Marti Ward

Moraturi Ring Marti Ward

What a 21st! Eva's big birthday 'present' was a tired old spaceship lost in space and time, a motley crew of amnesiac patients, 500 colonists in cryo, and a mission that would take a lifetime - assuming she could keep everyone alive till they made planetfall. SS Moraturi is a Lunar Earth Transfer Orbiter - a kind of spider robot designed to construct space stations and ships in and around the Earth-Moon Lagrange points 1 and 2. Now Moraturi is taking two cryoholds full of colonists to New Eden, an earth-like planet in the Paradisi system, 2.5 million light years from Earth in the Andromeda galaxy. Eva's problem is that the trip that was to take one year is now going to take forty years - their 100% oversupply was based on just 16 crew members, and the cryotechnology can't keep them all alive for 40 years.