{"id":1295,"date":"2026-01-03T21:23:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/last-contact-baxter-stephen\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T21:23:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:23:45","slug":"last-contact-baxter-stephen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/last-contact-baxter-stephen\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Contact – Baxter, Stephen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n

CAITLIN WALKED INTO the garden through the lit-tle gate from the drive. <\/p>\n

Maureen was working on the lawn. <\/p>\n

Just at that moment Maureen\u2019s phone pinged. She took off her gardening gloves, dug the phone out of the deep pocket of her old quilted coat and looked at the screen. \u201cAnother contact,\u201d she called to her daughter. <\/p>\n

Caitlin looked cold in her thin jacket; she wrapped her arms around her body. \u201cAnother super-civilization discovered, off in space. We live in strange times, Mum.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the fifteenth this year. And I did my bit to help discover it. <\/p>\n

Good for me,\u201d Maureen said, smiling. \u201cHello, love.\u201d She leaned forward for a kiss on the cheek. <\/p>\n

She knew why Caitlin was here, of course. Caitlin had always hinted she would come and deliver the news about the Big Rip in person, one way or the other. Maureen guessed what that news was from her daughter\u2019s hollow, stressed eyes. But Caitlin was looking around the garden, and Mau-reen decided to let her tell it all in her own time. <\/p>\n

She asked, \u201cHow\u2019re the kids?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cFine. At school. Bill\u2019s at home, baking bread.\u201d Caitlin smiled. \u201cWhy do stay-at-home fathers always bake bread? But he\u2019s starting at Webster\u2019s next month.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the engineers in Oxford?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right. Not that it makes much difference now. We won\u2019t run out of money before, well, before it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d Caitlin considered the garden. It was just a scrap of lawn really, with a quite nicely stocked border, behind a cottage that was a little more than a hundred years old, in this village on the outskirts of Oxford. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve seen this properly.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Book Preview CAITLIN WALKED INTO the garden through the lit-tle gate from the drive. Maureen was working on the lawn. Just at that moment Maureen\u2019s phone pinged. She took off her gardening gloves, dug the phone out of the deep pocket of her old quilted coat and looked at the screen. \u201cAnother contact,\u201d she called … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-stephen-baxter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}