<DIV><DIV><DIV>The Hugo Award&#8211;nominated novel by &#8220;a hard science fiction writer through and through and one of the very best alive.&#8221; <I>&#8212;</I><I>The Globe and Mail</I><DIV>&nbsp;<DIV>Two months have past since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since&#8212;until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who should we send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn&#8217;t want to meet? <DIV>&nbsp;<DIV>Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder and a biologist so spliced with machinery that he can&#8217;t feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they&#8217;ve been sent to find&#8212;but you&#8217;d give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them. . . . </DIV>