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Belt Three JOHN AYLIFF HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015 Copyright © John Ayliff 2015 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com John Ayliff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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. Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress. Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-811357-5 Version: 2015-05-15 Table of Contents
The ship was a spindly two-ring clipper, tacking against orbit as it dropped sunward through the main shipping lanes of Belt Three. Jonas magnified the image to fill the bridge screen, so that the insect-like body of the clipper stood out against the golden plane of its sail. The ship was battered, asymmetrical, its grav-rings and spine lost beneath a crust of repairs. There was a marking on the side of its cargo bay, a feathered spiral of white on blue, presumably the logo of some minor shipping company. Apart from its heading, it looked like any of the other ageing tramp freighters that plied the orbits of the inhabited belts. ‘Ayla, is that course reading correct?’ Jonas asked. The pilot jumped in her seat. ‘What was that, sir?’ Ayla often became so lost in her connection with the ship that she stopped paying attention to her physical surroundings, but she normally hid it better than that. Jonas made a mental note to give her some time off when they reached port. The stress of the evacuation was getting to all of them. ‘That ship,’ Jonas said, indicating the screen. ‘It looks like it’s heading for our rock. Can you get its
