The New York Times bestselling author of Leviathan and Primeval is back at full throttle with an adrenaline-pumping addition to the Event Group thriller series.
The United States is ready to make a triumphant return to the moon, striking out boldly into the solar system in an attempt to regain the confidence of the heady days of the Apollo program. The first of what are to be many missions to the lunar surface was designed to find the frozen water needed to prepare to build a base to launch an assault on Mars.
But a shocking discovery at Shackleton Crater brings the first Prometheus mission to an abrupt halt. Remote robots uncover human skeletal remains and a base that had been destroyed countless millennia ago. The information is sent back to earth where forensic analysis at NASA reveals the corpse to be over seven hundred million years old.
A secret this devastating cannot be kept forever, and the news is leaked to the world. Soon nations are thrown into a head-long collision, pitting governments against their own citizens as the flames of fundamentalism start a conflagration that threatens to engulf the world as a race to return the moon is on.
The Event Group is tasked to unravel the mystery and to offer something that can either explain our ancient visitor or, at least, keep the world from descending into chaos. Colonel Jack Collins once again leads a team of the world's greatest scientists and philosophers on a journey that will take the Event Group to the airless world of space. But while a battle rages over the truth of our heritage, the Event Group realizes that this may not be humanity's war alone. Could something else—someone else—be coming to finish a war that they started almost a billion years ago?