Search Worlds Without End

When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.

THE FERMI ARE AWAKE...

The invention of faster-than-light technology has brought great opportunity, but also great danger.

The Black Horizon conspiracy is broken up, but it still has deadly assets beyond the reach of Earth. As the great powers jostle for advantage, the alien minds known as the Fermi have their own ways of dealing with humans meddling in plans vaster and more ancient than anyone can suspect.

After the Venus catastrophe, John Grant's starship Fighting Chance and the Space Station have reached Apis--but not for long. They barely have time to mourn the dead before they're chased out of the system. The Station begins exploring the systems Black Horizon warned them against--with good reason, as they soon discover.

On Apis, Alliance agent Marcus Owen has a new mission: to communicate with the alien intelligences in the rocks, and to stop anyone else from getting to them first. Everyone knows he's a spy, but he's not going to let that cramp his style. But the scientists investigating the rock find that the Fermi may not be the only alien intelligence on Apis...

Humanity has taken to the stars, using faster-than-light travel to reach distant planets and new worlds. But in the far reaches of the galaxy, John Grant will discover a planet of humans who believe he has travelled not only through space to find them, but time.

On Apis, the mysterious Fermi appear to have vanished, taking with them knowledge of the universe that humanity desires. But Marcus Owen, the robot AI now plagued with sentience, knows that the Fermi would not easily abandon the native life of Apis, and that they won't take kindly to mankind asserting dominance on a world that does not belong to them.