Plenty of time, too, to reflect on what he had seen. All he had left behind.
He felt a sharp stab of loss, as if Ben’s face had materialized before him. But the choice was made, and it had been the right one. He had his memories, of Selena Jones, of Joshua – of Agnes, of Ben, of their home. And he had plenty of time to deal with a cosmos full of the silver beetles who had destroyed everything he cared about.
He fired the small rocket. The tiny ship slowly drifted away from the ruin of the Earth, away from the feeding frenzy of the beetles, towards the cool spaces beyond. He had plans to make, places to go.
And he smiled.
Just like before, Agnes. Soon, once again, I’ll be in with the Oort cloud.
Acknowledgements
We’re very grateful to our good friend Jacqueline Simpson for tracking down the source of Stan Berg’s quotation in Chapter 48 – ‘You cannot love what you do not know’ – which comes from the first paragraph of the thirty-seventh sermon on The Song of Songs by St Bernard of Clairvaux.
All errors and inaccuracies are of course our sole responsibility.
T.P.
S.B.
December 2014, Datum Earth
About the Authors
Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. His fortieth Discworld novel, Raising Steam, was published in 2013. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. He died in March 2015.
www.terrypratchett.co.uk
@terryandrob
Stephen Baxter is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers of science fiction and a multi-award winner. His many books include the classic Xeelee sequence, the Time’s Odyssey novels (written with Arthur C. Clarke), The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, a Doctor Who novel, The Wheel of Ice, and most recently the epic, far-future novels Proxima and Ultima. He lives in Northumberland.
For further information, visit www.stephen-baxter.com