The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is a science fiction novel by the American writer Becky Chambers, published by Harper Voyager in 2021. It is the fourth book in her Wayfarers series.

The novel takes place at the Five-Hop One-Stop, a refuelling and licensing station on the planet Gora, a world with no life of its own that was settled only because it sits close to a hub where several transit tunnels meet. If the wormhole network is a highway, Gora is the service station along it, and the Five-Hop is where crews stretch their legs, buy fuel and sort out permits. A technical failure then causes nearly all of the satellites above the planet to crash and brings all traffic through the hub to a halt for several days, leaving five travellers stuck together at the station. They include Pei, an Aeluon cargo runner on her way to meet her lover Ashby, the human captain of the Wayfarer, and Speaker, an Akarak trader who works on behalf of others of her species, which has a difficult history behind it. Over the days they are stranded, the five of them deal with their differences, their prejudices and their own problems.

Chambers's Wayfarers books are set in the same interstellar civilisation but follow different casts, and this one stays in a single location for the length of the story. The wider setting is the Galactic Commons, the political arrangement that links the species of the region, and the cast here is drawn from several of those species.