My name is Major Kensing Colby.

On December 2, 2056, I set out alone from the German Space Station Air Guys in a gray

class single seat locator headed toward the Besserebius sector to complete a brief recovery

mission on Teltrin.

Two weeks earlier, Ellen Hernandez had died there when her space suit was torn by a flying

shard of a radiated coolant released by an explosion on one of Russia's nuclear-powered

satellites.

The other members of her crew had to take off for their own safety from the freak storm

and her body hadn't been recovered yet.

Teltrin was a desert void that had aggravated both DLR and NASA for years now with its

maddening and conflicting soil evidence of a water source that was probably never going

to be found.

Ellen Hernandez had been collecting ever more samples when the coolant storm killed her.

All that was left now was the slow pulse of the positioning chip embedded in her left

boot heel.

It was this that I followed all the way down to the vast, arid surface.

It was almost entirely an instrument landing.

I kicked up so much toxic soil as I descended that too much of it got sucked into both

main engines and played hell with the craft's heating core, but this is only a minor

annoyance.

It was a relatively smooth operation.

When I was firmly down, I revved up the beacon lights and napped for the ten minutes

...