Thousands of years ago, artifacts of the early space age were lost to rising oceans and widespread turmoil. Garnett Baylee devoted his life to finding them, only to give up hope. Then, in the wake of his death, one was found in his home, raising tantalizing questions. Had he succeeded after all? Why had he kept it a secret? And where is the rest of the Apollo cache? Antiquities dealer Alex Benedict and his pilot, Chase Kolpath, have gone to Earth to learn the truth. But the trail seems to have gone cold, so they head back home to be present when the Capella, the interstellar transport that vanished eleven years earlier in a time/space warp, is expected to reappear. With a window of only a few hours, rescuing it is of the utmost importance. Twenty-six hundred passengers—including Alex’s uncle, Gabriel Benedict, the man who raised him—are on board. Alex now finds his attention divided between finding the artifacts and anticipating the rescue of the Capella. But time won’t allow him to do both. As the deadline for the Capella’s reappearance draws near, Alex fears that the puzzle of the artifacts will be lost yet again. But Alex Benedict never forgets and never gives up—and another day will soon come around... Praise for Jack McDevitt and the Alex Benedict Novels “The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” —Stephen King “The Alex Benedict series is reminiscent of some of the work of Isaac Asimov.”— SFRevu “Jack McDevitt is a master of describing otherworldly grandeur.” —The Denver Post “‘Why read Jack McDevitt?’ The question should be: ‘Who among us is such a slow pony that s/he isn’t reading McDevitt?’”—Harlan Ellison “An exemplary merger of mystery and science fiction…An intelligent, provocative entertainment by a man who brings energy, style, and a fresh perspective to everything he writes.”— The Washington Post Book World “You should definitely read Jack McDevitt.”—Gregory Benford “If you love reading good sci-fi and you haven’t read a Jack McDevitt book, you’re really missing out.”— Wired.com “More ghost hunters than an Indiana Jones adventure, with twists that reveal secret after secret.”— The Florida Times-Union “McDevitt imagines the far future with precision and believability.”— Library Journal “McDevitt manages to make the odd coupling of the cozy and the cosmic into effective and moving SF.”— Locus Jack McDevitt is a former naval officer, taxi driver, English teacher, customs officer, and motivational trainer, and is now a full-time writer. He is the author of the Alex Benedict novels, including Firebird . His novel Seeker won a Nebula Award, and he is a multiple Nebula Award finalist. He lives in Georgia with his wife, Maureen. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dates not classified as Common Era (C.E.) are based on the Rimway calendar. PROLOGUE 11,256 C.E. When Alex Benedict graduated high school, his uncle Gabe, the only parent he’d ever known, provided the ultimate gift: a flight to Earth, the home world, the place where everything had started. It was a mixed blessing, though. Alex had a hard time adjusting to interstellar travel, though he didn’t like to admit it. The jumps in and out of transdimensional space upset his stomach. And the constant changes in gravity levels never helped. But there was no way he would pass on the opportunity to see the oceans and mountains so prominent in his reading. And the great cities, Paris and Denver, Berlin and Shanghai. And the Alps and the Grand Canyon. The pyramids, the Great Wall, and the Arkon. And, for Gabe’s sake, he pretended to be enthusiastic about touring the world capital in Winnipeg. What most excited him was that Gabe had promised to include a visit to the Moon. That, of course, had been the stage for everything, where Neil Armstrong had climbed out of Apollo 11, stepped down onto the ground, and delivered his giant-leap statement. But he was surprised to discover, on their arrival, that Armstrong’s footprints were no longer there. “What happened to them?” he asked Gabe. His uncle frowned. “Actually, nobody knows.” Gabe was tall, with black hair beginning to gray, and sharp features that had been hardened by so many years digging into archeological sites under alien suns. “They were there for a while, but they disappeared during the Dark Age. Vandals, probably.” Gabe shook his head. “Idiots.” They were seated at a small round table in an observation lounge, drinking sodas and looking across the shops and hotels and cottages that covered the lunar surface at MoonWorld, the multiplex area reserved for tourists and shielded by a semitransparent dome. A few kilometers away, the cluster of walls and beams and platforms that had been the original Moonbase lay serenely in the vacuum, illuminated by the glow of the home world, which never moved from its position just over the horizon. Alex leaned back in his seat. “Nine thousand years,” he said. “It just doesn’t look that old.” “Time tends to stand still in places like this, Ale