Everyone you've met

Commander Lewis is the ranking officer and first human to step onto Mars; he gives a solemn speech about humanity's road to the stars.

Eagle II is a spaceplane lander carrying six crew to Arabia Terra near Schiaparelli Crater, landing close to two robot cargo landers.

Federal Europe leads in rejuvenation research and fusion is still early there; FESA could not mount a Mars mission for another decade.

Another Ulysses survivor, she moved to Felicity, the women-only planet, and has had many daughters; Wilson did not bother contacting her.

Jeff Baker was the first man to receive Europe's rejuvenation treatment and died amid global publicity.

Humans reached Mars eighty-one years after Apollo 11; the landing site was precisely mapped by satellite and orbital radar.

A survivor of the earlier Ulysses crew, she is Ecological Commissioner for Northwest Asia and refused to join, citing Earth's needs.

Nigel Sheldon is a young man in a homemade pressure suit who appears on Mars behind Eagle II, mocking the crew over radio.

Ulysses is NASA's first interplanetary craft, a 200-meter circular grid of modules powered by a compact fusion generator that enabled a ten-week flight to Mars.

Wilson is NASA's Captain-Pilot of the Eagle II, a former USAF pilot with nine years at NASA, who sacrificed his first marriage and relationship with his child.

A two-meter circular opening hangs above the Martian soil, linking Mars to a physics lab in sunny California.

Chi is one of LionWalker's life partners, a strikingly beautiful young woman who storms out during an argument with Scott.

CST (Compression Space Transport) operates the wormhole gateway stations and trains linking Commonwealth worlds, and is the only company interested in astronomy.

Thick drycoral gives good insulation but grows upward slowly; the Vernons' largest domes still need a couple of meters, expected finished by midsummer.

Dudley is a ninety-two-year-old astronomy professor in his second life, nearing another rejuvenation, with a reputation that is none too high and a timid, cautious nature.

Dyson Alpha is a K-type star 1,240 light-years from Gralmond whose visible light vanished instantly, now emitting only infrared, suggesting an enveloping force field rather than a built solid shell.

Dyson Beta is a second star near Dyson Alpha, also enclosed by a barrier that was intact twenty-five years earlier.

The Dyson Pair are two stars, a K-type and an M-type, that Oxford astronomers found in 2170 had shifted to infrared, indicating alien enclosure by shells.

Dudley's e-butler is a voice-interface assistant that only activates sensors on command; its voice is degrading as his OCtattoo ages.

Destination to which Adam's ordered goods are being shipped by circuitous routes, arriving over the following months.

Freeman Dyson was a twenty-first-century physicist who postulated advanced civilizations would enclose their star to harness all its energy; the Dyson Pair are named for this.

Gralmond is a cold, semifrontier world with a thin atmosphere and about eighteen million people, 240 light-years from Earth, settled in the second expansion phase.

The Commonwealth is a roughly spherical human-settled region four hundred light-years across centered on Earth, and has met several harmless alien species.

Leonida City is Gralmond's capital; the observatory stands ninety kilometers to its east on high moorland.

LionWalker is a wealthy, eccentric amateur astronomer on Tanyata who owns a four-foot reflecting telescope, and is shrewd despite appearances.

Dudley's OCtattoo is an organic-circuitry ear implant in a scarlet and turquoise spiral, over twenty-five years old and starting to degenerate.

Saville, less than ten light-years from Gralmond, will be the next world linked by CST, where a new base is being built for phase three space.

Scott is one of LionWalker's young life partners, an androgynous young man who asks about seeing the Dyson Pair.

Tanyata is an underdeveloped planet at the edge of phase-two space with no university, and is the next world to witness the envelopment.

Verona is the major junction world for this section of phase two space, with gateways to thirty-three planets, and is one of the company-run Big15 industrial worlds.

Wendy is Dudley's wife who urged him to dress warmly and to replace his embarrassing tattoo.

Abadan was a fiasco involving Adam Elvin's resistance cell, milder than later Guardians of Selfhood acts on Far Away.

On November 21, 2344, an attack on grain trains derailed fifteen trains here, killing 480 people, a third permanently, including children without memorycell inserts.

Adam is seventy-five and uses cellular reprofiling to change his appearance regularly; on Velaines he poses as an overweight, unremarkable man called Huw North.

Johansson sends Adam a reliable encrypted warning that Paula Myo is on Velaines.

Genetically modified for the Directorate, this nearly invisible insect is immune to janglepulse and trails a strand relaying audio and images to a processor carried by Renne.

Tokat detective who is hostile and taunts Paula about not recovering Elvin's money.

Special grain trains go through zero-end gateways to dump perfectly good grain into space, keeping food prices high for the market, according to Adam.

The Guardians claim to protect humanity from the Starflyer alien, which they say manipulates the government.

The Foundation settled Huxley's Haven in 2102 to build a stable society by fixing professional aptitudes in people's DNA.

Other Commonwealth worlds despise Huxley's Haven as the Hive; it is legally independent and stays connected through a CST gateway.

