June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention who leaves home to begin grueling astronaut training at the National Space Program. Younger by two years than her classmates at Peter Reed, the school on campus named for her uncle, she flourishes in her classes but struggles to make friends and find true intellectual peers. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space stationโand a hard-won sense of belongingโbut is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncleโs fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten the crew, June alone has evidence that makes her believe they are still alive.
She seeks out James, her uncleโs former protรฉgรฉ, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiryโs fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the relationship that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cellโs fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything theyโve worked so hard to createโand any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive.
A propulsive narrative of one womanโs persistence and journey to self-discovery, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship, and the costs of human ingenuity.