Ким Робинсон: Red Moon

“Good,” Fred said.

Over the horizon reared some low peaky hills, different from the usual crater rim arc. Fred accelerated the bike, ignoring Qi’s order to slow down. At the foot of the hills he spotted the cubical shapes that indicated buildings. Aside from the knot of hills, the white plain blazed flatly to the horizon in every direction. Everything white on white. Fred sped up more. They came to the parking lot Ta Shu had mentioned and he aimed for the building on the far left. Stopped right in front of an air lock door. Qi got off with her baby in her arms. Fred got off. Into the air lock, into the terminal. Very dark in there, until their pupils adjusted to the absence of sunblast. Then it was just a dim empty space, unoccupied, like some abandoned subway station. Big piste of a magnetic rail running down the middle of the building in a long glass-walled room of its own, stretching out of the structure and off to the horizon. They hurried to the back of the terminal, where the piste split into various closed doors. Fred chose the one at the very back, tapped on the door panel and it slid up, revealing a squat little rectangular spaceship, like a rover car. Its door opened even before he could tap on it, and they got in and closed the outer door. Inside they found a small cabin with several thick chairs in it, like recliner chairs. The ship’s systems were on. Fred and Qi took off their helmets, and Qi unsnapped the baby’s helmet and pulled her out of it and held her close. The babe was crying, she clutched to Qi with her tiny fists. Qi sat down heavily with her in one recliner. Fred sat in another recliner, then got up again and picked up Qi’s helmet and spoke into it.

“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.”

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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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

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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