The interior of the landing craft shook violently as the retrorockets flared, slowing the descent of the ship from that of a hurtling meteor to more of a controlled fall, a gliding sensation that Markus was intimately familiar with. How many times was this now, 23? 24? The red-orange fire of reentry snapped away from the windows lining the sides of the craft, and the strange green algae colored sky grew into view and stretched beyond the horizon. The techs said it was going to be green, but Markus figured it would have matched something from a coloring box, something a kid would scribble with on a wall, like Jungle Green or Shamrock, but whatever this was, it was alive. Like Electric Lime, he decided.

A low hum grew to match the roar of the rockets as the landing gear extended. They were close to landfall now. As the ship swooped…