Read an extract from Alex Foster’s sci-fi novel Circular Motion, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club

The drive was quiet. I put on the electronic music I liked but, feeling anxious, soon turned it off. I drove through to morning, along endless chain-link fences, escaping the Arctic Circle to find the sun. Its rise over the highway tundra was freer than anything I’d ever seen. Route 2 bridged the Chatanika, and rush hour traffic began to collect. I’d never been so far from home before. I pressed my phone against the pickup’s windows, taking photos of the big animated billboards. At the end of a mountain tunnel, in low light, Fairbanks appeared. The river was incredibly bright, as if filled with fire, strapped down by bridges, squirming between blue roofs. The city seemed so much hungrier for inhabitants than Keber Creek, so much larger not only in space but in spirit. Yet even as capacious as the city was, I soon hit gridlock. And construction: Even as big as it was, it was being built bigger. Cranes fed on Fairbanks from above. Sawhorses blocked every other road, and men with jackhammers were tearing up the detours. There was no snow. The directions off my phone kept rerouting. My truck seemed to be the only one around that wasn’t driving itself, and nearing the pod station I was taken by lights and arrows, loudspeaker announcements, and the mineral breeze of industry. It took effort to keep my focus on the road in front of me. I parked in the open-air long-term lot and hardly had my duffle out of the truck bed when a passing car honked at me to move. I turned to see the car was empty. It wheeled around into the passenger pickup line as a circuit vessel popped overhead, and I darted across the street toward VISA HELP, DUNKIN’ DONUTS, and PODS—ALL DESTINATIONS.

In the pod station’s domed lobby, a few dozen travelers rested on wooden benches, drinking coffee and staring at their phones. I stood by the door to my platform, anxiously rechecking that I had mapped the right route. There were a dozen circuit vessels crossing over Fairbanks every hour, and you had to be sure to board the pod that would shuttle you up to the vessel you wanted. The pods went up and down, but the vessels never landed—they orbited the Earth, again and again and again. On clear mornings in Keber Creek, I would look up and see their contrails crisscross. Their paths inclined northward or southward to varying degrees, but as a rule, all circuit vessels orbited roughly from east to west. That was the model drawn up by the world’s oldest and largest circuit vessel carrier, the Circumglobal Westward Circuit Group, or CWC, upon whose dreams of commercial empire the westward circuit had first taken its way. It was for CWC flights that Victor Bickle had bought me a day pass, good for arrival and departure at any of CWC’s tens of thousands of pod destinations in fifty-eight countries (even more for US citizens who added special visas to their passports). I knew there were people who viewed circuit travel as a basic necessity (and a single-day pass didn’t cost so much by most people’s standards: around fifty New Dollars for regular users and even less for first-time users off-peak), but I couldn’t imagine ever losing the sense of wonder I presently felt at possessing one.

The platform door to my pod slid open to reveal a revolving door through which several passengers emerged. Some popped their ears. After the last woman exited, I attempted to enter, swinging my duffle ahead of me. I hit the revolving door like a wall.

The woman who’d just depodded called me honey and said, “You gotta scan your ticket to unlock the turnstile.”

She pressed my phone against a small blue panel, the two screens kissing teeth to teeth.

Once through, I found myself alone in a round cabin about three yards across, encircled by a low bench. It wasn’t heated, and I saw no place for luggage. The only compartment I could find was stocked with barf bags.

The wall across from me, which was a screen—all the pod walls were screens—played a promotional montage. It showed people stepping out of pods into various city centers and festivals. I recognized Paris and Hong Kong. A blond kid and his mother were shown exiting a pod in the center of Times Square, and the camera panned up to a bright sky with a circuit vessel approaching—all fuselage, no wings—getting closer and closer until it reached the depth of the screen and burst right out. It was aiming straight for my head. I ducked as the hologram entered the screen behind me with a digital shiver.

Everything was bluer than blue, and the voice said, “Welcome to the world.”

The turnstile locked.

“Excuse me,” I said to no one. “Are there seatbelts or . . .”

As the floor and ceiling began to vibrate, I felt myself growing lighter, rising off the bench. I groped for a handle. Then I noticed my duffle sliding off the bench’s edge. I reached out to it and was knocked forward by an invisible force. I screamed. But my hands didn’t hit the floor. I was weightless. The pod had taken flight.

This is an extract from Alex Foster’s Circular Motion (Grove Press), the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read along with us here.