by James Smythe
I wait and feel my lungs stop, and I open my eyes wide and stare forward at the nothingness, going onwards forever, it seems, on and on, with or without me there to see it, and my head feels like it’s about to burst. I’m not back on the ship. I don’t have my scars. I’ve not opened the door and killed Arlen, and I haven’t started this all again, confused and lost and alone but not alone. I haven’t done that. I wait to see if it’ll happen before I die, and if it does, if I’ll even remember this moment in the first place.
From here, space looks like it does from any garden, anywhere. It’s so still.
Acknowledgments
Thanks go first and foremost to Dr Robert Simpson, friend and astrophysicist. When I started writing The Explorer I threw ideas at him, over and over. A lot of the science (the stuff that’s right and logical) is probably down to him. The other stuff? Blame me for that.
Sam Copeland is my agent, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all of his hard work. He saw this novel in its earliest form and knew what it ultimately could be. He told me that I could make it that novel, so thank/blame him appropriately. Thanks too to everybody else at RCW.
Thanks to Amy McCulloch, whose suggestions for edits made the novel better with each press of the Delete key. Thanks also to my copyeditor, Joy Chamberlain, who said the nicest thing about my writing that I have ever heard. Thanks to all at Voyager Books /HarperCollins UK for everything that they do so very well.
And lastly, there are those classic creators of the SFF work that first drove me to write. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, Iain Banks, George Orwell, Harlan Ellison, John Wyndham, Alfred Bester… All wrote the stories that they wanted to tell, and never forgot that Story is the thing. You would do well to track down and read anything and everything that they’ve written.
Also by James Smythe
The Testimony
Copyright
HarperCollins Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by Harper Voyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © James Smythe 2013
James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 00 745675 8
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Set in Sabon LT Std by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
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Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green
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