It takes over the investigation from local police, who handle crowd control until Ms. Halgarth leaves.

The Velaines chapter is weak, getting around two percent of the vote, and has had no new members for about nine months.

CST's huge planetary station on Earth, built on leased Camp Pendleton land; it rivals the Big15 stations and is the Guardians' effective base in the Commonwealth.

Tokat detective who assists Paula Myo and admires her thoroughness.

Nigel Murphy is a first-life leader of the Velaines seventh chapter of the Party; he is doubtful about direct action and worried about repeating Abadan.

Chief Investigator of the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate, she has hunted Bradley Johansson's group for 134 years without making an arrest.

A middle-aged Asian policewoman caught Sabbah nine years ago and forced him to report the arrival of a terrorist buying weapons, then arrested him anyway.

An arms dealer and car dealer, she is rejuvenated to look early twenties, and says police-issue combat armor needs ten days to two weeks.

Renne sat in a booth shielded by an e-seal and ran the spindlefly's processor.

Roundup is the codename for the police team targeting Adam Elvin, operating from room 5A5 at Tokat police headquarters.

Sabbah is a first-life member of the seventh chapter who resents his poor life and was coerced into informing on Adam.

A hidden, unmarked, fashionable Paris club in an alley, with a long queue, deafening music and sweltering heat.

The SI does not normally deal with individuals; it declined Paula's request to decrypt the message for lack of resources.

Kavanagh is Lancier's skinny bodyguard, with decades of petty violent convictions; he uses sophisticated sweeping and screening equipment.

According to the clans, the Starflyer survived the arkship crash, ignited the flare in Far Away's sun, and now hides among humanity in the Commonwealth.

Police officer who had watched the dealership for three weeks and insisted he saw arms go into the warehouse.

Velaines is a phase one world, about fifty light-years from Earth, settled in 2090, with over two billion people and a capital market economy.

AquaState makes semiorganic moisture extractor leaves and is heading for a public flotation.

Formed early in the Commonwealth to evaluate the threat posed by each newly discovered alien species; it had long become a ceremonial annual meeting attended by staff delegates.

Cressat is the Sheldon world, normally closed to outsiders; exceptions are made for the secret project.

Crispin is a senator on the Commonwealth Budget Commission with influence over the starflight agency's start-up, seen as a mild skeptic who is probably fishing for something.

Daniel Alster is Sheldon's aide who gives Wilson a tour of the starship project complex.

Darklake City is Oaktier's capital, sited in hilly subtropical coffee-growing country beside a lake.

A barrier enveloped the Dyson Alpha star in about two-thirds of a second; it blocks visible light but emits infrared, preserving the system inside.

Commonwealth Vice President and career politician of 180 years who has reshaped her appearance for political effect; she plans to seek the presidency in three years.

Founded the industrial planet EdenBurg, making them a major Intersolar Dynasty almost as influential as the Sheldons.

A living alien starship capable of FTL travel, resting in orbit around Icalanise, whose origin, power source and technology it refuses to explain.

Argues the barrier was defensive because a captor would not make it permeable.

A silver-leaved alien tree in Central Park, over 300 years old, one of eight transplanted from its native planet and now a city monument.

Morton, Shaheef's former husband, connected the cases because Cotal was named on the divorce papers as her partner on Tampico.

Oaktier was settled in 2089, has about 1.25 billion people on eight continents, and has banned combustion engines and fossil fuel power.

Co-inventor of the wormhole generator and legendary wildman of the Commonwealth; his thought routines were the basis of the SI.

Patricia is chief political advisor to Elaine Doi, who recently announced her candidacy. She uses the weekend to lobby and brought her companion Isabella.

Over two hundred years old, appears in his late fifties; chief of the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate, a Halgarth family member.

Insular alien species, long-lived and widely spread; they claim not to know about the barrier and give oblique answers.

Tara co-founded AquaState with her husband Morton and was having an affair with Wyobie Cotal while Morton was away.

The killer, wearing a false face, sabotaged the building's power, murdered both, packed bodies and Tara's belongings into crates and trucks, and had the apartment cleaned.

Senator chairing the science commission and North America's UFN delegate; an arrogant Earth aristocrat who mocks CST for missing the alien discovery.

Wyobie, Tara's young first-life lover, was shot and had his memorycell erased when he arrived at her apartment.

Armstrong City is a crowded, noisy, smelly city on Far Away, using gasoline vehicles, horse carts and bustling markets.

Barsoomians are radical ecogeneticists in lands east of the Oak Sea who designed the Charlemagnes and shun money.

Cam Tong drives the Telmar ranger in the recovery convoy that finds Justine.

Derrick is part of the support crew and does not answer Justine's radio call before the storm.

Estella is a red-haired woman who normally wears her hair waist-length; she planned the Far Away safari and flies a hyperglider nearby.

Harvey is Kazimir's clan teacher who would scold him and cut rations for carelessness.

A hyperglider is a plyplastic craft that reshapes from a cigar form into wings; it is tethered, then released to ride storm winds.

