The Age of Death ended countless millennia ago. No longer burdened by
limited lifespans, the immortal humans who populate inhabited space now
have the luxury to travel vast distances effortlessly and to tinker with
the intricate mechanics of space time. But one such experiment in
quantum physics has had a catastrophic and unanticipated result,
creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum--a region of new
physics--with the frightening potential to devour countless inhabited
solar systems.
Tchicaya abandoned his home world four thousand years ago to travel the
universe, freely choosing, as have others of his bent, to endure the
hardships of distance and loneliness for the sake of knowledge and
experience. Aboard the Rindler, a starship trawling the border of the
all consuming novo-vacuum, he feels his endless life has new purpose.
For the Rindler is the center for the scientific study the phenomenon--a
common ground for Preservationists and Yielders alike, those working to
halt and destroy the encroaching worlds-eater...and those determined to
investigate its marvels while allowing its growth to continue unchecked.
Tchicaya has allied himself firmly with the latter camp.
The passing decades--and inevitable expansion of the void--widen the
great rift between the two factions, intensifying what was once simply
ideological differences into something more angry, explosive, and
dangerous. And the arrival of Tchicaya's fiery first love, Mariama, and
her immediate embracing of the Preservationist cause, intensifies an
inner turmoil he has been struggling with since his distant childhood.
But everything onboard the Rindler--and, ultimately, in the inhabited
universe itself--is on the cusp of further cataclysmic change, as the
Yielders' explorations threaten to transform discord into violent action
and potential xenocide.
For new evidence suggests that something unthinkable is developing at an
astounding rate deep within the mysterious, 600-light-years-wide
void--something neither Tchicaya and his compatriots nor Mariama and
hers could ever have imagined possible: life.
