"Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports."
"The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since we left Earth, they've remained untested. Can't fix them now. No time. Inside gravity of planet. Over."
The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut. There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred light years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."
He patted her hand.
Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped mounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea.
"A lovely world," he whispered.
"You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability of Deneb's planets. You would have been famous."
He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country to call their own...."
He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of its unchecked flight. Thunder rolled like monumental cannonfire behind it, as the air was displaced and rolled together.