Publisher's Synopsis
At six in the evening June 28, 2150, Matt Brandon, the second shift mining engineer, began his shift duties and took his seat in a room cluttered with computers, monitors, direct communications equipment, and controls for the mining operations and outside observatory. "Jerry, could you come to satellite communication? I'm getting something strange from Hubble Three. I think Hubble has found something," said Matt. "No use in trying to explain it, I think you need to see this, looks like an asteroid, but it's not in an area where we've seen asteroids this big, and it appears to have come from the Oort Cloud; presently it is on a trajectory from the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt towards the inner planets. When it approaches the gas giants, Jupiter will hurl it back out of the solar system." Astmine Corporation now apprised of the incoming asteroid confirmed to be a hundred miles in length was the focus of the mining entity to bring it back to the moon where it could be mined for its metals. The only problem was the asteroid exhibited strange phenomena, and its composition could not be ascertained. Astmine Corporation sends an expedition to Neptune to retrieve the asteroid to the moon to mine its metals only to find the mystery deepens. Astmine's Corporation's exploration team, led by Dr. Drake Bear, lands on the surface and discovers a door cut into the interior of the rock. The team is met by a computerized holographic figure who looks anything but alien! Bell the computer has guarded his precious cargo for four thousand years. His priorities were to deliver his people to a new star system and to keep them safe. Because of these two prime conditions, Bell had to overrule his programs and in the process became sentient. In time, the team finds that the Methodians have left their solar system because of an impending catastrophe that could also affect the Earth. From this revelation, the greatest collaborative project ever conceived begins. It is led by Drake Bear and Jhrony Odap, captain of the asteroid spaceship. The extraordinary project that they have undertaken to save both the Methodians and the people of Earth is met with increasingly violent resistance from a variety of fringe groups. At one point a bomb explodes and Drake is gravely injured and would have died had it not been for the beautiful Methodian surgeon, Maranie Odap, and Methodian technology. During this intense personal near-death experience, Drake and the empathetic surgeon become forever linked. Not only is this a story of two alien cultures being thrown together for a project supremely important to the survival of both, but also intertwined is an ageless love between two alien species.
