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.