Excerpt: Five To The Cloud Planet

Placing his hand on the foot of the cot-frame for support, Kiter Io made himself rise for the first time since he'd found himself in the infirmary an undetermined numbers of hours -- or days -- ago. He made his still weak and newly healed legs move and hobbled the few steps to the window. He moved his hand in the motion he had seen one of his caregivers use earlier, to change the tint of the window so he could see outside. Below, the surface of Mirus Niveus was bathed in star shine. Its oceans were rich blue in color, but in contrast to the light green oceans of Pel, his own planet (sometimes called The Verdant World) they took up relatively little of the surface below, and were almost crowded out by medium-sized continents: four that he could count on this visible side of the surface alone. The most striking feature of the world below however was, that for a place called "Cloud Planet" there were not a particularly striking or even abundant cover of clouds.

In fact, what clouds there were, were high in the atmosphere, small, and reminded Kiter of the white caps he had seen in a storm once, on Pel's colder northern ocean, when he had visited the polar region one time in his youth. The memory made Pel feel farther away than ever. He had accepted the volunteer mission knowing full well that time dilation meant he would likely be away a century. Upon his return, if he did in fact return, many things would have changed, the greater portion of his friends and colleagues, and what few relatives he had, would be long dead. He had expected to miss home, but he had not anticipated how actually lonely this would make him. Just the simple fact that he had already been away from home approximately as many years as he had live to that point was a sobering fact. Then again, the most sobering fact of all was the fact that near-end-of-voyage accident had killed the other four members of the delegation, and that he had only barely survived himself.