Hollow Moon

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The author would like to thank Karen for friendship, wine and invaluable help in proof-reading Hollow Moon; Victor for the front cover artwork; and of course Sarah, who despite all evidence to the contrary, has kept me sane in this big, bad city.

BARNARD’S STAR has another name, for some call it the Runaway Star. In the skies of Earth this faint red sun lurks in the constellation of Ophiuchus the serpent bearer; hidden to all but the astronomers, yet close enough to tantalise the scientists, dreamers, crooks and believers who saw in the heavens the age-old lust for adventure. This is a story of the future, a time when human ingenuity has bridged the vast cosmos and many millions have staked their claims where distant suns burn fierce in the sky.

Drifting around Barnard’s Star was a monument to both the imagination and the folly of humanity. Like the first tools of prehistoric ancestors, the lonely crater-pocked asteroid had been shaped by human hands, an inventiveness betrayed by the caldera-like cones of silenced engines, the concrete carbuncles and single vast airlock shutting out the unforgiving vacuum of space. Beyond this door was carved yet another niche for survival, an incredible land of homes, farms, families and friends where there should be none. This was the forgotten ark of a planet few cared about, circling a sun too dim to see.

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