"One of science fiction"s most reliable practitioners" ("San Francisco Chronicle") continues his saga of space exploration. The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth"s fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. Now Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter Martians and then the mysterious Others, and her colleagues struggle to find a way, using nineteenthcentury technology, to reclaim the future that has been stolen from them.