Josh struggles to help give birth to himself.

They suction its mouth and it coughs, taking its first breath. Josh looks on in wonder as the avatar starts to wail, clenching its fists, its face contorting at the terror and pain of the outer world. It grabs Josh's arm and he winces in pain at the strength of the thing. It opens its eyes and looks right at him. He stares into its eyes, which are his own eyes. Its terror passes. It stares blankly at him, taking in shuddering breaths of the poisonous air.

Josh pulls his arm free.

TECH: Congratulations. It's a boy.

Josh glances down along the avatar's body, his expression growing even more amazed.

ISV PROMETHEUS goes into a low orbit around Pandora. We get our first good look at the new world. It is magnificent. Almost another Earth, at first glance, with white cloud whorls over a blue and brown surface. But the continents are all wrong, and the proportion of land to sea is much greater. The blue is a little different too, with a cyan tinge to it, suggesting the different air. But you can just tell, even from orbit... this is a planet that has life. It's got the look.

The most amazing thing about Pandora is that it doesn't actually orbit its sun directly, but is actually in orbit around an enormous planet, a gas giant almost twice the size of Jupiter, which in turn orbits the yellow sun of Alpha Centauri B. This monster planet has been named POLYPHEMIS, for the great cyclops of Greek myth. This is because, like Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, Polyphemis has a vest cyclonic storm like a great dark pupil in its vast disk.

The eye of an angry god looking down on Pandora. Pandora, despite being almost as big as Earth, is technically a moon of the giant planet.

Polyphemis has thirteen other moons, some closer in, some farther out. Depending on what's where in its orbit, Pandora can have two or even three moons in its sky at once. Pandora and the other moons cast large black shadow dots on the parent planet, like beauty marks.