This story is set in the world of January 2020 hard science fiction novel Frozen Orbit, by Patrick Chiles. Patrick Chiles has been fascinated by rockets and spaceflight ever since he watched the Apollo missions as a kid in South Carolina. How he ended up as an English major in college is still a mystery, though he eventually overcame this self-inflicted handicap to pursue a career in aviation. He is a graduate of The Citadel, a Marine Corps veteran, and a licensed pilot. He currently resides in Tennessee with his wife and sons, two lethargic dachshunds, and a bovine cat.

Vladimir Vaschenko’s first indication that his landing attempt might not have planned for every variable was when the ground beneath him exploded.

Frozen nitrogen tended to do that when it changed phases, which it was doing with gusto under his rocket exhaust. The plume from his descent engines had a long reach; the radar altimeter showed him to be more than a hundred meters above the surface. Liberated by his exhaust heat, brilliant white clouds of violently sublimating nitrogen erupted beneath him and obscured the ground. Spires of what he assumed to be more of the same rose above him; he was threading a path down through a forest of frozen gases. The safer course would have been to boost above the terrain, but that would cost propellant he’d need later—assuming he could find a clearing through this fog.

The indistinct picture from his ground mapping radar, suggesting a corridor between the spires, marginally increased his confidence. Or it could just as easily be noise in the returns. He’d seen it happen before in the fighter aircraft that the radar had been adapted from. Pilots who trusted it too much often ended up dead.

The LK lander’s big window was of little help. Rising clouds of nitrogen and methane stubbornly followed his track. Wherever he pointed his craft, a blinding fog soon appeared. The unease of flying through this strange environment was tempered by the joy of doing it far from the reach of ground controllers nitpicking every decision. The liberties he’d enjoyed during the long journey had already expanded his personal horizons beyond anything in his previous experience—what might his surface exploration bring?

Ken Roy is an engineer who lives and works amid the relics of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge. He has published technology speculation pieces in such venues as the Journal for the British Planetary Society, and the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. His current interests include terraforming and geoengineering.

We’re learning that planets appear to be plentiful, with most stars having a family of such bodies. As we venture into interstellar space it would be nice to think that we would find countless Earthlike planets having good clean breathable air, plenty of liquid water, a little ice, and be free of allergens, toxins, and bacteria that would harm us. A moderate temperature, a reasonable gravity, low background radiation, kindly neighbors, etc., all would be nice to have as well. With such a world, the colony lands and sets up shop, and lives happily ever after.

We shall consider such a world a habitable planet. Stephen Dole of the Rand Corporation estimated that about 1 in 200 stars has such a world. A more recent analysis by William Pollard of the ORAU Institute for Energy Analysis estimated that this number actually ranges somewhere between 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 10,000,000 stars. With Dole’s estimate, our space-faring descendants, on average, would have to search a spherical volume of space having a radius of 25 light-years to find a single habitable planet. With Pollard’s estimate, that radius would range between 200 and 1000 light-years. Habitable planets are probably not as common as we would like and by definition already possess life. This life may not take kindly to alien invaders (us). Indeed, its ecology could lack some essential amino acids that we require and could even be toxic to humans or even Earth life in general. There is much to be learned from alien life and certainly no reason not to study it, but there are real, practical, and even ethical issues involved in trying to colonize such a planet.

Over 170 titles from Baen Books to be published as audiobooks over the next three years

Baen Ebooks is proud to announce an agreement to distribute the English translation of Judgment in Moscow by Vladimir Bukovsky on its retail ebook site, as well as offering a selection of other ebooks from Judgment in Moscow publisher, Ninth of November Press.

J. J. Cragun takes home the top prize for his short story “Treason Properly.”

Matt McHugh of New Jersey has won the grand prize in the 2019 Jim Baen Memorial Award competition for his short story "Burners."

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