Outside the light

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We started out on a clear blue morning in June. There were only a few white puffy clouds in the sky and a handful of parents to see us off. It was almost as if everyone else couldn’t abide the thought that we were really going. Possibly,…..almost certainly never to see us again. Silence was the rule among us. Everyone seemed to be contemplating their own reasons for going.

Sara and I were the last two to board. We had struck an arrangement between ourselves to share berthing assignments. For two years we had known each other at the academy. Loners, we had watched as all the others paired off into compatible couples. Till only we two were left to ourselves. Out of necessity we had joined forces since only male and female couples were allowed to sign on.

It only made sense. We were heading to Peltus Six. We would travel fifteen light years from Earth, in the southeast quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy. Not so far, I guess, if you considered the size of our home galaxy.

Only in the last fifty years had the Hawking-Thompson Drive been perfected and men burst into the sky in search of whatever was out there. And out there consisted of a whole lot of nothing, lots of near vacuum, uninhabitable, hostile planets circling a variety of suns, both large and small. But Peltus Six had that rarest of rarities, a planet neither too hot nor cold, breathable atmosphere, in fact slightly more oxygen than earth, and water, life’s blood itself to a species comprised of seventy-five percent water.