For Ariel Reich

Every SF writer should be lucky enough to have a good friend who is both a Ph.D. in physics and a lawyer specializing in intellectual property.

Thanks, Ari, for helping me launch the Argo on its relativistic flight, work out the Lagrange points for the Quintaglio system, design a chemical structure for a new form of matter, and prosecute an extraterrestrial defendant.

This novel coalesced from my primordial cloud of ideas with the help of editors Susan Allison at Ace and Dr. Stanley Schmidt at Analog; Richard Curtis; Dr. Ariel Reich; fellow writers J. Brian Clarke, James Alan Gardner, Mark A. Garland, and Jean-Louis Trudel; proofreader extraordinaire Howard Miller; and my usual incisive manuscript readers: Ted Bleaney, David Livingstone Clink, Terence M. Green, Edo van Belkom, Andrew Weiner, and, most of all, my lovely wife, Carolyn Clink.

There would be hell to pay.

The gravity had already been bled off, and Keith Lansing was now floating in zero-g. Normally he found that experience calming, but not today. Today, he exhaled wearily and shook his head. The damage to Starplex would cost billions to repair. And how many Commonwealth citizens were dead? Well, that would come out in the eventual inquest — something he wasn't looking forward to one bit.

All the amazing things they had discovered, including .first contact with the darmats, could still end up being overshadowed by politics — or even interstellar war.

Keith touched the green GO button on the console in front of him.