Permanence

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Writing is not really a solitary activity, so thanks are due to many people who helped make this book happen: my editor, David Hartwell; my agent, Donald Maass; Moshe Feder and Rob Stauffer for production help; and as always the clever and relentless critics of Cecil Street. Thanks to the unruly mob at Open Cola for indulging my unusual lunchtime conversations. And especially, thanks to Janice for putting up with the uneven and sometimes bewildering creative process that is novel writing.

It is expedient that there be gods; therefore, let us believe in them.

— Ovid

THE DISCOVERY THAT made interstellar travel possible and an interstellar civilization inevitable, was made in 1997; but at the time no one recognized its significance.

Maria Teresa Ruiz, an astronomer at the Universidad de Chile, was searching for white dwarf stars when she spotted something unusual. Thirty light-years away, in the constellation Hydra, a very faint red pinprick of light lay adrift. Its spectrum didn't show titanium oxide, which would have marked it as a red dwarf star. Instead, Ruiz found the unmistakable signature of lithium in its atmosphere— an impossibility for any real star. She named the object Kelu-1, the first free-floating brown dwarf ever seen.

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