Justine's hyperglider has a cruciform shape and a compartment holding an inflatable blue shelter and supplies.

Justine comes from a wealthy, notable family and usually waits until her body is about fifty before undergoing rejuvenation again.

Kazimir is a seventeen-year-old McFoster clansman on his final groundwalk, a solo rite of passage proving he has mastered the wild.

Alien arkship that flew about 520 years at 0.72 lightspeed, so it did not come from the Dyson Pair but somewhere closer.

The Halgarth dynasty is its main backer, which the Guardians regard as a crime.

The McFosters supplied a dozen young fighters for the raid, wearing navy-blue and ebony hunter tartan at night.

A memorycell stores a person's memory; the Agent's was in his head, which Tarlo took.

Herculaneum is a semiactive volcano 32 km high and 711 km wide that has never erupted since human settlement.

Titan is the only currently active volcano of the Grand Triad, with a crater rim 23 km high.

Zeus is a volcano 17 km high forming one side of Stakeout Canyon.

A niling d-sink is a zero-size spacetime sinkhole that can store enormous energy; CST uses them as backup power for wormhole gateways.

Rejuvenation restores a youthful body but purges most inserts like OCtattoos and leaves patients weak for weeks, with a strong sex drive afterward.

Silvergalde is a likely artificial world nearly three times Earth's size with stable climate, no fossils, no crustal metals, and imported DNA types; apparently a Silfen capital.

Stakeout Canyon is a funnel-shaped canyon between Zeus and Titan that channels annual storms from the Hondu Ocean; storm winds are forced up Herculaneum's cliff.

Anshun, 217 light-years from Earth, hosts CST's phase three exploration division and is expected to become the junction for a new sector of space.

Sixty-three percent of the starship's components, including the wormhole generator, are fabricated on Augusta.

Boongate is the link world to Far Away; families are fleeing, there is no maglev line, and security is badly understaffed since the Prime attack.

The Clayden Clinic is a well-equipped rejuvenation facility in Darklake City on Oaktier, part of a company with clinics on five worlds.

Emily is a six-year-old great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Wilson Kime.

Hoshe Finn is a cheerful, overweight local detective from Oaktier's ice-crime division, assigned to assist Paula; he has handled three ice cases.

The Kime estate has a mock French château, vineyards of nearly a hundred square kilometers, and a quarter of the coastline; its wine is for family use.

Mel Rees is Paula's boss and a deputy director who rose through family connections; he refuses funding for mass cargo interception.

The starship has a 300-meter rotating habitation ring and a 400-meter central cylinder holding the FTL drive and five plasma rockets.

The starship project complex near Treloar is a row of windowless pearl-white buildings behind a six-meter fence patrolled by guardbots and human guards.

Paula doubts Tara and Wyobie ever settled on Tampico, since no secure memory store exists there; the ticket, divorce and effects may have been staged.

Treloar, Anshun's capital, is kept intact with a functioning station so aerobots can be channeled through to defend Anshun's remaining shielded cities.

Victor is an eight-year-old, quiet and inquisitive nephew of Wilson with a complicated family connection.

York5 was bought entirely by the Los Vada consortium of families in 2138 and never opened to general immigration; it has no industry, roads or real capital.

Posing as a holidaymaker, he seduced April over several days and was part of the Guardians team operating from the neighboring cottage.

Alessandra Baron is a news presenter in a studio on Augusta, covering the attack and warning nobody would survive if one Avenger got in.

A teenage girl who is Marty Vernon's new girlfriend of ten days.

Antonio is Kyle's boyfriend and works hospital shifts; he argues Augusta is the safest place in the Commonwealth.

A drug that leaves victims like blind drunk yet open to suggestion; probably slipped into April's drink.

A twenty-year-old resident of Solidade whose genuine author certificate let the shotgunned message pass most e-butler filters.

Mark's five-year-old hyperactive son.

Bitor-UU won the contract to develop bioscreening kits for the starship.

Carys is Marty's older sister, a glamorous multi-lifer who designs raunchy dramas that are sometimes made into TSIs.

David Dunbavand is a 200-year-old vine nursery owner who stayed to fight after sending his family away; he is one of the group's calmest heads.

A government-funded starship mission to the Dyson Pair, costing about twenty billion Earth dollars; Marty considers it a waste, while Kyle expects it to become hugely popular.

Joanne is the gateway Chief of Operations; Rob forces her to activate level three isolation manually, then drugs her.

Kyle is Mark's brother, works at StVincent Loan & Trust, and leases the bungalow where Mark's family is staying.

Mark's wife, much older and more experienced than him; she refused pregnancy, so their children came via a rented womb tank.

Grew up in New Costa and works at Colyn Electromation; he is stressed, suffers headaches he blames on his workplace interface, and fears job trouble.

Mark's 180-year-old father, recently rejuvenated, looks like Mark's younger brother and is dating a teenage girl, Amanda.

Criminals use memory edits to erase their own memories of crimes so their memories cannot serve as court evidence.

