Plot overview
A group of xeno-archaeologists, together with interstellar pilot Priscilla Hutchins, attempt to unravel the mysteries surrounding tremendous monuments left near severalPlot summary
Background
Humanity was introduced to the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life with the discovery of an alien statue onPlot
The story primarily follows Priscilla Hutchins – also known as "Hutch" – a prestigious starship pilot for the Academy (the organization responsible for many on- and off-world scientific endeavors). Hutch receives orders to take the Academy ship "Winckelmann" and evacuate the final archaeological team on the planet Quraqua. This evacuation is the result of a complicated series of political maneuvers, and is not favored by the Academy, which until this point had conducted extensive surveys of the planet in an attempt to learn about the former alien inhabitants of the world. The now-extinct Quraquans had a complex history spanning tens of thousands of years, and scientists had expected to have an unlimited timeframe for scientific discovery. Instead, they were being driven out after only 28 years, so that Quraqua could be terraformed; as the most Earth-like planet discovered so far, there was a tremendous pressure to begin transforming it into a New Earth, due to the deteriorating conditions of Earth itself. A total evacuation was called for, due to the nature of the terraforming process. Many nuclear devices were to be detonated in the planet's polar ice caps, in order to raise the world's sea level and bring about a warming climate change. This terraforming effort was being led by the wealthy corporation, Kosmik. Just before Hutch was set to leave Earth, the science team on Quraqua – led by Henry Jacobi – made a significant discovery. They uncovered a series of carvings that depicted mostly the native Quraquans, but additionally, they discovered one that bore an uncanny resemblance to the statue on Iapetus – presumably, one of the Monument-Makers. Even more perplexing, the apparent Monument-Maker took the form of a god of death in the artwork. Given this startling connection between the Quraquans and the Monument-Makers, the Academy desperately tried to postpone the terraforming process, but overwhelming political pressure prevented this from happening. Instead, one of the leading experts on the Monument-Makers, Richard Wald, joined Hutch on the voyage to Quraqua, so he could lend his expertise to the dig during the little time they had remaining. After a journey through space lasting nearly a month, Hutch and Richard arrived at the Quraqua star system. Before landing on the planet, however, Richard wanted to explore a unique feature on the planet's moon: a giant "Monument" that had been named "Oz." Oz superficially resembled a city, composed of giant cubic and rectangular structures. These structures, however, had no interior space and no exterior features. Until this point, nobody in the scientific community had been able to offer any theories about Oz's existence or construction. Many scientists, including Richard, did not even believe it was a product of the Monument-Makers; all of the other known Monuments were elegant and many were floating in space, and this faux-city was crude and unwieldy by comparison. But with the discovery of the depiction of a Monument-Maker on the planet below, Richard was intent on reevaluating Oz, in the hope of finding a definite link between the two cultures. In the end, they discovered several facts: (a) The monument was built approximately in the year 9000 B.C. (b) Many of the structures featured damage and mysterious scorch-marks, which also dated to roughly 9000 B.C. (c) The "city's" layout was perfectly symmetrical and composed of regular cubic units, with the notable exception of two cylindrical towers. (d) One of the towers held a short inscription that was in one of the ancient languages of the Quraquans. This was bewildering because the Quraquans never developed space travel; someone else must have inscribed it. Although they could identify the language, they could not read the inscription. After investigating Oz, Hutch and Richard made their way to Quraqua's surface. Hutch made one more attempt to get the terraforming operation postponed by contacting the terraforming project's director, Melanie Truscott, who resided in a space station in orbit around Quraqua. Unfortunately, Truscott is dead-set on adhering to her orders, and refuses once again to delay the operation. Faced with this reality, Hutch attempts to fulfill her mission quickly and efficiently – evacuate the remaining Academy personnel, equipment, and artifacts from the surface before the deadline. Her efforts are hampered by the fact that many of the scientists want to squeeze every second they can from their remaining time, and are reluctant to depart until it is absolutely necessary. The science team on the surface was excavating "The Temple of Winds," a sprawling complex that served many different functions over its thousands of years of history. The Temple was originally above ground, but tectonic forces had lowered it below sea level. Consequently, the archaeology team was based in an underwater dome structure, and the excavation of the site had to deal with slow movement, and shifting mud and silt – unusual obstacles. Their main mission at the time was to search for more examples of "Linear C," the language of the mysterious inscription on Oz. The team's philologist, Maggie Tufu, was convinced that she could decode the message if they could just find some more substantial examples of text to add to their scant library. To accomplish this, the team was excavating at break-neck pace deeper and deeper into the unexplored temple. Meanwhile, Hutch familiarized herself with the personnel while taking load after load of artifacts and scientists up to the "Winckelmann" via the ship's shuttlecraft, "Alpha." Richard was also brought up to speed on the history of Quraqua. Although the society existed for many thousands of years, they never achieved a high level of technology, but rather stagnated for long periods of time, and experienced many Dark Ages. In particular, there were several recorded "discontinuities," where it appeared that some mysterious and rapid disaster befell the planet. One such event coincided with the construction and damaging of Oz. The dig team had just discovered a potentially significant artifact (a printing press that could