Between the Strokes of Night

TO DEFEAT THE IMMORTALS,
YOU MUST BECOME AN IMMORTAL

After the Nuclear Spasm in the 21st century, homo sapiens was extinct, save for a tiny remnant scattered in small, primitive space colonies. At first Solar Humanity had only one goal: survival. But when the battle for existence was won, humankind began moving outward in slow, multi-generation space ships, and as the millennia passed, planet-based civilizations emerged in many star systems.

In the year 27,698 A.D., to these new worlds come the Immortals, beings with strange ties to ancient Earth, beings who seem to live forever, who can travel light years in daysand who use their strange powers to control the existence of ordinary mortals.

On the planet Pentecost, a small group sets out to find and challenge the Immortals. But in the search they themselves are changed: as Immortals, they discover a new threat, not just to themselves, but to the galaxy itself. j

"... one of the very best hard science fiction writers in the world."
Kirn Stanley Robinson

"One of the field's most inventively readable practicing scientists... provides his customary sterling performance.... Sheffield clothes the most advanced speculations of modern science in alluring form."
 The Washington Post Book World

"One of the most imaginative, exciting talents to appear on the SF scene...."
Publishers Weekly

Cover art by David Mattingly

Trade

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, November 2002

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-7434-3568-0

Copyright 2002 by Charles Sheffield

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
https://www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights
http://www.webwrights.com

To Rose and Toria
Lying asleep between the strokes of night,
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head . . .

—Augustus Swinburne

Baen Books by CHARLES SHEFFIELD:

Between the Strokes of Night
The Amazing Dr. Darwin
My Brother's Keeper
The Compleat McAndrew
Convergent Series
Transvergence
The Mind Pool
The Spheres of Heaven
Proteus in the Underworld
Borderlands of Science
The Web Between the Worlds