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STEPHEN BAXTER
TIME
MANIFOLD 1
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
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780006511823
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007383009 Version: 2018-12-03
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
To two space cadets: My nephew, James Baxter Kent Joosten, NASA
CONTENTS
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.
The world isn’t big enough any more. You don’t need me to stand here and tell you that. We could all choke to death, be extinct in a hundred years.
Or we could be on our way to populating the Galaxy.
Yes: the Galaxy. Want me to tell you how?
Turns out it’s all a question of economics.
Let’s say we set out to the stars. We might use ion rockets, solar sails, gravity assists. It doesn’t matter.
We’ll probably start as we have in the Solar System, with automated probes. Humans may follow. One per cent of the helium-3 fusion fuel available from the planet Uranus, for example, would be enough to send a giant interstellar ark, each ark containing a billion people, to every star in the Galaxy. But it may be cheaper for the probes to manufacture humans in situ, using
