Read Deep Space Dead for Free Online

head of the engineers, was going with him. She was to operate the computer system, with the side plates collecting data and relaying it back to the computer to be analysed and interpreted later.
     
    Jak had spent a long time in the flight simulators practicing for this moment but nothing could prepare him for the real thing. A variety of different instruments buzzed and whirred as the data was collected. Lights flashed. Soon they would know all they needed to know about the place.
    “Let’s hope it turns out okay,” he laughed. “It isn’t as if we can go back any time soon. We don’t have the fuel. We’re stuck here whatever it turns out to be.”
     
    The flight chamber closed around them. People pressed their noses to the glass to get a better look as Jak brought the Orbiter up in the air and brought it out of the upper hatch into the infinity of space. He turned it around steadily so that they were facing Hearthstone. The jet engines purred smoothly as he brought the orbiter forwards, flying at a steady speed until they touched the tip of the planet’s atmosphere. Jak flew low so that it appeared they were almost breaching the clouds although in fact they were still many hundreds of miles from the atmosphere.
    Now the clouds parted and Jak imagined he could almost see the froth of the waves. He looked towards Bratten and saw that the previously imperturbable engineer was looking forwards keenly, an almost mystical smile playing on her face. “Is it good?” Asked Jak.
    Bratten looked down at her computer monitor. “Really good,” she breathed. “I’m picking up some of the clearest air in the Confederation as well as the purest water. Why we could make a spa planet out of this place, a positive holiday destination.”
    “And it’s all ours,” said Jak wistfully. “Reckon we should send back a false report to the Confederation HQ saying it’s a sinkhole? After all, we wouldn’t want too many people coming over when we can hog the place all to ourselves.”
    Bratten laughed. “I’m sorely tempted,” she replied. “But judging from the data I’m picking up there’s plenty of paradise to go around.”
     
    After two hours the orbiter returned, the memory banks of the computers brimming with information, all of it positive. The people cheered as it touched down. As soon as the airlocks opened Ambra was through, rushing up to Jak and embracing him happily. He took her in his arms and brought her outside with him where together they lapped up the adulation of the happy crowds of colonists.
     
    Sol had tried to spend time with his daughter that morning but all Ambra had wanted to talk about was Jak. She had been eagerly awaiting his return, glancing out of the windows at the blue and green planet beyond in the hope of catching a glimpse of the orbiter. In this she was not alone of course, thousands of others were doing the same, but it still irked with Sol and in the end he came close to harshly telling the little girl to give it a rest.
     
    Sol was now forty-five and it seemed the older he got the less he had going for him. Back on Jupiter he had been a mid-level police officer fast approaching middle age living by himself in a one bedroom apartment. He had volunteered for the colonisation mission precisely because he’d had nobody to leave behind. Arianna had been young, vibrant and energetic and Sol had at first been flattered that she’d taken such an interest in him. They had shared a love of history and got talking one evening when he’d come in to request some research. Soon they were meeting for lunch and dinner and before he knew it Sol had been in a relationship, the first of his life and with a nineteen year old girl to boot. Those two and a half years he’d spent with Arianna had been the happiest times of his life, although to Arianna it would have seemed that all they’d done was argue. He had tried hard to make it work, but he was aloof and priggish. The large age gap between the two