Nzega is a liberal, relaxed phase two world of islands and seas, settled by Polynesians and Latin Americans, with many resorts.

Port Launay is a four-kilometer strip of chalets and bungalows on Kailindri island, Nzega, where a case scene is guarded by police and press.

Mark and Liz's baby daughter, collected from the clinic seven months ago.

Shotgunning sends one message to every e-butler address in the unisphere; it is illegal under Intersolar law (2174) with enormous fines, and used only by underground groups.

A Commonwealth-wide club franchise visited by the newly rejuvenated for anonymous sex; whatever happens inside is never mentioned outside.

Solidade is the Halgarth Dynasty's private planet, not legally accepted as part of the Commonwealth.

AFR98-2B is an F2 star twenty-seven light-years from Merredin, with five planets: two gas giants and three solid inner worlds.

Claims to be a roving Earle News reporter; he probes the funding history of Dudley's department, showing triumph on learning Cox wrote the Dyson Pair observation into its contract.

Newly explored planet whose ground plants and trees secrete acid; all vegetation shares one biochemistry, so exploration was abandoned and the exit closed.

Earth-based charity that gave the largest donation to Dudley's astronomy department for eleven years; it never visited, and the Dyson Pair observation was reportedly in its endowment contract.

A founder of Gralmond's university who set up the astronomy department before leaving for rejuvenation.

Fourth-generation member of the EdenBurg founding family and director of the Research Institute on Far Away; bald with OCtattoos.

McClain Gilbert is the forward crew chief; Oscar gave him initial encounter authorization to ready the first contact team.

Merredin is the new junction world for phase three space in its sector, with three gateways: to Mito, Clonclurry and Valvida; fifty are planned.

Oscar is Operations Director of the CST exploratory division base on Merredin, running wormhole planet-hunting operations.

The Raiel live in one High Angel dome and consented to contact with humans.

The RI runs the gateway opening procedures; the SI formatted it with strategic limiters so it cannot develop self-determination.

The third planet has a breathable-type oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, a cool climate, huge ice caps and five continents; Oscar gave it preliminary H-congruous status.

Big Bear is the thickset Native American landlord of the Last Pony; he haggles Ozzie into paying seventeen Earth dollars for beer and a room.

A teardrop pearl in platinum mesh with blue sparkles, given by the Silfen as a mark of friendship.

Jess is a hostile patron at the Last Pony who sneers at rich young visitors seeking Silfen thrills.

A lontrus is an eight-legged, shaggy pack animal with a double-jawed mouth that carries twice the load of a horse.

Lyddington is the CST station town on Silvergalde with about ten thousand residents, a muddy, shabby harbor town reached by train from Bayovar.

Two sixty-meter marble pillars with worn humanoid carvings mark the start of the forest path. They are among the only known Silfen artifacts.

Moonshimmer, called Moony, is a seven-year-old girl who directs Ozzie to the Last Pony.

Mr. Stafford runs Top Street Stables, rents and buys back animals from offworlders, and warns against fake path maps.

Nine Sky is the name Ozzie gives to a Silfen who recognizes him and returns the lost animals to the group.

Orion is a fifteen-year-old orphan-like boy working at the Last Pony; his parents walked the paths years ago and never returned.

The asteroid's cavity is about eighty miles long and fifteen across, landscaped as perpetual summer with waterfalls, lakes and mountains, run by an RI and over a hundred thousand bots.

Polly is Ozzie's horse and reliably finds the path.

Vinmar is a barren airless rock, secretly located, where the SIs live; its wormhole was reduced to micro-width in 2178 and nothing physical has traveled since.

Bayfoss makes sensor satellites, including the Armstrong-class satellites carried by the Second Chance, and supplies classified navy projects. Lawyer Seaton sat on its board.

Caroline had lunch with Tara at the Low Moon marina restaurant, the last time Tara was seen alive, and said she seemed normal.

Island at the center of the Leithpool crater lake, carved into three pinnacles with a Bavarian-style castle on the tallest; seat of government.

Coya was the Redhounds' biological daughter, raised as Paula's twin sister to provide a normal example.

Gansu is the biggest civil engineering company on Oaktier, with growing offplanet divisions.

Planet isolated by CST 280 years ago after civil war between nationalist and evangelical factions; now divided into homelands, none socialist.

Capital of Lothian, built around an asteroid crater turned into a ring-shaped lake with a central Castle Mount; home to four and a half million people.

Marcus and his wife Rebecca, wealthy extreme liberals, led a raid stealing Hive babies and secretly raised one as their own daughter.

Matthew is Tara's much older husband, a protective hunter who lives on a coffee plantation and resents city anti-hunting politics.

Mellanie is a nineteen-year-old first-life diver on Oaktier's national squad who moved in with Morton against her parents' wishes.

It gives people aptitude for a designated job along with physical modifications, fixed to prevent genetic drift.

Rebecca and Marcus Redhound hid on Marindra raising Paula to prove nurture could defeat Foundation profiling.

