(Ebook) World Engine: Destroyer by Baxter Stephen ISBN 9781473223202, 1473223202

(Ebook) World Engine: Destroyer by Baxter Stephen ISBN 9781473223202, 1473223202

In the year 2570, a sleeper will wake . . .

In the mid-21st century, the Kernel, a strange object on a
five-hundred-year-orbit, is detected coming from high above the plane of
the solar system. Could it be an alien artefact? In the middle of
climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts -
but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated
would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more
is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns . . .

By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by
advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the
natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps. It is not an age for
expansion; there are only small science bases beyond the Earth. But
this is a world you would want to live in: a Star Trek without the stars.

After 500 years the Kernel returns, and a descendant of Stoney, who Malenfant will call Emma II,
mounts a mission to see what became of Malenfant. She finds him still
alive, cryo-preserved . . . His culture-shock encounter with a
conservative future is entertaining . . . But the Kernel itself turns
out to be attached to a kind of wormhole, through which Malenfant and
Emma II, exploring further, plummet back in time, across five billion
years . .