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faded, leaving her cold but alert.
    Beeps emitted from the cryopod’s life-monitor readout, and a green light flashed. Great; she had woken in good health. She smoothed back her hair with trembling fingers. No matter how many times she underwent this same resurrection, Kivita always hated it.
    Grunting, she rose as the cryopod’s transparent cover opened.
Terredyn Narbas
hummed around her, dark and cold. Heating and life support had activated minutes before her awakening, but vacuum frost still covered the bulkheads. She shivered in her two-piece underwear.
    â€œDamn.” Kivita grabbed her black bodyglove andslipped from the pod.
Terredyn Narbas
’s running lights and gravity activated fully. The cryopod closed with a sucking noise.
    Kivita stretched, touched her toes, then did fifty jumping jacks. Burning sensations jolted her muscles again. Deep breaths cracked her chest. After a final stretch, she headed for the bridge. Blue-white lamps activated along the floor. Moments later she opened the bridge viewport.
    Vstrunn dominated the vista as the trawler entered the planet’s orbit. Wraith Star, a white dwarf sun, lit up the planet’s crystallized surface in red, purple, and white twinkles. Gray cloud banks encircled the sphere. The planet was like the corpse of someone’s dream, left to rot in the void.
    She couldn’t imagine a worse place to explore: more than twenty-thousand miles in diameter, with high-G and a seven-hour day—and nothing but hydrogen for an atmosphere.
    Viewing the computer readout, Kivita snapped on her polyboots. No Aldaakian ships appeared on the scanner. Frowning, she studied Vstrunn’s scintillating surface once more. High-G, combined with the jagged surface, would make for a dangerous landing.
    â€œYeah. Let’s see what you got, you big lug of a planet.” After eating a protein slab, she donned an envirosuit, then girded on her kinetic pistol with a ten-round magazine.
    â€œI’m going to leave you up here, okay, girl? Be right back.” She patted the bulkhead and stepped into the landing unit’s cramped bay. She slid into a small planetary capsule and sealed the hatch behind her. Two small seats waited with frost-caked buckles and rippedcushions. A tiny console beeped to life. She buckled herself in and triggered the tandem beacon. When she needed to return, the capsule would lift off and reunite with
Terredyn Narbas
.
    Before pressing the release button, she thought of her mother. Rhyer had claimed Kivita looked just like her. Hazel eyes, golden red hair. She caught her reflection in the console screen and swallowed.
    â€œHere goes.” As soon as she tapped the red button, Kivita’s stomach churned and she gritted her teeth. One instant she gazed upon the landing unit’s bulkhead; the next, Vstrunn rose below her in monstrous vastness.
    Dark void filled reality on either side of the capsule.
Terredyn Narbas
grew smaller above her. The Wraith Star burned with a dying, impotent fury, casting everything in subdued tones. Vstrunn’s hydrogen bands seemed to reach up and grab the capsule.
    The computer beeped again. Two minutes until landing; each second a mini eternity of crushing acceleration and gut-wrenching free fall.
    Vstrunn’s outer atmosphere encircled the landing capsule. Yellow-gray mist obscured the viewport as turbulence shook the small craft. Kivita gripped the seat handles as vacuum frost came free and struck her suit. She squeezed her legs together, the sensation to urinate overwhelming. The protein slab she’d eaten jumped in her stomach, and Kivita bit her lip to keep from vomiting.
    Stillness fell over the capsule. Cloud cover dissipated, revealing a landscape dotted with twisted spires, jagged plateaus, and mile-deep canyons. Kivita smiled despite her reentry travails. She’d never seen placards of Vstrunn; just heard rumors in spacer bars.
    The white dwarf sun lit everything in ghostly