Alden Bridge

On his eleventh birthday, young Alden Waverly hears strange noises outside his play cave on Cappa Terse. He and his parents live intriguing, fulfilling lives as pioneers there among the trees and rocky terrain of their plateau, part of a small contingent of humans evaluating the planet for colonization.

After the strange noises comes a cataclysmic explosion. Alden races from his cave to find devastation. His house and the bridge from their plateau to the rest of the planet lay in obliterated...