"The planet's in view!" Charlie, the engineer on the ship shouted.
I looked up from my book to see it. It was beautiful. The large, blue, yellow and green sphere was slowly passing the bow of the Viper. Planet X-RB48, or as we called it, Xurb.
A bit larger than Earth, and with a simalar oxygen content to Earth without people's pollution.
"Won't be long now, boys!" Yelled a widely grinning Captain Claw.
Claw's real name was Ray, but no one called him that after he had volenteered to go to a different planet, on which he had a nasty run-in with an animal that gave him a large scar on his face. The scar ran down from his forehead on the right to his chin on the left, which obiviously gave him his nickname.
We were on a mission to prepare the planet for when Earth expires. X-RB48 was the nearest planet sustainable of human life. I was here to study the planet's fauna.
"Watcha thinking so hard about?" Sam, my best friend, was on the exploration mission to look at the flaura.
"Earth. How little time home has left. I mean, its great that we have the tech to determine a planet's lifespan, but did they have to tell us that? It doesn't really help, as there are enough people paranoid about it already." I groaned.
"I know what you mean. But still, 15 years isn't a lot of time... All because of us. Humans. The worst threat to our own survival. There is almost nothing natural back home. All because of our greed." Sam shook his head. Lightening up, he asked, "What kind of plants you think Xurb's got?"
"You are one weird botanist. We're talking about how home is almost expired, and then 'what kind of plants'?"
"You like Venus Flytraps! What so wrong with plants?"
"Okay, okay. But you went to a lecture about trees for two hours!"
"Don't worry about it..." Sam poked me in the forehead.
Just then the ship jolted, and the co-pilot yelled, "We're in the atmosphere!"
Claw rushed into the room from the sattelite room.
Looking back to the window, Xurb filled it.
Claw ran to the controls and put the rear-facing jets on full in an attempt to slow our descent.
"Hold on to something!" Turning to me, he said, "Give me directions to the landing site! The monitor should be on the left!"
I looked to left, and a monitor had a target on it. "What do you see in the window?"
"A mountain! And an ocean! The mountain rises out of the ocean!" Claw shouted back.
I looked around at the monitors and the screen that showed those... were on the other side of the planet. "Claw, the site is on the other side of the planet!"
"What?! No!" Claw was silent for a moment. "Get in the crash chairs!"
Crash chairs are seats in the center of the Viper. The crew all ran to the room containing the crash seats. I strapped in along with the rest of the crew.
"The captain's missing!" Someone screamed.
Then there was freezing heat, searing cold, blindness, the straps on the seat broke, and I was slammed into a wall of metal pipes and tiles.