Alamo Avengers are ancient armored war machines with rocket flight, force fields, cannons and particle lances, driven by animal-sentient smartware that never stops until its target is reached.

Anna, with gold OCtattoos, efficiently organizes technicians to seal the emergency airlocks and form damage crews aboard the Second Chance.

Anna Hober is an astronomer, sensor expert and navigator, appointed executive officer by Wilson during the crisis.

It detected two unauthorized spaceplane launches from an equatorial island, heading in retrograde orbit toward the assembly platform.

The assembly platform is a blue-gray malmetal sphere orbiting Anshun, where the Second Chance is built.

Broher Associates is a law firm hired to act for Tara after her disappearance, maintaining the fiction that she had left for Tampico.

Hoshe thinks supplying Qatux with memories is wrong but refuses to leave the case, determined to see it through.

A gas giant with thirty-eight moons; the High Angel orbits it and a free-flying factory archipelago of over a hundred stations lies nearby.

Kaos software infiltrates the complex's network nodes, cutting off cybersphere access during the attack.

Its CST station operates the gateway to the High Angel, with security checks and Diplomatic Police review of visitors.

Lennie is a reporter who arrives late at the Anshun starship complex and broadcasts live footage of the Alamo Avengers across the Commonwealth.

A High Angel dome with skyscrapers, skyway pods and Circle Park; city hall houses the Chairwoman's office.

Elderly, frail Raiel in poor health, with a trembling tentacle and rheumy eyes, who absorbs human memories; has never taken more than twenty years of memory before.

Rob is one of the infiltrators inside the gateway control room, working to a compartmentalized plan he cannot fully see.

Rob Tannie is a debt-ridden freelance security operative hired for a lucrative contract with a re-life clause, working undercover as a CST guard.

The Single Star Republic used Alamo Avengers against United Federal emplacements and nearly turned Austin into an Isolated.

Young-looking political staffer of the Chairwoman who escorts visitors; overheard Mac's insult.

The two medium-lift spaceplanes mass about 250 tons each and are used as kinetic weapons to destroy the platform.

Chairwoman of the Human Residents Association for over a century; formerly an ion thruster technician; possible presidential candidate; wins every election.

TSI recordings are polished, directed experiences, unlike raw memory, which holds whatever caught the person's attention; humans must review memory in real time.

The forest's weather and day length do not match Silvergalde; Ozzie guesses a world with a dying sun or a long elliptical orbit, in midwinter.

Area 37 is the smartest and most elusive of Oaktier's three main crime syndicates, based in Darklake City, with legitimate businesses and apparent political connections.

Bill is a Korrok-hi, a tall rectangle of fluffy fur with dark eyes that hoots in a chant; Sara compares him to a yeti.

The Citadel is a terraced mound on the icy plain, topped with a green beacon, where humans and Korrok-hi live.

The crystal trees of this frozen world are adapted to extreme cold and thin out to nothing at the edge of a huge icy plain.

Foral Ltd. is a company whose board diversified into financial and street crime.

Ozzie had only eleven heatbricks left, enough for about three days, forcing a turn-back decision if no warmer world was found.

Beneath the bark, the trees are amethyst-like purple crystal around a quartz core with capillaries carrying slow dark fluid, and fractal-patterned branches.

The Johasie family is an old-fashioned mafia-style network of related hoodlums, with lawyers who disconnect the bosses from street-level activity.

The Korrok-hi are aliens living in the Ice Citadel who, per George, have no intention of leaving as it suits them.

Sara Bush, in her sixties with a northern Mediterranean accent, is the unofficial spokesperson for the humans at the Citadel.

Andria is a dark-haired McNowak fighter who has been looking at Kazimir and returns a sly smile.

Bruce is Kazimir's closest friend, a cocky, tactless womanizer who sneaks up on him and jokes constantly.

Charlemagnes are huge gene-modified warhorses bred by Barsoomians for carnage, with unicorn spikes, tusks, triple hearts, and no fear in battle.

Its smartware locked out a hack attempt on the Cox charity account, but the hackers' Trojan was based on Professor Bose's codes.

A clan device that, on contact with a force field, spreads conductive filaments draining its energy until the generator overloads and the shield collapses.

The only major road on Far Away, running south from Armstrong City past the Great Iril Steppes to the Institute valley; it is the sole supply route.

The humans need the icewhale carcasses from the hunt, because people will die without them.

Douvoir is the Second Chance's pilot, a veteran of engineering pods at the High Angel and developer of spaceplane RI pilot control routines.

Kraken is Kazimir's Charlemagne warhorse.

Lina was a McSobel woman Kazimir spent time with after the West Irral raid because she resembled Justine.

The McKratzes farm and raise cattle, breeding Charlemagnes and lynxhounds and feeding the nomadic clans.

The McMixons keep Rock Dee and other forts near the Institute and tend the warhorses.

The McPeierls roam widely gathering intelligence on the Institute and distribute smuggled equipment that Johansson brings through the gateway.

