The Deserted Planet

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

The Kith ship, the Golden Flyer, has returned from a twenty thousand year round trip at near light speed to the galactic center. The viewpoint character, Jong Errifans, is twenty years old and has apparently experienced the entire trip:

"...in his own life he had seen the flower and the fall of an empire." (p. 12)

Planetary civilizations are transitory to the Kith.

The ship has stopped in a planetary system:

"...three hundred light-years from Sol's calculated present position." (p. 14)

The position of the Solar System has to be calculated and the calculation might be wrong!

The third planet:

is of Earth mass;

has islands scattered on a global ocean with no continents;

is uniformly warm;

has a terrestroid atmosphere sustained by weed mats, hundreds of square kilometers in extent;

was colonized and civilized although its islands and cities have long been deserted.