Who the Door Admits (The Cairn)
The Tallow left the Cairn with ten people aboard. It returns from a nine-hour journey eleven months later carrying fourteen.
Nine of the original crew remain. Four passengers were collected from a depot that should not exist where they found it. One child was born in transit.
The ship's manifest is impossible.
Every number in it is also true.
The Cairn Compact is seven weeks old, its authority held together by borrowed rooms, stamped paper and Administrator Ester Kade's ability to make temporary answers last until morning. Earth's order is unambiguous: the Tallow must not enter station volume.
But the people aboard have already reached the door.
While loadmaster Sesk reconstructs a voyage that consumed eleven months of air, water and food during a journey the route board insists lasted nine hours, investigator Priya Yoss follows signs that somebody ashore was preparing for the ship's return before anyone knew it was coming.
The Cairn's first serious test will not be discovering which record is false. It will be deciding what to do when none of them are.
Who the Door Admits begins The Cairn, a complete five-book station saga for readers who want lived-in hard science fiction, ensemble characters, procedural tension and political decisions with immediate human consequences.
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