The beginning of the new world

First Sight

It was a blue dot in the distance, the first time we saw Ghent. The dangers of traveling in zero space were plentiful, so we had to exit well before reaching the planet.

Within 3 hours, the planet had increased in size enough that a person could look out the windows and see it as we had seen earth. There were some major differences between the pictures. Our earth was, for the most part, a dessert. Where our planet had been mostly brown, with water around the brown and green on the edges of earth, Ghent was mostly green. The waters had been the colour of a mudflat, with a blue tinge to it. This water was the colour I knew to be cobalt, a blue I had only seen in old paintings. It sparkled so, and ran all over. I could see islands, and no traces of the storms that often lay waist to our old planet. There were plenty of clouds, and no holes in the atmosphere. It was beautiful.

"Pretty!" cried a small voice at my feet. Looking down, I saw Zander, a dark haired boy of about 5.

"It is pretty, isn't it?" I asked myself in an almost whisper.

"Yes, it is," declared Zander's ten year old sister, Zafrean. She was a remarkably outspoken ten year old, and like Zander, small for her age.

"We're going to live there?" the blond child that had called me scary asked curiously. Her name was Bells, and she was six years old. Even though I am terrible with names, after spending 30 days with a group of people, you learned their names, and a bit about their personalities.

"Yes Bells, we're going to live there," I told her confidently.

All throughout talking in voices hushed with awe, we were moving closer to Ghent. It was bigger than earth, but not by a lot. It would also be colder, or so I was told.

"Please re-enter your seats," squawked the remarkably annoying voice over the loudspeaker. "We will be entering into New Earth's atmosphere shortly. Prepare for pressure." There was a beep and the voice disappeared. Thank goodness! I think in exasperation.

I help all the littles back into the space seats, and watch as the sides of the ship all turn back to grey. It looked almost like frost creeping up the windows to seal us in. Shuddering, I turn away and sit down in my own seat.

The space craft starts to tilt, picking up speed as it enters into a new atmosphere. Quickly we pass through and down we go, then the engine kicks in, and lowers us more slowly to the earth. There is a bone rattling thud as we land. About two minutes later the voice bombards our conscious for the last time. "We have arrived!" it announces, stating the obvious. "The doors will be open shortly. You may remove your seat belts. Have a nice stay!" it continues. Then it clicks, never to be heard again.

"No, really? I thought we had landed on one of our new moons for a pit stop!" a fifteen year old boy named Benaldo remarks sarcastically. "I never would have thought that we were actually here! That's amazing!" Benaldo was a bit of a clown, and the long stay inside had made him remarkably sarcastic. I had worked with him during our training, being as he was the oldest boy on the ship.

Before I could come back with something cutting, or tell him off, the doors opened.