Time

Time
Stephen Baxter

2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation.

As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space.

Now Reid gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?

STEPHEN BAXTER

TIME

MANIFOLD 1

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_c69a26a8-c669-528d-b5bb-14c56b28858c)

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.

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 1999

Copyright © Stephen Baxter 1999

Cover image of Calabi-yau manifold © Laguna Design/Getty Images

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Stephen Baxter 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.

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 ebook 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 ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any written content or picture content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006511823

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007383009

Version: 2018-12-03

PRAISE (#ulink_a5f22c48-7899-54c1-ac27-b4f2c224a7cb)

Praise for Stephen Baxter:

‘Stephen Baxter proves what a cosmic thinker he is’

Washington Post Book World

‘Baxter handles a complex and gripping plot with his customary aplomb … The ending will blow your mind … go out and buy everything else that Baxter has ever written’

New Scientist

‘Baxter has emerged as a master of cosmological hard SF, a writer enamored of alien viewpoints and radical settings, with a sense of sublime immensities and an ingenuity at working permutations on the question of what is human’

Locus

DEDICATION (#ulink_8a6a62dd-7be7-5d07-a8f9-7e13049a9c67)

To two space cadets: My nephew, James Baxter Kent Joosten, NASA

CONTENTS

Title Page (#uf8794e14-248f-5253-8b26-1bf8cb1e36ea)

Copyright (#u20eb2bf4-90d1-5ea0-b865-93f0e0526aab)

Praise (#u44891a3b-3f70-5d58-8905-261f3a942e89)

Dedication (#u0ed46997-8cf9-5dea-8469-f7598d7aa569)

1: Bootstrap (#ud13a759c-12bb-5e30-8125-63d13139ed05)

2: Downstream (#ueb05886b-0b07-5764-aed5-0649b2652607)

3: Cruithne (#litres_trial_promo)

4: Manifold (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Reid Malenfant:

You know me. And you know I’m a space cadet.

You know I’ve campaigned for, among other things, private mining expeditions to the asteroids. In fact, in the past I’ve tried to get you to pay for such things. I’ve bored you with that often enough already, right?

So tonight I want to look a little further out. Tonight I want to tell you why I care so much about this issue that I devoted my life to it.