<p><em>The starstream is beautiful. But beauty turns deadly when an ancient AI bent on destruction uses it to travel uptime, to humanity&rsquo;s future.</em></p><p>The Mindaru are dead. Or so exiled-Earthman John Bandicut and his alien companions believe, after their intervention to save the Orion Nebula and surrounding worlds. But now a part of this ancient and malicious AI colony is swarming toward the present from its birthplace deep in the past. Their opening: a temporal disturbance in the starstream, a hyperspatial thoroughfare used by myriad civilizations. The disturbance emanates from the planetary defenses of nearby Karellia, whose people know nothing of the starstream or the galaxy-threatening Mindaru.</p><p>Only Bandicut and his friends have the knowledge and experience to act. But when several of the company go missing, he and Li-Jared must team with the pandimensional Ruall and her gokat&mdash;the oddest aliens Bandicut has met since the shadow-people&mdash;and journey to Karellia to find a way to cut off the timestream.</p><p>Meanwhile, on Shipworld, the &ldquo;missing&rdquo; Ik meets another human of Earth&mdash;a former lover of Bandicut&rsquo;s&mdash;and embarks with her on a perilous mission far back into deep time, seeking a way to stop the Mindaru at their source.</p><p><em>The Chaos Chronicles</em> returns at last with part one of a heartstopping, two-part adventure. Concluded in <em>Crucible of Time</em>&mdash;coming soon from Nebula-nominated Jeffrey A. Carver!</p>