Other World

         The green marble grew larger. Jackson's eye fixed on it from the crew window.
He hadn't told them yet, though head team would likely make an announcement and then they'd all rush in for the view. The view of home.

Jackson made an involuntary gulp. His throat was dry from the parched air, not a drop of water went to waste on this ship. Some found the lack of humidity, or lack thereof, so bad out of the living quarters they got nosebleeds. Jackson never had one on the whole two years he'd been awake on it but his throat did get painfully dry sometimes on his shift, just like now. He resisted the urge to go get something to drink. The solitary moment looking over the whole world that he knew as it came ever more in to focus was too precious to not suffer for. He felt a gentle shift in the ships gravity as it slowly accelerated.

This was not a homecoming, it was a final goodbye. Everyone he ever knew in the entirety of his life was there and he would pass them by in one quick zoom. He'd already set up his evo account to beam his last messages down on them whenever the ship got close enough to transmit those non-essential things.

He looked out more alertly when he realized he could make out the Torith Ocean and in a spectacular fashion the two moons, one a cakey red and the other a strange dirty grey begin to eclipse each other, as if they were dancing some farewell for him.

He'd been working for thirty years out on the solo mines on Ravwa, there was no one really left to return to when he was tired of it. The consultancy job out back in the old system, where Earth and the fabled Uranus outposts lay for him to discover. He took himself from his seat and on to the kitchen when he heard the buzz of the tannoy and the rush of onlookers.