Time Away
From Home

The crew of the Hōkūleʻa were only testing an engine, quietly, before a competitor could. Eight people on a refurbished mining ship, overqualified for a run nobody back home was watching too closely.

The test lasted three minutes. They felt almost nothing.

Then the stars were wrong. The ship was nowhere near where it should have been, the clocks could not agree, and Earth stopped answering. It wasn't space that had moved for them. It was time.

Twenty-eight days later they come home to a silent planet. The great tethers that once climbed into orbit are gone. The night side shows no lights. Nothing answers. What became of their families, and of everyone else, is a question they will have to walk into.

Time Away From Home follows a captain who has never once doubted his own control, an engineer who left a monastery for something he still can't name, a young woman who loves with her whole heart and has learned to guard it, and a quiet healer who seems to know more about letting go than any of them wants to learn. The way back to Earth is a matter of physics. The way back to themselves is not.

Who will they become, now that they're here?