World Hopping
The sky seemed to go on forever.
The planet was deserted.
Animals still lived here, as did plants; but the indigenous population had died out when the planet was first discovered. Some idiot scientist had taken his helmet off when he had discovered oxygen on the planet. He had given an innocent enough virus to one of the natives and it had led to a pandemic of death. Turns out that the cold for their people caused a hemorrhagic fever.
After that, human scientists made sure to leave their helmets on until given the go ahead that anything they might be carrying wouldn’t cause devastating illness to the people of the world they were visiting.
But there was no actual need for helmets right now. For one, Felix was in his ship, and for two; the remaining inhabitants (there were maybe a few hundred) were immune to the cold, and the animals didn’t seem to suffer from it either.
He looked up when someone entered the control room.
“So, what’s the plan? We mining for something? Retrieving some wondrous artifact? Collecting plant life for medical purposes? Recreational purposes?”
He spun his pilot chair around.
“And can I get out of this stuffy ship because I could really use some fresh air.”