When it looks as though the Earth is doomed – through our own negligent actions – a plan is hatched to send five thousand selected people to search out a new home on which to restart – with the hope that this time mankind will get it right.

Ted Latimer is one of the maintenance crew. It is his job to perform the basic maintenance that will need to be done periodically on the trip as well as to be available should emergencies occur.

Well okay I guess it's not going to come as any great surprise that one of these kinds of emergencies happens. Just over a thousand years into this journey, Latimer and his maintenance crew are awoken from their stasis to find that an unexplained explosion has happened and two fifths of the colonists have been killed, and a further fifth are connected to the ship only via an umbilical-style cord.

Despite discovering that the central AI computer has been damaged, the crew decide that the mission is still viable, the three thousand colonists are safe and that the remaining computers are capable of detecting any possible future home planets.

Decided that the situation is under some form of control they re-enter stasis with the intention of waking in another thousand years, or should a suitable planet be discovered.

But things are not quite what they had hoped for when they next awaken.

I have only recently read another hive-ship type story (Stephen Baxter – Mayflower II) and was wondering if this could hold up to. Well, it was a lot for it to live up to, Baxter's novella was quite wonderful, I considered it one of the best books I read last year.

And the good news is that it doesn't get completely overshadowed by Baxter's book – and possibly because this is a different kind of story. Whereas Baxter's book was very much a spiritual journey, this is very much an action driven story - very much a tale of striving for survival.

Brown has a very good knack of handling action sequences in his stories, he draws his action sequences in a very concise manner, using language with an efficiency that aids the action sequences, bestowing upon them a great pace. This style effectively involving the reader in the thick of events in a way that more verbose writing would only impede.

This spare manner of writing does not however mean that Brown skimps on other aspects of this tale, the characters are portrayed well, and with sufficient detail for the reader to empathise with them – an absolute necessity to build the kind of excitement that the story needed.

Herein Eric Brown confirms his talent, his ability to tell an engrossing story. He is an author with an impressive portfolio of stories, and one who is always worth reading.

Synopsis
//~Mission to locate Earth-temperate planet for colonisation: failed

...//~1000 years out from Earth base, damage to colony sleeper hangars 1, 3 and 4 sustained ... all lives lost ... hangars 2 and 5 still operational

...//~Mission parameters adjusted: Augmentation of colonists to commence

...//~Request all drones and 'bots to medical units to begin experimentation

A novella of power and humanity from "one of the very best of the new generation of British SF writers." (Vector)

"SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility ... accomplished and affecting." Paul McAuley