Alicia gasped and jerked awake, then shivered, unable for a moment to remember where she was or why she was so cold. Slowly her eyes focused on a dimly lit wall of rough stone only a few inches from her face. She rolled over, and memory flooded back.
She lay in the cave where she had crawled after being washed ashore on the rocky beach. From her shelter she could see down to the ocean, rolling in slow, sullen swells onto the red stones. The grey, watery light, filtered through a thin mist, turned the sea the colour of old pewter.
Somewhere out there drifted her parents and the other survivors of the colony ship Appalachia; somewhere above circled the ship itself, an airless tomb for 142 other colonists, killed by the explosion that had ripped open the ship’s hull as it entered orbit arou
