En route to a job in the asteroid belt, the transport ship that Jonathan and Gaby are travelling on is required to give assistance to a space station in trouble.
Astoria Station stopped responding to everything except automated messages. Jonathan and Gaby, familiar with disease and habitat collapse, offer to help.
But not even they are prepared for what they find, or the efforts by some to sweep it under the carpet.
Snippet from the book:
He caught up with Gaby, who stood looking into another room where unwatched data scrolled over a screen.
“I don’t understand why everyone would have left their posts,” Gaby said. “It’s like they just went for a meeting and then never came back.”
“They have to be somewhere.” Jonathan checked his map.
Fifteen minutes was not enough time to go through the entire station.
“Is there a meeting room or canteen big enough to hold three hundred people?” Gaby asked.
“There is a canteen and a cinema on the bottom floor,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know if any of them are big enough. Let’s check there, as well as the school and recreational rooms. Then the sleeping quarters.”
“Yes,” Gaby said. “If there was an emergency, the inhabitants would have withdrawn to their cabins.”
They went down the two flights of stairs again.
First they passed a canteen and recreation rooms, all empty. A gym, empty, a health centre, empty. A tiny medical post, abandoned.
The corridor ran past the single classroom of the tiny school. All the tables were empty, with signs that work had been underway, although some of the screen desks appeared to have run out of battery.
And Jonathan and Gaby were running out of time.
Behind the school was the station’s cinema, storage rooms and a library and learning space. While Jonathan marked off each area that they had visited, Gaby checked the rooms. Sometimes she needed to open the door, but sometimes the door had a window.
So it happened that Jonathan had gone ahead when Gaby called him, her voice shaking.
“Jonathan, have a look in here.”
