Classic sense-of-wonder sf from the author of THE ENGINES OF GOD.

We are alone in the universe.

We have faster-than-light travel. We've been looking for over 1,000 years, and there is simply nothing out there.

The universe is a magnificent, but sterile, wilderness - and it all belongs to us. Maybe we're lucky.

That's the received wisdom, anyway.

A new expedition, investigating a mysteriously aborted mission 27 years earlier, is about to turn that wisdom on its head.