Sitting in three neat rows of desks, the middle school students did their best to look attentive and ignore a furiously buzzing fly on the window… [This is Part 12. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
Coffee cups, energy bar wrappers, and other debris from the crew’s long hours littered the narrow countertops of the galley. It wasn’t Woods’ scheduled day to clean up, so he ignored the mess… [This is Part 11. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
An extremely thick window, several times the strength of bulletproof, separated the exobiology laboratory from the curving corridor that led to it… [This is Part 10. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
The red rubber kickball raised puffs of dust when it came rolling toward home plate on a hot, dry afternoon in early September, 2009… [This is Part 9. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
“Careful, don’t scare it away with any quick moves,” Peter Marchenko said, leaning over the console. The warning wasn’t needed… [This is Part 8. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
From orbit, Europa gleamed pure white like a flawless pearl. That illusion was broken, as Mark Woods knew it would be, when the landing craft descended… [This is Part 7. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
Three pale blue speckled eggs filled a bird’s nest on the wall calendar in the classroom. Their smooth ovals contrasted with the long, straight twigs that formed the circle of the nest… [This is Part 6. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
Protest banners, rippling in a stiff wind, filled the large screen on the dining room wall. The camera angle panned out to show thousands of chanting marchers… [This is Part 5. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
Mark Woods woke from a dream of flying. The rhythmic sound of his wingbeats as he soared over blood-red cliffs and a dark ocean faded… [This is Part 4. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]
The little boy ran through the office, not watching where he was going, his gaze fixed on the bright sunlit mass of late-afternoon clouds shining like great red cliffs in the sky. He ignored the more mundane view of Baltimore’s streets in December 2003… [This is Part 3. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]