The Echo

The Echo
James Smythe

The stunning sequel to James Smythe’s critically acclaimed literary sci-fi novel The Explorer.TWENTY YEARS following the spacecraft Ishiguro’s disappearance, humanity is setting its sights on the heavens once more.Under the direction of two of the most brilliant minds science has ever seen – twin brothers Tomas and Mirakel Hyvönen – this space programme has been tasked with one of the most difficult missions in its history: to study what is being called ‘the anomaly’ – a vast blackness of space thought to be responsible for the loss of the Ishiguro.But as the anomaly tests Mira and the rest of the hand-picked crew’s sanity, Tomas will have to use all his ingenuity if he is to save his brother and their mission.

Copyright (#ud7e19d1d-40b4-5ffa-87c0-fa4253665716)

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014

Copyright © James Smythe 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs: © iStockphoto (astronaut). Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (background)

James Smythe 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: 9780007456789

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007456802

Version: 2014-12-10

Praise for The Anomaly Quartet: (#ud7e19d1d-40b4-5ffa-87c0-fa4253665716)

‘Utterly gripping and highly original … explodes off the page’

Daily Mail

‘The Explorer has the dreamlike detachment of an Ishiguro novel … reminiscent of a 1970s space movie, where the darkness of the void mirrors the darkness of the human soul’

Financial Times

‘Beautifully written, creepy as hell. The Explorer is as clever in its unravelling as it is breathlessly claustrophobic’

Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls

‘A wonderful examination of coping with loss, time and death’

SFX

Contents

Cover (#ua3f18cbf-2e01-5091-a031-05609e689c4d)

Title Page (#ubb0a166e-cec9-5dd9-b70d-f88c142057e4)

Copyright

Praise

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part Two

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part Three

Chapter 13

Chapter 14