After Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

my scent? Okay, that didn’t make sense, not for a ship made to travel through space, but the timing of all this made me feel like I was being punished somehow, for stepping out of line.
    And then I felt the impact. I saw wave after wave of asteroids strike the ship, tossing it around like it was a toy. I grabbed onto my seat as the entire ship shook. Muscles tensed, I braced myself. This was so much bigger than me, so much worse than I had imagined, that the guilt disappeared, replaced by pure survival instinct.
    Alarms sounded throughout the ship as bigger and bigger asteroids pounded against the hull. We tipped dangerously from side to side and I gripped my seat even harder, feeling its edges bite into my palms.
    â€œCaution. Critical hull damage,” blared the voice of the onboard computer. “Caution. Main power failure.”
    All I could do was sit there, like my dad told me to, hoping that everything would be okay and trying not to completely freak out.
    Something big hit the tail of the ship. Hard. It swung around wildly, knocking the breath out of me. Before I could recover, something bigger hit us even harder, shaking the whole ship again. I was starting to hyperventilate. It took everything I had not to unsnap my harness and run after my father. I wanted to feel like I was doing something . I hadn’t felt this helpless since that day with Senshi: a little kid hiding while an Ursa tore through our apartment, my sister trying and failing to defeat it. I hunkered down in my seat while the captain tried and failed to keep asteroids from ripping our ship to pieces. Both times, I did nothing—except follow orders.
    Another asteroid knocked us sideways, and I heard the screech and tearing of metal. That could only mean something major had broken. I had never been in a ship like this before, but even I knew that meant we were going to crash. No one screamed. Rangers are all trained better than that. But I think we all, in that moment, braced ourselves for the end.
    And then a blinding white light flashed outside the windows. We rocketed forward, so fast that I was pinned back against my seat. At first I thought this was what death looked like, but then I remembered our science lesson on space travel. This was what my teacher said a wormhole was like. Someone—the pilot? My dad?—must’ve decided it was our best chance to reach a place we could land.
    Suddenly, we burst into a peaceful stretch of winking stars. Through the window, I saw pieces flying off of our ship. This was not going to end well.
    Then the navigator’s voice came over the speakers. “Cabin pressure dropping, heavy damage to outer hull. Breach possible in middle cabin.” The Rangers sprang into action, doing their best to reinforce the cabin. I wanted to help, but my father—the Commander General—had ordered me to stay put. I didn’t want to get in his way.
    I gasped for breath, and a Ranger handed me an oxygen mask before exiting to the rear of the cabin. I was shaking with fear. This ship was going down and there was not one thing I could do to stop it, or to make sure I would survive when it did. I hated the thought of dying a Cadet and not a Ranger. I hated the thought of my mother losing another child. But it didn’t matter how I felt. There was nothing I could do.
    A blue-and-green planet appeared in the distance, and our ship careened toward it. We whooshed past a small space buoy, and its recorded message began playing on a loop: “Warning. This planet has been declared unfit for human habitation. Placed under Class-One Quarantine by the Interplanetary Authority. Under penalty of law, do not attempt to land. Repeat, do not attempt to land.” It played so many times that I had no trouble memorizing every word.
    I heard the pilot shouting over the radio. “Mayday, Mayday, this is Hesper-Two-Niner-Niner heavy in distress! We took heavy damage from an asteroid storm and are going