Moon of Memory

Karl Barstac has one destination left in the solar system. Mars is closed to him, Earth is locked behind the New System’s laws, and deep space is strangled by patrol nets. Only Deimos remains — a barren rock where the mist-like Martians are said to grant dreams to the lost, and where no one returns unchanged. He fights his way to freedom with a weapon he spent ten years building in secret, determined never to be taken alive again. But his escape is interrupted by Marian Sayers, the reckless daughter of one of the system’s richest industrialists. She saves him from certain capture and insists on joining his flight to Deimos. Her fascination with the infamous Barstac seems romantic, almost reckless. He sees her as a convenience, perhaps even a shield. Yet on the lonely approach to the moon, as the red planet falls away behind them, it becomes clear she has her own purpose. Deimos is not a refuge in any simple sense. The Martians who dwell there do not govern with weapons or laws. They work on memory itself. In their drifting cities of vapor and music, old wounds surface, buried childhoods return, and long-forgotten moments take on new weight. For a man who has defined himself by violence, the recovery of happiness may be more dangerous than any prison sentence. Moon of Memory presses its characters into a confrontation neither expected. Barstac believes he has nothing left to lose. Marian believes she understands exactly what she is doing. On Deimos, both are forced to face what cannot be outrun. Bryce Walton published widely in the American science fiction magazine market from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Walton often brought psychological intensity into planetary settings, favoring damaged protagonists placed in morally charged situations. In stories such as The Ultimate World and others, he explored the inner fracture beneath outward adventure.