CHAPTER ONE: LARGO LANDING
There was hazard here. It was a bold new world full of dangers. Largo was not a gentle place decided John Ix. It took this planet only 17-solar hours to complete a day and for many months he had tracked the sun and watched the stars, from the sterile confines of the navigation pod. In those brilliant points of light he discovered and named new constellations. There were two moons gliding overhead through the night, threatening to collide, and these he had name Meade and Arial and one night wrote a whole mythology for these two heavenly bodies. (This was before he found out their Largo names of Memn and Pella and the sun's name given to him later as Shiloh.) The bright red star, which this world orbited, he had named Porthos, and it sailed against a rose color sky. At dusk when it was huge and round just before its final descent over the horizon for the day, the world became alive. Colors more brilliant than he could remember burst from setting sun and he could not distinguish where the earth ended and heaven began, with them came the stealthy predators that inhabited this vast ochre savannah, which stretched in all directions until it raced like a herd of wild beasts into the distant sea.
Where the land met the sea. That would be the first destination of Ix. He remembered the first glimpses of the world, displayed for the whole crew on viewers throughout the space weary ship. It looked like the most precious jewel in the universe with its blue seas and gold and green continents.
This world was chained by a mountain range near its equator, which disappeared into seas, making its presence known as occasional islands and archipelagos, inhabited by aboriginals much like ancient Polynesia of earth. The mountains returned full force a half world away in some other strange land gasping and clutching for the thin air of the heavens. Clouds and brilliant ice crowned the gray and green mountains. They burst with every color of the spectrum at sunset, like titan jewels. More clouds, some thick others a mere twirling wisp played across the surface of the living planet. North of the great savannah, mountains were still being birthed in thunder and fire. The volcanoes there spewed lava and rattled the earth with earthquakes and slides that rumbled constantly and held back the rest of the planet except for passage by sea. Ramirez, The Captain, had decided that would be their landing, and point of departure onto this new world of promise. In his future he saw lapis and diamonds and other precious minerals sitting in that dread dark land of upheaval and fiery death. From orbit they had discovered this vast peninsula of grasslands. It was golden and being terrestrial beings, the openness beckoned them. At the sight of it a small sound escaped from Jon Ix. It was want for the vastness and openness of a whole world. At that moment he stripped off the silver skin, which covered him like the silver skin of the space ship, preferring now to keep his body almost totally naked. It did not take the others long to get use to the idea of the navigator sometimes strolling about decks as in a leather and red lacquer cod.