challenges him, and he devises a solution: combining spice with the acid-base power pack of the paracompass and a little water to create foam that can temporarily stabilize the sand.

Paul gathers spice from the open desert using an irregular, worm-safe walk, then turns the paracompass into a foaming tool. Working together, Paul and Jessica dig through the slope, find the pack strap, and recover the buried supplies just as the foam fails. Their relief is tempered by Paul’s admission that his carelessness caused the crisis.

Paul pitches the stilltent in a place where others have camped before, and he and Jessica use binoculars to study the opposite escarpment, where vegetation suggests possible Fremen presence or an old testing station. Another huge worm passes across the dunes, emphasizing the danger of the crossing. Jessica then insists on continuing Paul’s Bene Gesserit physical training because his panic showed he still lacks full bodily control, and Paul reluctantly accepts that he has participated in the forces reshaping him.