The Mission

If this is your first sci-fi story, then it is a very good start.  It's a good idea, an alien's view of Earth.  I think it could be tackled with more depth, it feels a little hurried, and you had the word count to do a bit more with it.  The ending feels forced - Cato starts off with great optimism, and yet by the end he has completely turned around after little in the way of exploration.  What you do very well is to drip-feed backstory into the narrative, it has a lot of exposition without feeling too clunky.  It's a good story.

Hi Heidi, 

Like Adam said, this is a very good first attempt at sci-fi :) 

I'm afraid I struggled with how you presented the story though. I agree with Adam that it feels hurried. It has the feeling of a first draft, where you're getting all your ideas down into words. Now it needs some sculpting and fine tuning. I personally feel the story would work better if it was told in first person, I think that would give it a lot more depth. 

There was something else too, a bit of a personal irritation of mine: Your character, Zola. I really find it frustrating in stories where the female character is 'beautiful, intelligent and strong'. And the envy of other women, etc. Male characters tend to be given more of an edge, they're given flaws and faults. Whereas so many female characters are just 'perfect'. And that means I can't connect to them. I know a lot of people won't mind it, so please don't take my comments as a put down, it's just a personal preference.

I think you could also tighten the language a little. As an example, where you say: "Cato spent the next two days quickly approaching the new planet." You could say 'speeding towards' rather than 'quickly approaching'. It just gives it a little more punch and makes the imagery stronger.

I quite like the conclusion. That he's not going to find anywhere where people treat each other well, and that it's up to them to do that for each other. It felt realistic and I could relate to that feeling.

I'd love to come back and read a re-draft if you do one, because I think your story has a lot of potential :)

SPOILERS

You've got me wondering which of the Egyptian deities the Hyronian's became the basis for.  I really like the concept and world you have setup.

One thing tripped me up while reading:

"Unlike his home planet; Hyronium had slowly become a desert wasteland after thousands of years of abusing its natural resources."

That's near the bottom of page three.  Other than that, I didn't notice much if anything gramaticaly off with the story. (Of course that's the part of editing that I'm horrible at!)  Still, there were parts of it that reminded me of stage direction.  You could probably smooth it out a little more with a few more read/edit cycles.

Good Job!