This Green Hell

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Thank you Lucy Sherriff — geeks truly will inherit the earth, and to Lawrence, Rob and the US GEO for allowing me to share some of their research. To Kathleen, Cory and Brad — my biggest supporters … and critics! To my publisher, Cate. And finally to my editors, Joel and Nicola — wordsmiths, interrogators, and counsellors, I thank you.

Hell is not hot, or cold.

Nor is it deep below ground, or somewhere in the sky. Instead it is a place on Earth filled with sucking bogs, disfiguring diseases and millions of tiny flesh-eating creatures.

Hell is a jungle, and it is monstrously green.

It had travelled for a billion years.

Exploded from its cold, black world by a massive meteor strike and scattered in a spray of diamond-hard matter throughout the universe.

Different-sized fragments would arrive at different times; some many millions of years before others. Some were folded deep below the primordial earth; others perished under a toxic sunlight.

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