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The Long Quiet at Tern Station

Name: The Long Quiet at Tern Station
Price: 6.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (4 reviews)
Author: Arlo Quinn

by Arlo Quinn · published via Smithbook

Three technicians keep a relay station running on a dead moon. Then, after nine years of silence, the relay picks up a voice.

★★★★★ 4.8 · 4 reviews 88 readers English

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★★★★★

"Once for the story and once to notice all the small repairs. So well built."

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

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What it covers

science fictionspace stationfound familyrepair crew

About this book

Tern Station is a relay on the far side of a moon nobody visits, crewed by three people whose job is to keep the antenna pointed at a home they have not seen in years. Mae Kurtz fixes things. Bartholomew cooks. Joss keeps the logs and pretends not to care. When the relay picks up a human voice from the wrong direction, from somewhere there should be nothing at all, the three of them have to decide whether to answer it. A quiet, warm science fiction novel about work, distance and choosing who you stay with.

Look inside · First chapter

Every morning at station time 0600, Mae Kurtz put on her boots, walked the eighty metres of corridor to the relay room and checked that the big antenna was still pointed at the sun that warmed a planet she had not stood on in nine years. It always was. She checked anyway. That was the job. Tern Station sat on the far side of a moon so small and so dead that the survey had given it a number instead of a name. Three people lived on it. Mae fixed things. Bartholomew cooked, and ran the hydroponics,

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Product details

Title: The Long Quiet at Tern Station
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

4.8

★★★★★

4 reviews

5★3

4★1

3★0

2★0

1★0

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

Read it twice

Once for the story and once to notice all the small repairs. So well built.

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

Bartholomew’s soup

I have never cared this much about a soup in a science fiction book. Brilliant ending.

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

Quiet and huge

Nothing explodes and I could not stop reading. The crew feels like people I know.

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

A patient slow burn

Takes its time, pays off. The antenna scene in the storm is perfect.

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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