The Ninth Metal

by Benjamin Percy

  She won’t be there to see Hawkin learn how to read a compass and map, to see Victoria hook her first trout and net it from the water with a startled laugh, to see her father set up camp. She won’t be there to listen to them read a battered, taped-up copy of Hatchet together or smell the wood smoke as the fire crackles or hear her father telling a story about song lines, an indigenous term that refers to the paths across the sky or the earth taken by the creators during the first dreaming of the world. And she won’t know about the humming in the air that night—what might be mistaken for insects but in fact comes from drones cutting through the sky, hovering above the treetops, hunting.

  Acknowledgments

  This book wouldn’t have been written if not for Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bob Cane, Bill Finger, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Chris Claremont. Conjurers of worlds and characters and myths that owned my imagination as a child and continue to inspire me today.

  Thanks to Helen Atsma, my brilliant coach and editor. Thanks to Katherine Fausset and the Curtis Brown crew for kicking down doors on my behalf all these years. Thanks to Holly Frederick, Britton Rizzio, and Noah Rosen for soldiering the Hollywood battlefields with me.

  Thanks to the gang at HMH, including Marissa Page, Tracy Roe, Michael Dudding, Jen Reynolds. I appreciate your smarts and muscle.

  Thanks to all the booksellers who generously support me, and a standing ovation to Jessica Peterson White and the amazing staff at Content, the killer local bookstore here in Northfield. Thanks also to the generosity and awesomeness of Steph Opitz, Jenny Dodgson, Britt Udeson, and everyone else at the Loft Literary Center, the crown jewel of Minnesota.

  Thanks to Dr. James Head at Brown University, not only for his course on space geology, which sticks with me to this day, but for his kindness and guidance in making sure I didn’t drop out after the GPA disaster of my freshman year.

  Thanks to my parents, with a special shout-out to my father, who is a giant space nerd. He was regularly spotted during my childhood with a science fiction novel, an astronomy magazine, or a giant telescope. He raised me on a steady diet of Star Wars and Star Trek (anything involving stars, really), so whenever I look up at the night sky, I think of him.

  Thanks to Arjendu Pattanayak, who bullshitted with me about physics over many glasses of scotch and helped me formulate some of the novel’s slippery science. Other coconspirators who deserve a special nod: Daniel Fink, Peter Geye, Brent Schoonover, Paul W. and Stacie T., Jonathan Hickman, Jordan White, James Ponsoldt, Axel Alonso, and the Fantasy Fathers. Can I thank coffee and bourbon? Because I’d like to thank coffee and bourbon.

  And thanks to love. Her name is Lisa.

  Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Comet Cycle series.

  About the Author

  © Connor Percy

  Benjamin Percy is the author of four other novels, three short story collections, and a book of essays. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, GQ, Time, Outside, Men’s Journal, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and McSweeney’s, among others. He writes comics for Marvel, DC, and Dynamite and is known for his work on X-Force, Batman, Wolverine, Green Arrow, Nightwing, James Bond, and Teen Titans. His audio series Wolverine: The Long Night won the iHeartRadio Award for best scripted podcast, and his honors include an NEA fellowship, a Whiting Award, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.

  Learn more at benjaminpercy.com

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