The Winking Planet

Publisher Marketing: For three hundred Earth years the Starship Evergreen was in deep space traveling from Earth to the new home world, the planet in orbit around Scorpio 16. On Earth this planet had been called the Winking Planet because of the pulsation of its light signature. Now that they were approaching the planet most considered "Winking Planet" to be an inappropriate name for their new home. After a couple of decades of debate and argument the refugees threw up the hands and just started to call it "Alfa." No one was happy but everyone was satisfied. The refugees from Earth then turned their attention to more important matters; such as, what would they find when they landed on Alfa. The only facts they had was that Alfa was very similar to Earth in mass, gravity, location from the star, it had a breathable atmosphere, with water vapor in the air; oh, and a limited number of volcanoes. And, it had continents, islands, oceans, lakes and rivers. What they really wondered about though, was what was living on or in those continents, islands, oceans, lakes and rivers. What was eating what, and which category of 'what' would the humans fall into? Assuming humans could survive on Alfa and not end up on the bad end of the food chain, what would happen to their society? For fifteen generations they had lived in a tube a half a mile wide and a little over two miles long. The original population of 500 was now 25,000, as planned. They had become a planned community, orderly, peaceful, traditional and very conservative. A very large portion of the population was refusing to set foot on Alfa until the engineers had properly built cities. Meaning tubes, half mile wide by two miles long. Administrators decided to leave this minority on the Starship while the rest went down the surface of Alfa and settled the new world. This book tells of the saga of the first years of colonization. As expected, some of the things they encountered in these early years were, well ... totally unexpected. Some discoveries were delightful, some others, not so much so. And a few were ... well, you can read about those. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. J. L. Walden