SODIUM:4 Gravity Read Online Free PDF

session available to occupy our time. I spent hours upon hours learning the ins and outs of operating the weapons, defenses and systems.
    Spare moments were spent perusing the ship’s manuals and familiarizing myself with every square inch of that which surrounded me. Shepard used her time in a similar fashion. I was still amazed at how our technology allowed us to go for months without eating or using a restroom.
    It made me think about every science-fiction book and movie that I had ever read or seen and how no story that I could remember had ever made mention of a toilet on a ship. And, I was especially grateful for the diminished effects of my monthly womanly issues due to the nutri-packs and the BGS.
    As we decelerated towards Epsilon Eridani we got our first glimpse of the orange sun and the tiny speck of a world in its habitable zone. The planet was a pale blue like earth only slightly smaller. There were also two larger gas planets orbiting closer to the star and two large asteroid fields farther out.
    We dropped below light speed and turned off the BHD when we reached five light hours distance. The spectrograph from the sensors told of a planet much like our own, liquid water, oxygen, nitrogen and a solid core. As we closed in we could make out pink clouds in the atmosphere and temperatures that only differed by a few degrees from earth.
    The poles shown white with ice caps while the rest of the planet was covered with deep blue oceans. We had been gawking for several minutes at its beauty before the warble sound of channel 1650 rang in my ear. I enabled the QE channel and was immediately greeted by a voice from 10.5 light years away. Man had now truly ventured to another world.
    The wide channel of the QE communications allowed data from all sensors to stream home live as well as the rapid uploading of archived data from passing the fleet. The command center at home was strangely quiet as everyone let out nothing more than oohs and aahs.
    Commander Bennett came on and asked that we circle the planet once in search of more aliens and then make the return trip to the fleet. I first made a request that the planet be named Alvin after my Grandfather. The Commander took note and said he would pass that along.
    I enabled one BHD ring, punched a few numbers into the nav computer and then sat back in my chair while taking in the sights of a new alien world. Our ship would steer to a course that would place us in a single orbit around the planet before the BHD shut down.
    We would then circle in silence and a brief burst of the BHD would again break us free. Once at a safe distance I would again push the throttle to full for our journey back to the fleet. As we drifted I took note that Alvin was slightly smaller than Earth with a diameter of about 9,000 kilometers as compared to Earth’s 12,740.
    As we approached I observed the two small yellow-brown moons in orbit around Alvin. The computer showed them to be high in Fluorine and Sodium. I was at first deceived by what looked to be green continents on the surface of Alvin only to discover they were the reflections of the yellow-brown moons above, on the blue waters below.
    The twin moons were about 800 kilometers in diameter and were pockmarked with hundreds of large craters. I named them Beta and Gamma after the two long haired Dachshunds I had when a child, they also had a yellow-brown appearance.
    As I continued observation of Alvin and the parameters the computer displayed on my holo-screen, I noticed that there was one element that the Earth had that Alvin was lacking... Sodium. The planet the aliens had come from was almost devoid of Sodium.
    The team at home quickly came to a conclusion as to why the aliens were so interested in our planet, Alvin was missing a crucial element. As we circled closer to the planet's atmosphere our sensors picked up two surface structures. They were approximately 20 kilometers in diameter and were each circled by a thin structural ring