Two centuries into the future, the Hundred Concerns, a group of powerful corporations that dominate galactic commerce, have pressured the Commonwealth of Humans into signing a pact with the Haluk, a conquering alien race with nefarious designs. Among the few people who recognize the malevolent intent of the aliens is hotheaded maverick Helly Frost. To prove that the Haluk have created demiclones--genetically engineered individuals who are perfect human replicas--Helly travels to the Sagittarius Whorl, a fearsome region of the galaxy hostile to every form of life. But he must find crucial pieces of evidence that will expose the Haluk plot. Instead, he discovers something far darker than he had ever imagined. . . . "A WRITER OF EXCEPTIONAL PERCEPTION AND POWER." --JEAN M. AUEL s into the future, the Hundred Concerns, a group of powerful corporations that dominate galactic commerce, have pressured the Commonwealth of Humans into signing a pact with the Haluk, a conquering alien race with nefarious designs. Among the few people who recognize the malevolent intent of the aliens is hotheaded maverick Helly Frost. To prove that the Haluk have created demiclones--genetically engineered individuals who are perfect human replicas--Helly travels to the Sagittarius Whorl, a fearsome region of the galaxy hostile to every form of life. But he must find crucial pieces of evidence that will expose the Haluk plot. Instead, he discovers something far darker than he had ever imagined. . . . Two centuries into the future, the Hundred Concerns, a group of powerful corporations that dominate galactic commerce, have pressured the Commonwealth of Humans into signing a pact with the Haluk, a conquering alien race with nefarious designs. Among the few people who recognize the malevolent intent of the aliens is hotheaded maverick Helly Frost. To prove that the Haluk have created demiclones--genetically engineered individuals who are perfect human replicas--Helly travels to the Sagittarius Whorl, a fearsome region of the galaxy hostile to every form of life. But he must find crucial pieces of evidence that will expose the Haluk plot. Instead, he discovers something far darker than he had ever imagined. . . . Julian May has written numerous books, including the four books of The Saga of Pliocene Exile, the two books of Intervention, and The Galactic Milieu Trilogy. She has also collaborated with Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley on the successful fantasy novel Black Trillium. Ms. May lives in Bellevue, Washington. SAGITTARIUS WHORL—The Rampart Worlds: Book 3 (Excerpt) Behold a comatose human guy in a dystasis tank, hooked to a psychotronic apparatus that plays the same lovely dream over and over and over and over. He is being genetically engineered. That much he knows, because he's been in one of the damned vats before3—sometime, somewhere. The details are a mystery. He drifts in the glass coffin of bubbly oxygen-charged goo, too stoned by the drugs to react rationally during his brief interludes of semiconsciousness. The wakeful bits, when he manages to force open his eyes and peer myopically through the perfluorocarbon liquid, are fuzzy and surreal and punctuated by stabs of fear and helpless anger. During them, the floater recalls one vivid short-term memory snippet . . . He sits in a smoke-filled bar in a hollow asteroid in the distant Sagittarius Whorl, and the Haluk smiles at him as his consciousness starts to drain away. He remembers his despairing certainty, in the final instant before oblivion, that the aliens are probably going to subject him to something outrageously weird this time around, having failed to finish him off during their previous assaults and batteries. He squirms in the dystasis tank, making a futile attempt to swim up, push off the lid, and break free. But his limbs and trunk are firmly clamped in an upright frame. Only his head, gripped less tightly, is able to move a little. He remembers a few more things. He can swim. He can cook. He can pilot a starship. He can ride a horse. He's a disgrace. He's a lawyer. He's a scuba diver. He's a zillionaire. He was a cop. He was a suicidal drunk. He was a political gadfly. He was . . . doing something that got him in deepest shit. When he finishes wrenching his head around uselessly, he sees another transparent-walled container next to his own. Inside it another body is dimly visible in reddish womb-light, a companion in dystasis. Straining, he tries to get a better view of the other person, but finds it impossible. His mouth opens in a silent roar of frustration. With his lungs and the rest of his respiratory tract full of liquid, his vocal cords are as impotent as those of an unborn baby. The dystasis monitoring equipment detects his frantic muscle contractions and the hormonal flood that indicates an agitated mental state. Naughty, naughty! His struggles are disrupting the genetic engineering procedure. The apparatus programs deeper anesthesia. He plum