Situated atop this Texas-sized floating structure were copper-tinted domes—thousands of them—each roof ten times the girth of the old New Orleans Superdome, yet all interconnecting, like the bottom of a carton of eggs.

As we watched, a section of one of the domes retracted, allowing our drone to enter. Inside was a city, the scope of which could only be conceived in fantasy.

Imagine Manhattan, only one hundred thousand years in the future, the entire island raised in the sky and encapsulated. Imagine majestic silicon dwellings—so tall they would have dwarfed Chicago’s Sears Tower. Imagine interconnecting walkways and levitating pavilions—all woven into the dazzling skyline like latticework, and lush, tropical gardens and azure lagoons. There were rivers and twisting brooks, and cascading waterfalls, and farther along the outskirts, what appeared to be floating agricultural pods.

It was Shangri-La and Eden rolled into one, a beehive of intellect that, on an evolutionary scale, dwarfed us on a scale that we dwarfed the Neanderthals.

The technology required to build this domain was simply too overwhelming to conceive, and yet … it was deserted, not a single sign of life.

Who had built this magnificent floating habitat? Why had they abandoned it? Were they beings like us? Would they return?

We must have felt like the first Spanish explorers who happened upon Chichén Itzá after the Mayans deserted the city.

With us, however, these questions were quickly forgotten after the drone’s atmospheric readings detected air within the domed city. Higher in oxygen content than Earth’s, void of all our chemical pollutants, it was nevertheless quite breathable.

To our dying community, we had discovered an oasis, delivered by God Himself, and we were determined to occupy it.

First, of course, we had to get there.

The structure’s closest border was 422 miles southeast of our crash site. Since the existence of the planet’s nocturnal insects made traveling by foot out of the question, our only hope was to repair as many of our damaged spaceships for a limited flight before our air and water supplies ran out.

Hope. How long had it been since any of us dared utter the word?

It took us ninety-six days to make three of our twelve shuttles operable enough for a vertical takeoff and restricted flight plan. During that time, we continued sending drones into the city, establishing maps, identifying key landmarks, puzzling over a myriad of dwellings.

Never did we come across a life-form.

The day of our departure finally arrived. Tossing out all personal luggage and nonessential items, we crammed our 572 survivors on board the three ships and flew to the Promised Land.

For twenty minutes, our vessel pitched wildly in the dense atmosphere, bringing nausea to all but our most seasoned astronauts. And then we passed over the copper domes and entered the alien domain.

What an astounding site.

As Bill Raby—I felt reborn … invigorated, excited to be alive.