“Ta Shu, we’re in the passenger pod, ready when you are.”
He sat down in the chair, grabbed an arm and pulled himself down into it. The little spaceship lurched forward. Quickly it was out of its room and on the piste. Thick little oval side windows showed nothing but the terminal’s walls. Then the surface of the moon, white as the big bang, moving by them faster and faster. They were shoved back in their chairs. Fred felt the gel under him give and give until there was no more to give. He was crushed against it until it felt like concrete, concrete scooped to the shape of his body. The babe was wailing, then she stopped. Maybe Qi was giving her mouth-to-mouth. Fred couldn’t look, he could barely take a breath. All his effort had to go to sucking in air and then holding on. His vision blurred. The world went from too bright to too dark. He felt conscious but besieged. The world went blacker and blacker, his whole body squished, it was a struggle to breathe or even to hold his breath, even to hold his muscles tight enough to keep his ribs from cracking. His body became one big shout of pain. Little choked yelps of protest came from the babe, who was not to be silenced by a mere several g’s. Possibly it was not that much different from her passage out of Qi. Life just one crushing after another. Qi too called out something wordless.
Then the pressure went abruptly away. Fred sucked in hard, shook his head, gasped hard, sucked in air. He sat up. Everything was blurry. They hadn’t even been strapped in. Out the window he saw only black space and stars. Weightlessness: he was floating up, he grabbed his seat arm again, he pulled himself to the window and looked out. White moon behind them, shrinking fast, a bone against the night. Qi’s child wailed, music to his ears, drilling like a fire alarm right down his spinal cord.
“How’s the baby?” he asked.
“She seems all right. Where are we headed?”
“I don’t know.”
By Kim Stanley Robinson
Icehenge
The Memory of Whiteness
The Wild Shore
The Gold Coast
Pacific Edge
The Planet on the Table
Escape from Kathmandu
A Short, Sharp Shock
Remaking History
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
The Martians
Antarctica
The Years of Rice and Salt
Forty Signs of Rain
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting
combined as Green Earth
Galileo’s Dream
2312
Shaman
Aurora
New York 2140
Red Moon
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover image by Arcangel
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: October 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Robinson, Kim Stanley, author.
Title: Red moon / Kim Stanley Robinson.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018239| ISBN 9780316262378 (Hardcover) | ISBN 9780316262392 (Trade Paperback) | ISBN 9781549194986 (Audio Book (download)) | ISBN 9781549142598 (Audio Book (CD)) | ISBN 9780316262354 (ebook (open))
Subjects: LCSH: Life on other planets—Fiction. | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3568.O2893 R445 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018239
ISBNs: 978-0-316-26237-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-26235-4 (ebook), 978-0-316-52969-3 (B&N Black Friday signed special edition), 978-0-316-52970-9 (BN.com signed special edition)
E3-20180905-JV-PC