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Moonseed
Stephen Baxter
Venus has exploded.
Showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans.
Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form – a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed.
Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth’s extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what’s left of the planet.
STEPHEN BAXTER
MOONSEED
THE NASA TRILOGY
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_5ed5643e-c0ed-54e4-9d52-9be506095e1f)
HarperVoyager an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 1998
Copyright © Stephen Baxter 1998
Cover photo © NASA
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Stephen Baxter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008134532
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN 9780007392353
Version: 2015-10-07
DEDICATION (#ulink_3a89f6bc-8178-55bf-b78c-5a6237ae2816)
For Sandra, with all my love
CONTENTS
Cover (#ue0f54e49-6f19-5503-9f51-016b5d2c4421)
Title Page (#u9f984c9f-4551-5bd7-bc51-cf35c4b7447e)
Copyright (#u7c6d3241-128e-531b-bb88-1199af3168d3)
Dedication (#ue4267dae-de8b-5464-ac4d-b6a66d3c4a00)
Dramatis Personae (#ue39de1f8-7c15-50c8-bda0-f3d42c3b61cb)
I Big Whack (#uf1bfb644-2356-545d-bc87-918dd3bd53a5)
II Ard Tor (#u8d0c9198-6e2b-5de5-8214-ee796f9b0953)
III Earth (#litres_trial_promo)
IV Moon (#litres_trial_promo)
V Bottleneck (#litres_trial_promo)
VI Nadezhda (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise for Stephen Baxter (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (#ulink_fec715d7-80ff-53b6-a775-9098e995143e)
Henry Meacher, geologist, NASA
Geena Bourne, Space Station astronaut
Jane Dundas, shopkeeper
Arkady Berezovoy, Space Station astronaut
GREAT BRITAIN
EDINBURGH:
Jack Dundas, son of Jane
Mike Dundas, technician
Ted Dundas, retired police officer
Ruth Clark, neighbour of Ted Dundas
Hamish Macrae, aka Bran, cult leader
Billy Macrae, brother of Hamish
Alan Macrae, father of Hamish
Dan McDiarmid, geologist, Edinburgh University
Marge Case, geologist, Edinburgh University
Constable Morag Decker, police officer
Blue Ishiguro, geologist, USGS
William MacEwen, police superintendent
Paula Romano, Chief Constable
Archie Ferguson, Emergency Planning Officer
Janice Docherty, hospital patient
Siobhan Reader, Musselburgh Rest Centre manager
OTHER:
Bob Farnes, Prime Minister
Dave Holland, Environment Secretary
Indira Bhide, Home Secretary
Debbie Sturrock, firefighter, Dunbar
William Calder, Jackie Brown, rig workers
Jenny Calder, wife to William
UNITED STATES
NASA:
Jays Malone, Apollo astronaut
Tom Barber, Apollo astronaut
Tracy Malone, daughter to Jays
Harry Maddicott, JSC director
Sixt Guth, Space Station astronaut
Bonnie Jones, Space Station astronaut
Frank Turtle, engineer, JSC Solar System Exploration Division
OTHER:
Monica Beus, physicist
Alfred Synge, astronomer
Scott Coplon, geologist, US Geological Survey
Joely Stern, e-zine journalist
Cecilia Stanley, e-zine editor
David Petit, chemist, Nobel Prize Winner
Admiral Joan Bromwich, Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff
Garry Beus, son of Monica, USAF pilot
Jake Parrish, USAF pilot
JAPAN
Declan Hague, monk
LUNAR FEDERAL REPUBLIC:
Nadezhda Pour-El Meacher Dundas, astronaut
I BIG WHACK (#ulink_f4219bc0-4ff7-50bf-ab3a-12f39e0e8f56)
It began in a moment of unimaginable violence, five billion years before humans walked the Earth.
There was a cloud, of gas and dust, slowly spinning. Much of it was the hydrogen and helium which had emerged from the Big Bang itself, but it was tainted by crystals of ice – ammonia, water and methane – and dust motes rich in iron, magnesium and silica, even some grains of pure metal. These were flotsam from older stars, stars already dead.
… And now another star died, a giant, in the conclusive spasm of supernova. A flood of energy and matter hammered into the cloud.
The cloud lost its stability, and began to collapse, to a spinning disc. The central mass shone cherry red, then gradually brightened to white, until – after a hundred million years – it burst into fusion life.
