73. (I've been trying to build on this image... but nothing will come.)

The ship's intercoms are silent. We float through space, idling, almost frozen. Shocked. I imagine the expression is visible even outside, as crazy as that sounds. The communications tech lets his hand fall away from the control panel which, only minutes before, had opened the relays to receive the planetary identification signal of Earth, our home. This signal is sent out from all Colonial planets to aid crews in the clumsy act of gaining ones bearings post-hyperspatial travel. His hand had, after hitting the proper keystrokes, remained frozen over the panel.

Utter silence. Traditionally, the signal is broadcast over the ships intercoms to reassure the crew--blind on the interior of the ship--that they are, in fact, not lost in space, as hyperspatial travel often leads one to believe.

"Open the relays," the captain had barked at him, "and be quick about it." An edge of panic had slipped into his voice.

"They're open, sir," the tech had replied. "Double-checked. There... there's no signals coming through. Silence, sir."

Fear rippled across the bridge crew, cold sweats broke out, hands started to shake. Silence generally meant one thing: there was nothing out there to broadcast an ident. signal, therefore we were no where near a planet. Before the adoption of the planetary ident. signal this was how ships became lost in space.

"Open the viewshields," the captain whispered. "Open them, damn it!" Stronger this time. The tech responsible jumped to his duties, fingers flying across the control panel. The gunmetal grey shields that close over the thick glass viewport at the front of the bridge during hyperspatial travel folded down and vanished.

The captain fell back into his chair, a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. A man screamed. It was far worse than we had imagined.

We were not lost in the endlessness of space. In fact, we were right where we had expected to come out. Earth itself was even there, floating in the middle of the viewport. It was the state of the planet that brought us such shock. The spherical body was shattered in two and twisted, its molten core leaking out and cooling near-instantly, like a constant volcanic eruption. Chunks of shattered earth the size of continents floated amidst the wreckage, still green and blue as they had been when we had last seen the planet.

For a moment I held out hope that life remained on those broken, jagged chunks of planet, that people still clung to life on what remained of our world. I soon corrected myself. The captain came to the same conclusion moments later: "There are no clouds. Not a single goddamn cloud."

He was right. There were no clouds--because there was no atmosphere. Earth had been reduced to little more than a massive, broken asteroid, circling 'round its sun at a limp, dragging pieces of it self in its wake. The planet was as dead as everything that still remained on it. Judging from the wrecks of our defensive fleet, from the burns that scored the metal hulls... it was not a catastrophe that had come about naturally.