*Indeed, the question of scale accounts for much of the Charonian difficulty in being able to perceive humans.
Somewhere in the distant past, the Adversary broke into the Charonian wormhole network and cut a massive swath of destruction, smashing into Spheres and feeding on their energy sources, leaving wrecked Multisystems in its wake. After the first horrific onslaught wiped out most of the Spheres, the Charonians learned to fight back—and to hide. But the war did not end so much as peter out. The Adversary still feeds on Charonian Spheres whenever it can.
One hundred forty-seven years before the book opens, the Adversary found the Shattered Sphere and ate it. The Shattered Sphere, parent to the Multisystem that holds Earth, gave a warning, then killed itself before the Adversary could make a link to other systems. When the Shattered Sphere died, its system was wrecked. Dead planets, rogue stars, and dead Charonians wheeled through space.
After killing the Shattered Sphere, the Adversary unit responsible for the attack withdrew to a truncated wormhole and remained there. The Adversary unit lived in slow-time conditions where perhaps one year Adversary time is equivalent to a century of our time. It was “asleep” for most of that 147 years, inert, as seen from the outside Universe.
However, the Earth’s arrival in the Multisystem created a disturbance in the wormhole net that stimulated the Adversary to wakefulness. Then, the human-caused interference was loud and indiscriminate. It served to illuminate the Shattered Sphere system links to the Multisystem, making the revivable wormholes clearly visible.
This gave the Adversary a wonderful guide to a new system to invade, a trail which it is following as The Shattered Sphere opens. The Adversary is preparing to make a transit of normal space heading straight for the main, default wormhole link, the one that produced the most clear and powerful signal—that is, the link between Lone World of Solitude to the Multisystem. The Adversary has taken five years to awaken and now is preparing to attack. The Multisystem Charonians laid low until there was no question that an attack was coming. Once there was no doubt, they prepared to meet it.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Roger MacBride Allen
Author’s Note & Acknowledgements
“Have you finished The Shattered Sphere yet?”
That is the question I have been asked more than any other since The Ring of Charon came out. Readers, friends, editors, agents, and all sorts of other people have wanted to know. I am more pleased than you can know that the answer is now “yes.” Here it is.
To everyone who has been patient—and impatient— for this book, let me say thank you. I hope that the results have been worth the wait.
Special thanks are due to my editor, Debbie Notkin, and to Beth Meacham, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tom Doherty, and the entire staff at Tor Books. Now, at long last, I can stop hiding from them. Thanks also, once again, to Linda Silk, whose artwork graced the advance reading copies. Thanks to my parents, Tarn and Scottie, for their comments on the manuscript.
And finally, thanks also to Eleanore Maury Fox, to whom this book is dedicated. She read the original manuscript and provided a great deal of firm and much-needed advice. There are, needless to say, a lot of other reasons for me to say thanks to Eleanore, but that’s another story—one that isn’t anywhere near done yet.
—Roger MacBride Allen, London, August 1993
About the author
Roger MacBride Allen (born September 26, 1957) is an American science fiction author. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and grew up in Washington, D.C., graduating from Boston University in 1979. His father is American historian and author Thomas B. Allen.
Also By Roger MacBride Allen
Series
Allies and Aliens
The Torch of Donor (1985)
Rogue Powers (1986)
* Allies and Aliens (1995) collects The Torch of Donor and Rogue Powers
Hunted Earth
The Ring of Charon (1990)
The Falling World (TBA)
Caliban
Isaac Asimov's Caliban (1993)
Isaac Asimov's Inferno (1994)
Isaac Asimov's Utopia (1996)
Chronicles of Solace
The Depths of Time (2000)
The Ocean of Years (2002)
The Shores of Tomorrow (2003)
BSI Starside
BSI Starside: The Cause of Death (2006)
BSI Starside: Death Sentence (2007)
BSI Starside: Final Inquiries (2008)
Corellian (Star Wars)
Star Wars: Ambush at Corellia (1995)
Star Wars: Assault at Selonia (1995)
Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint (1995)
Stand-alone Novels
Orphan of Creation (1988)
Farside Cannon (1988)
The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (1989), with David Drake
Orphan of Creation (1991)
Supernova (1991), with Eric Kotani
The Modular Man (1992), accompanying the novel is an essay by Isaac Asimov "Intelligent Robots and Cybernetic Organisms."
Historical
Time Capsule: The Book of Record (2010) with Thomas B. Allen
Mr. Lincoln's High Tech War (2008) with Thomas B. Allen
Hunted Earth Omnibus Page 90
