A NASA team has discovered alien ruins buried in the canyons of Mars, at the site called Vulcan’s Forge. The first man who touched them died making them very, very interesting. NASA needs to figure out who left them, and what they might mean to Earth exploration.
Tau Wolfsinger is the NASA researcher to do that. Brilliant and intuitive, he’s as much an outsider at the agency as he has been everywhere, all his life. Nobody likes using him, but he’s the best.
What Tau doesn’t know is that the Mars ruins aren’t the first of their kind. The others are in the hands of the Davos Group, a shadowy international organization whose members have been hiding similar artifacts for decades, trying to unlock their secrets. Tau has sworn that his talents will not be put to military use, but dangerous people are watching him now, and they do not intend to be stopped.
“Strap in, and get ready for an exciting ride.”—William C. Dietz
“Balfour expertly speculates on many fronts that make NASA and the Martian environment credible. . . . Tau and his trip to Mars make a good story.”—The Denver Post
Author
Bruce Balfour
Bruce Balfour should be considered artificially intelligent and dangerous, having been trained in AI and employed in that field by NASA. He sold his first short stories to Twilight Zone Magazine in 1982. As he is unable to hold a job, he’s been a test driver, freelance journalist, comic book writer, strategic planner, systems manager, software development manager, and computer game designer with bestselling titles such as Neuromancer, Wasteland, The Dagger of Amon Ra, and Outpost. His first novel was Star Crusader. He lives in a think tank slightly north of San Francisco with his wife, two stepdaughters, dog, hedgehog, and numerous voices in his head. He has traveled extensively at ground level throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Yucatan Peninsula. He has also traveled extensively at high altitudes aboard NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory
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