The McSobels are the armorer and technology clan, maintaining weapons, batteries and electronic warfare gear for the raid.

Truten teaches law at Leonida City university on Gralmond and came to represent the Boses as a colleague.

Rock Dee is a large Guardian fort of caverns beneath StOmer, reached by a narrow hidden tunnel, powered by geothermal cables.

Someone Kazimir will have to tell about Bruce's death.

Sara walked off Earth in 2009 and claims never to have been rejuvenated, saying time runs differently along the Silfen paths.

Squad leader who conducts the roll call after the raid; only nine of twelve McFosters return.

The paths are unstable, and people who leave the Ice Citadel into the forest often are never seen again or are found frozen dead.

Tu Lee is the hyperspace officer and Nigel Sheldon's great-great-great-granddaughter; she kept this secret to be chosen on merit.

Andria, heavily pregnant, runs the Guardian control center on Mount Idle and directs operators bringing the manipulator station network to readiness.

Court One was hurriedly refurbished for the trial, which was followed by about three billion people on the unisphere.

Howard Madoc is Morton's polished, middle-aged defense lawyer; he first seeks dismissal over media contamination of evidence, which is rejected.

Ivor Chessel is Darklake City's chief attorney and leads the prosecution.

Judge Carmichael presides over the trial, rejects the dismissal motion, and after the verdict says sentences are usually at least twice the period of life loss.

Lennox is Bruce and Samantha's three-week-old son, named after Bruce's grandfather.

Re-life is a clinic procedure that clones and revives a dead person with a gap of a decade or two and erased memory; insurance usually covers it.

Sharron Hoffbrand, head of city forensics, testifies that the victims died during a three-day window when Morton was at a conference in Talansee.

Stig is a strong, experienced Guardian who has traveled the Commonwealth and is assembling a small team to set up new routes for items needed on Far Away.

Alpha Major is the innermost, largest solid planet of Dyson Alpha, with oceans, an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, enormous fusion power output and dense spaceship traffic.

Antonia is the chief engineer; she said gravity-wave emission is a simple reprogramming of the hysradar function.

Bruno suggested the hemisphere might be a generator for the barrier, and Tunde endorsed the idea.

Comrelays are safety circuits placed along the route to maintain contact; Oscar says they shouldn't fail.

A hemisphere on the barrier with a glowing opening; its light is periodically eclipsed about every seven and a quarter hours by moving lattice struts.

The Dyson Alpha civilization has colonized its entire star system with habitats, industrial moonlets and fusion ships, and is roughly on a technological par with the Commonwealth, but has no wormholes.

The barrier around Dyson Alpha, in place over a thousand years, suddenly lost cohesion and vanished as the Second Chance approached.

About fifteen more alien ships appear to be on their way from Dyson Major.

Emmanuelle Verbeke is the alien culture officer; she says the Dyson aliens' behavior cannot be predicted from current knowledge.

Eight alien ships launched from the outermost gas giant's moons and asteroids, accelerating hard at 8 gees toward the Second Chance without decelerating.

Francis Rawlins leads contact team C and instructs teams to set up comrelays and never lose communications.

Of thirty-seven satellites deployed inside the Dark Fortress, nine were lost to the central maelstrom or communication failure.

Hysradar sends hyperaccelerated gravity waves from the wormhole generator; the crew feared using it would reveal the ship's presence.

Four nested rotating lattice spheres lie inside the Dark Fortress, with struts hundreds of kilometers wide; the first is electro-repulsive and the second is negative mass matter.

The second lattice sphere is made of negative mass matter, whose inverted gravity repels all ordinary matter, including satellites and fired slugs.

The shaft has aluminum sheathing, then corrugations with yellow ceramic bearing red markings that might be writing.

The barrier around Dyson Alpha is 29.7 AU in diameter, emits low infrared, and blocks neutrinos, particles, most electromagnetic radiation and wormholes, but not gravity.

The hemisphere is a perfect hemisphere, 25,000 km across, rising from the barrier on the equator, with an extremely strong fluctuating magnetic field and regular gravity wave pulses.

Tunde Sutton heads astrophysics; his science team has become excitable and aloof, acting like first-life science geeks.

A razor-edged rock fragment over a kilometer and a half long, with a derelict polytitanium station at one end, found by Anna.

The Black House is a huge Georgian mansion above Randtown's lake inlet where Simon Rand lives.

A huge explosion flattened about a third of Blackwater Crag, centered on the Ables Motors garage where Mellanie had been left.

The bank is the court-appointed debt-receiver and took over Morton's penthouse and possessions, including items Mellanie considered hers.

Elan is 754 light-years from the Dyson Pair, with seven Commonwealth planets closer, including Anshun.

Grencham is an Elan-native vine, planted in the Ulon at Simon Rand's suggestion, already gaining a reputation among Commonwealth wine connoisseurs.

Highmarsh Valley was the first farmed in the Randtown district, drained into rich peat for cattle and crops, with ranches lined by liipoplars.

