Showing results by author "Judy Griffith Gill" in All Categories

Joe Storn has come a long way since the Dirtsider Expedition landed and he formed the 100-strong Dirtsider Troop, men and women who followed him because they chose not to live under draconian rules laid down by those who equated “daring” with “dying”. But now, their numbers are dwindling through accident and suicide, and the only hope of fulfilling the mandate he was charged with, as admiral of the Expedition, “save humanity from extinction”, lies in replenishing their population from the cryostasis chambers aboard the seven ships they arrived in.

Captain Joe Storn, shanghaied in Luna, promoted to admiral, and ordered back to space, cannot refuse. Mother Earth is dying. All her creatures need a lifeline. Joe must take a fleet of seven vast freeze-ships halfway across the Galaxy to the Magnus System, where three Earth-like planets promise hope. His ships carry the basic material to recreate every living thing from Earth, including humans, in deep stasis to withstand the 1,000-year voyage. An unforeseen magnetic anomaly inexorably drags the fleet to the wrong planet, which has some decidedly unfriendly denizens.

365 days and nights - one full Earth year - of total dark and killing cold? No human, ever, can live through it. None has tried since humans arrived on Storn. Tended by servos, they enter ancient cryostasis in tubes they know are beginning to fail. Until, that is, in the 357th year, desperate people known as The Group refuse to freeze in tubes. Instead, they will risk freezing on Storn's brutal surface because there are children who, if not taken to safety, will be the last of the new evolution. The last of the first true humans on Storn.