Very likely the shortest sci-fi short story you'll ever read. Complete, unabridged and whole. Enjoy, or so I hope.
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Nel

Walking in the knee-high deep nests of vegetal bird-leaves, Nel was much too worried to have realized how hazardous his roaming about really was. Had the situation not demanded it, he would never ever have ventured out there without his nuclear pulverizer at the very least. And one or two pocket laser missiles, while he was at it.

Where had that damned mongrel rolled-flown to again? What was he going to steal and bring back home, again? The Strato-Cops? Again?!? Last time, well, last time, he’d stolen a whole unit quota of potato legs. Six months’ probation. This time it’d be jail no doubt.

Nel couldn’t afford to sit in jail. Sit? Hell, those were the good old days where convicts had horizontal cots to sit and sleep on. Those great grandpa times no one remembered anyway were over. Had they ever happened? Well, if they had, no one could trace anything back to then anyway, not after the widely approved Declaration of Annihilation.

In a time where air was rationed in the second summer of the year while two of the three scorching suns were blazing in full noon, Nel found it hard to breathe let alone calling out. Besides, one sun playing hide’n seek was never good. Ominous at best if not downright apocalyptic; jail would be his death.

A sudden whirl in one of the nests concentrated all of his attention onto the lethal predatory bird-leaf bites only.