Jaycee is the crude, fifty-one-year-old chief executive of Wayside Productions, who plans to shoot sex scenes first and rewrite Morton as a knife-wielding killer.

Jilly Yen is a former acquaintance who left a shop to avoid greeting Mellanie.

Joseph is a Wayside actor reprofiled to look like Morton, who crudely propositions Mellanie; Jaycee calls him a 'dol' (dick on legs).

The lake is 180 km long and over a kilometer deep in places, with an isolated native ecology of coral reefs and atolls.

Mandy is a young waitress at Two For Tea who called Mark to fix the espresso machine and clearly admires him.

Murderous Seduction is the title of the Wayside drama based on Mellanie and Morton, with a set copying Morton's penthouse.

Olivia is Mark's garage sales assistant and shares updates on her romantic saga with Wolfram.

Randtown is an Elan tourist town beneath the Dau'sing Mountains, known for extreme sports and tourism as its biggest industry.

Rishon is a reporter who knew Mellanie from her time with Morton and turned her story into a script for an eight-part drama.

Sasmi is a cheerful Finnish-descended stall seller who arrived in Randtown a few months ago; Mark finds her tempting.

Nigel Sheldon calls Senator Burnelli a good friend and agrees with him that a return mission is needed.

Simon Rand, a minor Grand Family son, arrived on Elan 55 years ago and spent three years building a highway through the Dau'sing range to found Randtown.

Tiger Pansy is a garishly dressed Wayside actress who chooses her own stage name and warns Mellanie about Joseph.

Old Tony Matvig keeps chickens and offered Mark eggs; Liz rejects keeping chickens of their own.

Ulon Valley is a wide valley with harsh winters, where homesteaders grow grencham vines managed and harvested by a cooperative under a shared wine label.

A Vinci suit is a slim winged sleeping-bag suit with electromuscle wings, letting people glide and soar like birds.

Wayside Productions is a cheap media company in a run-down warehouse in Thurnby; it is making a sleazy porn-tinged drama of Mellanie's story.

Yuri Conant owns three vineyards in Ulon Valley, is Mark's friend and neighbor, and owns three autopickers awaiting repair.

The Guardians' spokesman is a Formit 3004 politician sculpture sitting at a desk in San Matio, delivering a message authored by Chiles Liddle Halgarth.

George Parkin is the unofficial workshop foreman and best carpenter in the Ice Citadel, a Yorkshireman who smokes a litchenweed pipe.

He is a freethinker in his mid-thirties, great-grandson of Alexis Denken who advised Paula, and lives in a book-cluttered house in Montagu.

Mo-oM is Europe's biggest trash disposal company, owned by George's family, which dumped waste through wormholes.

Ozzie's retinal inserts can see infrared and ultraviolet and still hold working CST-style translation and interpretation programs, though his handheld array is dead.

The tochee is an alien Ozzie once mistook for a young Raiel; it is an egg-shaped, wrinkled creature with caramel bristly fur.

Ybnan are draft animals that pull the big covered sleds.

Abby is Justine's daughter, with a dispute over which university she attends; Gore predicts Oxford.

Gore plans to offer Buta new High Angel shipyard assembly contracts as an incentive.

Campbell is Nigel's great-great-grandchild and the CST Director for Advanced Civil and Commercial Projects. He flirts easily with Justine.

Thompson and Gore see the navy as the long-term big spender, including planetary defenses, expected to cost far more than the agency.

Dawson Knight is the legal, accountancy and management firm at the core of the Burnelli financial empire, staffed almost entirely by family members.

George believes living on this world is a penance that makes people value their lives more.

Gerhard is a Braunt family attorney, former New Germany senator, once married to a Burnelli with two children by her, and a potential ally.

Gore is the patriarch of the Burnelli family, recently rejuvenated, with a face completely covered by golden OCtattoos. He is obsessively focused on business and family finances.

The hunting ground is a vast plain of hundreds of volcanic craters filled with fine ice granules that behave like liquid, hundreds of miles across.

Isabella is a nineteen-year-old low-status Halgarth, an invitrogestated minor trustbabe not in the direct lineage, and is currently Patricia Kantil's companion.

Larry pushed to give the navy an offensive capability against the Dysons and limited the review meeting to level one security clearance.

Natasha is chief executive of the Commonwealth Special Science Supervisory Directorate, which studies exotic weapons theory. Larry Halgarth insisted on bringing her.

Patricia is willing to sign over large sums to the agency, seen as buying her election with tax money.

Ramon is the senator for Buta and leader of the African caucus. He was Justine's husband for twelve years, eight decades ago, and has heart trouble from overweight.

The Sheldon Dynasty paid for the seduction contract from its main security division account, which the SI finds suspicious.

Sorbonne Wood is the Burnellis' West Coast retreat near Seattle, a heavily secured estate with a main house covered in ancient drycoral and a dozen guest lodges.

The ExoProtectorate Council has already decided to create the starflight agency; remaining policy details need settling before Senate confirmation.

James Barclay's classic finance text was Gore's Bible in his first life; he comforts himself by touching it during difficult maneuvers.

