Condition: Acceptable. Please see the images for more details. May show signs of wear such as:
• Shelf wear or scuffing on the cover
• Creases, marks, or tears on pages or dust jacket
• Possible remainder marks or previous owner’s name/notes inside
Cover art: Luis Royo
Blurb: “On any given planetdown mission, there's always someone whose job it is to walk into danger and get killed.
What must it be like to be him, knowing your lifespan is as short as a fruitfly's?
"My name is Festina Ramos.
My calling in life was to land on hostile planets.
I made first contacts with alien cultures.
I went anyplace the Admiralty didn't know what the hell to expect.
Officially, I belong to the Explorer Corps. Unofficially, we Explorers called ourselves ECMs-short for Expendable Crew Members."
It's the year 2452. Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, a pan-species confederation with an ironclad rule against killing, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred.
Unless you're different. Flawed. Ugly: Strange. In the Technocracy, if you're born less...real than a normal person, there's an Explorer's black uniform in your future.
That's what happened to Festina Ramos.
Born with a port-wine birthmark covering the right side of her face and conditioned to take great pride in her disfigurement, Festina belongs to the well-trained, always dwindling ranks of the ECMs.
Now she and her subordinate, Yarrun Derigha, have been ordered to escort Admiral Chee—150 years old and suffering from mental decline-to Melaquin, the feared "Planet of No Return." Lusciously earthlike, totally uninhabited, Melaquin looks perfect for colonization. But for forty years, it has swallowed up countless Explorers without a trace.
Obviously, this is meant to be the last mission for Ramos and Derigha. But it won't be, not if Festina can help it.“