Walking to Aldebaran

* A STUNNING NOVELLA BY THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF CHILDREN OF STRIFE *'Thought-provoking' - AT BOUNDARY'S EDGE'Unsettling and creepy' - CIVILIAN READER'By turns humorous and horrific' - FANTASY HIVE'Unsettling and undeniably alien' - RUN ALONG THE SHELVESI'M LOST. I'M SCARED. AND THERE'S SOMETHING HORRIBLE IN HERE.My name is Gary Rendell. I'm an astronaut. When they asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, 'astronaut, please!' I dreamed astronaut, I worked astronaut, I studied astronaut.I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw. I got even luckier. When disaster hit and our team was split up, scattered through the endless cold tunnels, I somehow survived. Now I'm lost, and alone, and scared, and there's something horrible in here. Lucky me. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author of the acclaimed ten-book Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series, and other novels, novellas and short stories including Children of Time (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2016), and its sequel, Children of Ruin (which won the British Science Fiction Award in 2020). He lives in Leeds in the UK and his hobbies include entomology and board and role-playing games.