Prologue

The invention of the HEFEIN (High Efficiency Fusion Energized Ion Thruster) drive in 2140 followed by the Malinksy Suspensor Field in 2156, interstellar colonization was now viable. The first test colony group of three ships left Earth space in 2192 bound for Alpha Centauri where a near-Earth size planet with a Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere orbited in the habitable zone. Each ship carried three thousand colonists and thirty two crew, with the crew only awake two months a year in rotations of eight. The just over fifty year voyage would age them by two years while the passengers aged not at all.

Upon arrival in 2246, the colonists discovered two things that made surface living impossible. First was the vast array of bacteria and viruses that humans had no defense against, and while that could be overcome with enough time and research it was the second problem that killed any permanent settlement. The soil and water that supported a variety of algae, fern and moss analogs, as well as an impressive array of invertebrate, fish, and amphibian analogs was loaded with cadmium, chromium, and thallium. The life forms that had evolved here actually metabolized those, it was necessary to their existence.