The canyon opened into a valley. And there—impossible, irrational—stood a single dome, intact, with a warm light glowing through its scratched polymer skin. A small garden grew outside, hardy tubers and purple-leafed vines.
His breath caught. Seven klicks from what ? The original colony had been destroyed twenty years ago, the day he’d lost his family in the evacuation scramble. He’d buried them in his memory, not in the ground.
The rover stopped. The AI displayed one last message: