# Read the first page of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Read the opening of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers free, no signup. A young clerk joins a ragtag multispecies crew on a battered spaceship. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet-becky-chambers - Genre: Science fiction - Year: 2015 - ISBN: 9780062444134 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781473619777&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780062444134 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780062444134 ## The opening As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file. None of this information was new, but it wasn't pleasant to wake up to. She wasn't supposed to be awake yet, not for another day at least, but that was what you got for booking cheap transport. Cheap transport meant a cheap pod flying on cheap fuel, and cheap drugs to knock you out. She had flickered into consciousness several times since launch — surfacing in confusion, falling back just as she'd gotten a grasp on things. The pod was dark, and there were no navigational screens. There was no way to tell how much time had passed between each waking, or how far she'd traveled, or if she'd even been traveling at all. The thought made her anxious, and sick. Her vision cleared enough for her to focus on the window. The shutters were down, blocking out any possible light sources. She knew there were none. She was out in the open now. No bustling planets, no travel lanes, no sparkling orbiters. Just emptiness, horrible emptiness, filled with nothing but herself and the occasional rock. The engine whined as it prepared for another sublayer jump. The drugs reached out, tugging her down into uneasy sleep. As she faded, she thought again of the job, the lies, the smug look on the official's face as she'd poured credits into his account. She wondered if it had been enough. It had to be. It had to. She’d paid too much already for mistakes she’d had no part in. Her eyes closed. The drugs took her. The pod, presumably, continued on. Living in space was anything but quiet. Grounders never expected that. For anyone who had grown up planetside, it took some time to get used to the clicks and hums of a ship, the ever-present ambiance that came with living inside a piece of machinery. But to Ashby, those sounds were as ordinary as his own heartbeat. He could tell when it was time to wake by the sigh of the air filter over his bed. When rocks hit the outer hull with their familiar pattering, he knew which were small enough to ignore, and which meant trouble. He could tell by the amount of static crackling over the ansible how far away he was from the person on the other end. These were the sounds of spacer life, an underscore of vulnerability and distance. They were reminders of what a fragile thing it was to be alive. But those sounds also meant safety. An absence of sound meant that air was no longer flowing, engines no longer running, artigrav nets no longer holding your feet to the floor. Silence belonged to the vacuum outside. Silence was death. There were other sounds, too, sounds made not by the ship itself, but by the people living in it. Even in the endless halls of homestead ships, you could hear the echoes of nearby conversations, footsteps on metal floors, the faint thumping of a tech climbing through the walls, off to repair some unseen circuit. Ashby’s ship, the Wayfarer, was spacious enough, but tiny compared to the homesteader he’d grown up on. When he’d first purchased the Wayfarer and filled it with crew, even he’d had to get used to the close quarters they kept. ## Books with a similar feel - [Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir](https://uncovered.ink/read/project-hail-mary-andy-weir.md) - [Redshirts by John Scalzi](https://uncovered.ink/read/redshirts-john-scalzi.md) - [Trips in Time by Christopher Priest](https://uncovered.ink/read/trips-in-time-christopher-priest.md) - [To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu](https://uncovered.ink/read/to-hold-up-the-sky-cixin-liu.md) - [Vanishing Acts by Ellen Datlow](https://uncovered.ink/read/vanishing-acts-ellen-datlow.md) - [Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang](https://uncovered.ink/read/stories-of-your-life-and-others-ted-chiang.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.