Prologue

            The ship was not of human origin.  Perhaps six feet in length and oblong, it hurtled through the recesses of space without any obvious means of propulsion.  A spherical bulge towards the back dominated most of the ship, with the front tapering off to a long point.  Its hull was silver, unmarked, and seamless.  It moved with a grace and speed that was impossible for modern human crafts.  Even more impossible was how far it had come, and for what purpose.

            Inside the ship, a small child slept dreamlessly, though not soundly.  Voices and faces floated on the edge of his mind, some more familiar and distinct than others.  As he slept, he almost remembered what they meant, but then the thought was gone.  He had been asleep for a long while, frozen in time.  He would not have survived the trip if he had not been.  He had come a long way from a world he could never go back to. 

            As the ship passed around the dark side of the moon and into the sun’s light again, a remarkable change occurred inside the craft.  The sphere’s upper hull became transparent, allowing the star’s light to bathe the child.  He shifted idly in his sleep, stretching out in the warmth.  The gentle hum of the ship reverberated inside the dome, quieting his sleep.  He could feel the sun’s rays on his skin, revitalizing him.  It was so different from the light of his home, richer and fuller in some fashion.  Though he did not know, could not know, the light of this star had been the reason for his destination.  It would feed him, make him stronger and faster than any other creature he would meet when his ship landed on the tiny planet that was its destination.  It had been imagined that he would be like a god to them, descending from the heavens with fire and glory.  He would have power, knowledge from behind the stars, everything that he would need to lead those lesser than him to glory.

If the child thought about the future that awaited him, it didn’t seem to bother him.  He lowed peacefully in the light of the star, stretching out quietly.  Then the hull abruptly darkened again as other objects appeared beside it. 

            Meteorites hurtled by the small craft, caught in the gravity of the blue planet that was the ship’s destination.  The fragments were dark and jagged hunks of stone, shot through with streaks of a green, glowing crystal vein.  As the green light reached the craft, it seemed to shudder and then began to shine with a brilliant white light of its own.  The meteorites passed around the ship wildly, bumping and crashing into one another.  Harsh dust and other small particles from the collisions clattered across the hull of the ship, but it held its course, only veering now and then to avoid running into one of the larger fragments.  One of the meteorites smashed through a tiny satellite orbiting the planet, adding to the debris caught up in its wake.

            As the ship and the meteorites passed into the edges of the planet’s atmosphere, the friction raised the temperature outside to incredible levels.  Some of the smaller meteorites burned away in brilliant flashes of light, but the larger rocks kept going.  The heat around them produced some startling changes in the green crystal veins though.  Some of the stones fused and took on different colors, some red, others gold, and even blue.  As the intense heat converted them, the stones began flashing wildly and sending out arcing bursts of energy into space.  The ship meanwhile, rode out the heat without incident, the extreme temperature somehow being reflected by the skin of the craft.  Inside, the child slept through it, hardly noticing any difference.

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            But then something unexpected happened.

            A fragment broke off from a meteorite and, with the intense heat and force already buffeting it, the ship couldn’t swerve to avoid it.  The chunk of rock, perhaps no more than ten inches across, shattered against the right edge of the ship and pushed it off course.  The change was minute, not even a degree, a second’s, difference in fact.  

            But it was enough.

            The ship hurtled through the air, descending into the inner atmosphere of the planet.  Still on fire, it streaked over a vast body of water.  Along side it flew the meteorites, which depending on their weight and path of entry, began to disperse over the planet.  A large number still fell along side the ship, pulled along in its wake.  The water  underneath it gave way to a gentle, rolling land as the ship began its descent.  The child was awake now, the roaring and shaking bringing him out of his deep sleep.  He clutched the sides of his pod, suddenly afraid for the first time in his life.  Something was wrong, he could feel it in the tremor of the ship.  Something had gone wrong.

            Indeed, something had.  The ship was still going too fast.  It passed over the abandoned field which its creator had deemed safe and isolated enough from his vantage point, so long and far ago.  It tried to begin a turn that would put it back on course, but momentum had hold of it now and there was no going back.  It darted through the air above fields and homes, coming in for a crash landing.  The engines, preset to fire and slow the landing, tried to compensate, but the ship was still going too fast.  This had not been planned on and the ship could not respond.  It obliterated the first house it passed through, and then another, and another, and another.  The child began to scream, calling out in a strange tongue for someone, anyone.  Completely out of control, the ship tumbled and rolled, destroying everything in its path until it struck the pavement of a broad street and smashed deep into the ground.  The hull, which had weathered the gravity and intense heat of countless suns, buckled finally and cracked in.

            For a moment, there was silence.  Then the tiny ship, tried beyond all the plans of its maker, slowly opened the spherical pod with a screech.  Even as it did, the computers that had governed its flight and controlled the sleep of its passenger blinked and died out.  The child opened his eyes and stared out, at first too frightened to move.  He stared at his strange surroundings, so different from his dim memories of the past.  Then slowly, he climbed out of the pod. 

            The ground was hot to the touch, but he barely noticed.  He gazed around, taking in the devastation around him.  Then there was noise, people shouting and crying out and pointing at him.  He turned, staring at them.  They looked familiar, but were not, he knew.  He could sense that, they were different.  He was alone here.  Then a great roaring came from overhead and they all looked up, human and alien alike, as the meteorites passed above them, burning with fire and wrath.

            A strangely adult thought passed through his young mind.  Nothing would ever be the same here, he thought.  Not for anyone.