**Humanity's complex relationship with technology spirals out of control in this first book of an all-new series from "the owner of the most powerful imagination in science fiction" (Ken Follett).** **** In 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation--including starships--virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful--until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world eighty-nine light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem. . . . Bursting with tension and big ideas, *Salvation* is the first book of an all-new series that highlights...
Copyright © 2018 by Peter F. Hamilton
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published in the United Kingdom by Pan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Hamilton, Peter F., author.
Title: Salvation / Peter F. Hamilton.
Description: New York : Del Rey, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009573 | ISBN 9780399178764 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780399178771 (Ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6058.A5536 S25 2018 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009573
Ebook ISBN 9780399178771
Cover design and illustration: Anna Kochman, based on an image © agsandrew/Shutterstock
v5.3_r1.2
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Earth Calling
The Assessment Team
Juloss
The Assessment Team
Callum and Yuri
Juloss
The Assessment Team
Yuri’s Race Against Time
Juloss
The Assessment Team
The Case of Alik’s Favor
Juloss
The Assessment Team
The Death of Cancer
Juloss
The Assessment Team
Feriton Kayne’s Spy Mission
The Assessment Team
Juloss
The Assessment Team
Jio-Feriton Quint
Cast of Characters
Timeline
Dedication
By Peter F. Hamilton
About the Author
EARTH CALLING
Drifting through interstellar space, three light-years out from the star 31 Aquilae, the Neána abode cluster picked up a series of short, faint electromagnetic pulses that lasted intermittently for eighteen years. The early signatures were familiar to the Neána, and faintly worrying: nuclear fission detonations, followed seven years later by fusion explosions. The technological progress of whoever was detonating them was exceptionally swift by the usual metric of emerging civilizations.
Metaviral spawn chewed into the cometry chunks that anchored the vast cluster, spinning out a string of flimsy receiver webs twenty kilometers across. They aligned themselves on the G-class star fifty light-years away, where the savage weapons were being deployed.
Sure enough, a torrent of weak electromagnetic signals was pouring out from the star’s third planet. A sentient species was entering into its early scientific industrial state.
The Neána were concerned that so many nuclear weapons were being used. Clearly, the new species was disturbingly aggressive. Some of the cluster’s minds welcomed that.
Analysis of the radio signals, now becoming analogue audiovisual broadcasts, revealed a bipedal race organized along geo-tribal lines, and constantly in conflict. Their specific biochemical composition was one that, from the Neána perspective, gave them sadly short lives. That was posited as the probable reason behind their faster than usual technological progression.
That there would be an expedition was never in doubt; the Neána saw that as their duty no matter what kind of life evolved on distant worlds. The only question now concerned the level of assistance to be offered. Those who welcomed the new species’ aggressive qualities wanted to make the full spectrum of Neána technology available. They almost prevailed.
The spherical insertion ship that left the cluster—it didn’t know if it was one of many being dispatched, or alone—measured a hundred meters in diameter, a mass comprised of active molecule blocks. It spent three months accelerating up to thirty percent of light speed along a course to Altair—a trip that took just over a hundred years. During the lonely voyage the ship’s controlling sentience continued to monitor the electromagnetic signals coming from the young civilization that was its ultimate goal. It built up an impressive knowledge base of human biology, as well as a comprehensive understanding of their constantly evolving tribal political and economic structures.
When the ship reached Altair, it performed a complex flyby maneuver, which aligned it perfectly on Sol. After that, the physical section of the sentience’s memory that contained all the astrogation data of the flight from the cluster to Altair was jettisoned and the constituent blocks deactivated. Its weakened atomic structure broke apart into an expanding cloud of dust, which was quickly dispersed by Altair’s solar wind. Now, if it was ever intercepted, the insertion ship could never betray the position of the Neána abode cluster—for it no longer knew where it was.