unlock the Linear C language), when disaster struck. Convinced that the Academy team would willfully ignore the terraforming deadline, the Kosmik operation decided to give them a demonstration of the dangers of remaining on Quraqua. They willfully nudged a small comet out of orbit that crashed into the sea, creating a tsunami that caused significant damage to the dig site. The personnel had enough warning to shelter themselves, but the wave buried the printing press before they could excavate it. Angered, Hutch and her new friend Janet Allegri created a faux-comet out of packing foam and launched it from orbit at the Kosmik space station. This caused a panic and evacuation of the station, but no physical damage. Melanie Truscott, director of the station, secretly decided that she couldn't very well hold a grudge for being played by her own game. Around this time, Richard made some inquiries to a colleague who was studying the planet Nok. It would come to be known that Nok, in addition to Quraqua, had apparently suffered mysterious "discontinuities" in its long and troubled history, and a pattern emerged from this information: a period of roughly 8,000 years lay between each discontinuity. In addition, a number of new Monuments were discovered in deep orbit around Nok – a series of free-floating, enormous cubes, which were scorched and damaged – very reminiscent of Oz. With the printing press buried, many on the team felt defeated, but many others were more determined than ever to excavate the machines. The evacuation continued but Henry and several others were not quite able to load the machines and themselves by the time the deadline passed, and the nuclear devices were detonated at the planet's poles. In the end, the presses were retrieved and all of the personnel made it out – with the exception of Richard, Hutch's friend and the expert on the Monument-Makers. This angered many of the team, and there were differing opinions as to who held the most blame for Richard's death: Henry, for pushing his team too hard in the face of danger; Maggie, for her insistence that the alien machines had to be recovered; or even Hutch, who Henry felt had only hurt the situation by her desperate pleas to leave well enough alone and get out of harm's way. Fortunately, Maggie was soon able to decipher the perplexing inscription from Oz: "Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the eye." A was a mythical beast on Quraqua, and the passage referred to a part of a stellar constellation – it pointed the way to the home of the Monument-Makers. Using the out-of-place cylindrical towers on Oz as waypoint markers, Hutch and Frank (the second-in-command of the Quraqua expedition) were able to make a list of potential stars that the passage might be referring to. Then with a powerful radio telescope, they surveyed all the candidates and found one that was broadcasting a faint artificial transmission – Beta Pacifica. Ecstatic, the Academy quietly approved an urgent mission to investigate the star system. The mission would consist of Hutch, Frank, Maggie, Janet, and George Hackett, another veteran from Quraqua. At the last minute, they received orders from the government to halt their mission – apparently, the idea of charging into the potential heart of an unknown space-faring civilization was something they didn't trust to an Academy scout ship – but the crew willfully ignored the instruction and leaped into hyperspace on their weeks-long journey to Beta Pacifica. Specifically, they knew that the source of the radio transmission originated not on a planet, but at a point in space roughly 15 AU from the star. On the long journey, the five crewmates grew quite close, and a romance blossomed between Hutch and George. Upon arrival at Beta Pacifica, disaster struck again. They emerged from their jump extremely close to a mysterious object in space, a vast black mass larger than Earth's moon which, inexplicably, the instruments claimed had no measurable mass. At their current velocity, there was no way to divert from the object in time, and the crew resigned themselves to a quick death via collision. Their death never came, however, because they somehow passed "through" the object – although not without suffering heavy damage in the process. They lost many ship's systems and sent out a general distress call to the nearest human presences, at Quraqua and Nok. When they received word that rescue would be slow in coming from Nok, the crew felt dismayed and helpless. At one point it appeared as if they would run out of air before rescue arrived, but Hutch managed to remedy the problem at the last minute. Eventually, help arrived not from Nok, but from Quraqua, in the form of their former foe, Melanie Truscott. Truscott had been accompanying Kosmik employees back to Earth when she diverted her course to lend assistance to the crew of the "Winckelmann." At first, Truscott was unwilling to stay in the Beta Pacifica system for any reason, because she was anxious to complete her mission to return her batch of employees to Earth, but quickly changed her mind after a rapid series of tantalizing discoveries made it clear that this star system was of major importance. First, they determined that the object that Hutch's crew ran into was a vast dish-shaped telescope, and that the alien radio transmission emanated from its center. Further, the dish was one of eight such objects orbiting the star, although the rest appeared to be defunct. In addition, the structure was "organic" in nature, and had already nearly healed the damage caused by the impact event. The reason the ship survived, and the reason the object registered as having so little mass, was because the dish was extremely thin. At the present time, the telescope array was not pointed at any particular object in the sky, but they determined that roughly 10,000 years ago, the network would have been observing theCharacters
*Priscilla Hutchins *Frank Carson *Janet Allegri *Richard Wald *Henry Jacobi *Linda Thomas *Maggie Tufu: Chief philologist or code breaker. *Melanie Truscott: Director of "Kosmik operation". *Cal Hartlett: Financial analyst with the brokerage firm of Forman & Dyer.References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Engines of God 1994 American novels 1994 science fiction novels Ace Books books American science fiction novels Fiction set on Iapetus (moon) Large Magellanic Cloud in fiction Novels by Jack McDevitt Xenoarchaeology in fiction