After fifteen years on Mars, the colonists have named every animal, mapped every rock, and mined the crystal that keeps two planets warm. Six-year-old Sol Vale still taps good-night to the dark, every single night.
The novel and the comic are out now in paperback and on Kindle.
No one is left outside the count.
Read the full novel, or follow the saga issue by issue as a full-color comic. Each chapter of the novel becomes its own comic.
by Stephen Bui
When Drill 9 cracks the roof of a city three billion years old, everything depends on the one human who has ever spoken to the world below: a six-year-old boy, and the good-night rhythm he has always tapped out into the dark.
182 pages · 8 illustrated plates
Ages 10 to 14
Story by Stephen Bui · Illustrated by Max Cole
Far from home, a sister must protect the brother entrusted to her. Juno Vale is twelve, and her name is on the record beside Sol's. One season away. One promise to keep.
44 full-color story pages · 6 × 9 in
Ages 9 to 12 and up
The town square. The boulder has been there longer than anyone.
Going outside is ordinary now. Rovers roll out every week, kids ride along with the survey crews, and the dark is just the dark. Everything out there has been counted.
The crystal that holds warmth the way a battery holds charge. Mars mines it. Earth pays for it.
The kind machine that counts every warm and breathing soul, and has never once said the words I do not know.
Drill 9 and its convoy, headed farther out than anyone has ever gone. The Vale family goes too.
Chapter Two · Drive Out
Chapter Three · The Thing in the Rock
Chapter Seven · The Gift of Heat
Most of them have never seen Earth. One of them still remembers rain.
Keeps the roster and keeps her promises. Done, logged, next.
Waves at the dark. Taps good-night to it. Sees first.
The first child born on Mars. Jokes to hide fear, fixes anything with wheels.
Counts everything, and always says the true number.
Three years on Mars and still Earth-hearted. The only kid who remembers rain.
Asks the one question the grown-ups forgot to.
A courtly robot with a GOOD JOB sticker, who means every word of it.
Filed under rock for fifteen years. Meet them in Book One.
“A neighbor is not someone you understand. A neighbor is someone you knock for.”
And every chapter becomes a full-color comic issue, so readers can meet the saga whichever way they like.
One email for each new book or comic issue. Nothing else.