"Tunnel In the Sky," starts with a regular high school student about to take his off planet survival test. The night before he leaves his parents inform him that they are going into stasis so that they can wait for his a cure for his father's illness. His sister (a female mercenary) offers her brother some loving advice and her favorite knife.
Fast forward a little, he uses a space tunnel to be dropped off on an unihabited planet and should be picked up in a few days and pretty close to where he has been dropped. Well this wouldn't be a very good story if that happened. To say alot and give away very little, this has become the mother of all survialism tests.