A man is ripped from a deep sleep by a little girl. He’s in a room with other writhing bodies. It’s bitterly cold. The little girls runs, telling him to chase heat.
He’s propelled into a nightmare world of shifting gravity, of changing temperatures, of strange monsters out to kill him. He has only his memories, and crude notes gathered in a book by the little girl.
Where is he? Why was he born? Why don’t his memories of his previous life, preparing to be a teacher to a group of colonists preparing to settle a new world, jibe with the present nightmare reality?
Hull Zero Three is hard SF at its best, combining Bear’s trademark vision of weird biology with a frighteningly plausible look at how we would colonise an alien planet at any price.