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Orbit of Small Things

Name: Orbit of Small Things
Price: 4.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Author: Arlo Quinn

by Arlo Quinn · published via Smithbook

A repair drone collects the junk in low orbit. One day it finds a bolt that has been waiting for it.

★★★★★ 4.5 · 2 reviews 47 readers English

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★★★★☆

"A short read with a big heart. Great for a lunch break."

tom•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test · verified reader

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What it covers

science fictionrepair droneorbital junkshort novel

About this book

Unit 9 is a small repair drone whose whole job is collecting the loose bolts, lost tools and dead satellites that circle a crowded Earth. It has been doing this for eleven years with a patience its operators never programmed. Then it catches a spanner with a name scratched into the handle, and a message from the astronaut who lost it, and starts to wonder who else is still up there. A short, gentle science fiction story.

Look inside · First chapter

Unit 9 was the size of a microwave oven and had two arms, a net and a very small thruster. It lived in low Earth orbit among forty thousand other objects, most of them rubbish, and its job was to catch the rubbish before the rubbish caught something expensive. It had caught three hundred and twelve bolts, eighty lost tools, one glove and a camera lens cap that still had a fingerprint on it. The operators on the ground called this Unit 9’s collection. Unit 9 did not have a word for what it was do

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Product details

Title: Orbit of Small Things
Author: Arlo Quinn
Format: Digital · browser reader
Language: English
Category: Fantasy & Science Fiction
Delivery: In seconds · to your e-mail
Access: Lifetime · any device
Publisher: Independent · via Smithbook

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Reviews

4.5

★★★★★

2 reviews

5★1

4★1

3★0

2★0

1★0

★★★★☆ · tom•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/30/2026

Sweet

A short read with a big heart. Great for a lunch break.

★★★★★ · nan•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/29/2026

Tiny and perfect

I did not expect to cry over a drone collecting spanners. I did.

About the author

Arlo Quinn

I fix bikes at a little shop in West End, a block back from the river, and I write before work, from about five until the humidity wins. Most of my stories start with something broken and a person stubborn enough to fix it: a relay station on a dead moon, a glass furnace in a flooded city, a bush town where the iron has started to walk. I grew up in Ipswich, read every paperback in the Redbank Plains library by the time I was fourteen, and still think the best crews are the ones that argue about lunch. I share a Queenslander with two housemates, a lot of tools and a possum who lives in the roof and does not pay rent.

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