Search Worlds Without End

It is the twenty-first century. Earth's space program is thriving, with a colony in place in the Moon. And then an incredible discovery is made on the lunar farside. A massive structure is being erected by living machines--microscopically small, intelligent, unstoppable, consuming whatever they touch. All who come near them die horribly. Meanwhile, the mysterious structure continues to grow, expand, take shape. And its creators begin to multiply....

Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotech experimentation gone awry, triggering a long-predicted disaster? As riots rage across a panicked Earth, scientists on Earth and on the Moon race to learn the truth before humanity's home is engulfed by the voracious machines and its inhabitants perish in the most terrifying plague ever known.

The launch of the space shuttle Atlantis will make history. Another triumph for the space program, and a political coup: a Russian cosmonaut is scheduled to perform the first spacewalk from an American unit.

The checkout fail-safes are all go. The mission is proceeding like clockwork. The team of American and Russian astronauts are strapped in, the mission specialists in Houston see no hitches. No one knows the real danger.

For as millions of viewers tune in to watch the countdown, there's nothing to indicate that what they're seeing is a prerecorded show. Terrorists have taken over Launch Control at Cape Canaveral and are threatening to blow up the Atlantis in less than three hours unless their demands are met.

Only Colonel "Iceberg" Friese, the mission's former commander, out with a broken foot, knows about the danger to his crew. Unknown to anyone, he's sneaked into the restricted zone. And now it's up to him to stop the clock before the countdown reaches... ignition.

It is the largest oil spill in history: a supertanker crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay. Desperate to avert environmental damage (as well as the PR disaster), the multinational oil company releases an untested designer oil-eating microbe to break up the spill.

What the company didn't realize is that their microbe propagates through the air... and it mutates to consume anything made of petrocarbons: oil, gasoline, synthetic fabrics, plastics of all kinds. And when every piece of plastic begins to dissolve, it's too late....

In shock and grief the last remnants of the human race watched from space as the holocaust of war raged across the face of the Earth. Now the future rested in the hands of three fragile space colonies:

• Aguinaldo--The Philippine L-5 colony whose brilliant biochemist engineered a limitless supply of food.
• Kibalchich--The Soviet space exploration platform that harbors a deadly secret.
• Orbitech 1--The American space factory whose superstrong weavewire could be a lifeline to link the colonies--or a cutting-edge weapon of destruction.

As allies, they could unite to rebuild a better world. As enemies, they could destroy mankind's last hope for survival.

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS--and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world's financial system.

All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

Activist Elizabeth Devane wished for an end to nuclear weapons. Surely, she thought, if they'd known what they were unleashing, the scientists of the Manhattan Project would never have created such a terrible instrument of destruction. But during a protest action, the unthinkable happened: a flash of light, a silent confusion, and Elizabeth awakes to find herself alone in a desolate desert arroyo... and almost fifty years in the past. June 1944. Los Alamos, New Mexico. While the Allies battle in the Pacific and begin the Normandy invasion in Europe, Nazi Germany deviates from the timeline Elizabeth knows and uses its newfound nuclear arsenal against America. Somehow, someway, Elizabeth has been given the chance to put the genie back in the bottle... yet could she--should she--attempt the greatest sabotage in history?

Virtual reality is the technology of the future. Groundbreaking. Dangerous. Almost limitless in its potential. It could replace nuclear power as the most coveted knowledge on the planet. And in a supersecret installation in California, under the most restricted security, one of the top scientists in the field is about to be murdered.

They call themselves Eagle's Claw, one of the most extreme militia groups in the United States. They have infiltrated the Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. And the most frightening display of nuclear terrorism is about to unfold.

At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, Fermilab, Nobel candidate Georg Dumenco is bombarded with enough radiation to kill him within days. FBI Special Agent Craig Kreident knows it was no accident. But he has to prove it. Only Dumenco knows enough to track down his own killers--if he lives long enough.