Thompson cannot get approval to inspect all cargo going to Far Away, despite asking Patricia Kantil; he suspects someone is lobbying the executive office against it.

A huge flower-shaped stately home in Rye County, begun by Miles Foran and completed after Gore Burnelli bought it; Justine considers it her real home.

Two bipedal alien motiles were captured, emitting microwave pulses from their suits; stripped of suits, they make loud sounds and give off a strong stench.

Offshoot Prime immotiles at the second star incorporated alien genetics and cybernetics, becoming independent and diverging from pure Prime, which terrified the home Primes.

Prime base cells are amoeba-like single-celled life in the planet's waterways; motiles consume them and they form motiles when triggered by nucleiplasm.

ColdLakePromontory was a smaller immotile group that innovated by linking a separate immotile electronically to itself to manage space operations.

ColdLakePromontory2 was the first mobile immotile, a smaller identical twin of ColdLakePromontory, placed on an asteroid while sharing thoughts with the planetary group despite time delay.

A force field enclosed the Prime star system for 1,182 years, trapping the Primes, then vanished abruptly; the alienPrime system was found enclosed by another one.

Humans are individuals with no motile/immotile caste, a civilization of billions of sentient entities often in conflict.

Prime immotiles have no names; they are identified by characteristics such as location, and are fundamentally individual, territorial and prone to shifting alliances.

MorningLightMountain is named for its location, a conical mountain in a swampy valley struck by sunlight only in the morning.

MorningLightMountain17,735 was on an early starship to the alienPrime system, and sent a message warning that the alien ship holds dangerous aliens that should be destroyed.

MorningLightMountain8658 conquered the fourth planet of the second star system, learned about biology, genetics and fiction, and founded a new territory there.

The conical mountain houses over fifty thousand immotile units and is the true heart of MorningLightMountain, protected by the planet's strongest force field.

Motiles are pear-shaped, four-legged, four-armed Prime creatures birthed by immotiles. They have four sensory stalks, feed immotiles regurgitated pap, and are not smart enough to handle technology unaided.

Nucleiplasms are released by immotiles into water; they trigger base cells to become multicellular, congregating into new motiles.

The Prime homeworld is polluted, with permanent smog, no wild plants, scarce resources, and short-lived motiles suffering radiation and metal contamination.

Wormholes are distortions of spacetime that reduce distance to nothing; they serve as ultimate transport and communication, and can be large or small.

Hogan is Paula's new deputy, appointed by Columbia from his legal department; he is a political placeman who insists on briefings and procedure, angering Paris office investigators.

Anacona orbits very close to its G1 star; its central band from fifty degrees north to south is uninhabitable rocky desert, with habitable polar regions.

The Clinton Estate is an ultra-exclusive Washington social and sports club about 250 years old, where much Intersolar government business is conducted.

The new Agency, twin of the Starflight Agency, now receives 55 percent of the overall budget; President Doi forcefully funds it.

A second-generation CST scoutship about 250 m long and 80 m wide, with three plasma rockets, a crew of 25 and no life-support wheel.

Its lunar solar farm, begun in 2190, now rings the Moon's equator and is Earth's main electricity source via micro-wormholes.

Inima, Hoshe's wife, was badly injured on Sligo; she needs a clone graft for hip and thigh and an electromuscle suit, and will leave hospital in about a week.

A three-story canal-side gallery in Cesena specializing in EK art, in a converted warehouse, under Agency surveillance as a front for arms dealing.

Roberto is a seven-foot-tall man, apparently Rigin's bodyguard, hidden on a couch in his office; Adam shoots him through the door.

Santa Monica in Los Angeles is clean, wealthy and well preserved, and has few children; a beach section is roped off for them.

Darklake City software house that apparently supplied a fix to the regulator software of a superconducting microphase modulator found in Rigin's equipment.

Rigin owns the Nystol Gallery and also runs a black-market armaments business; he has been buying restricted dual-use technology.

A 150-km canal city on Anacona's Calitri continent, founded in 2200 on a sandy spit called Prato and grown by dredging into an elongated island city.

Venice Coast was an operation seen as a victory for Elvin and Johansson over Paula, and it embarrassed the new Agency in the media.

The black globe holds the planet's last memory, showing its destruction by imperial starships; Ozzie experiences the deaths of the aliens through it.

Memories of Dudley Bose are caged in one immotile unit; they sarcastically answer MorningLightMountain's questions and betray it by warning the humans.

Ozzie names a strange bent nebula with a reddish spike the Devil's Tail; he sees nothing like it near the Commonwealth.

At night, nonhuman voices that sound urgent and frightened sweep past the camp; they grow louder and more frequent as the travellers go on.

Imperial colonizers crossed interstellar space over decades in starships, seeking a new world for their old empire, and destroyed the jelly aliens' planet with missiles and kinetic projectiles.

A toroid with a 2.5 km aperture at a gas giant's moon, run by twelve thousand immotile brains; large ships enter every five or six minutes.

The jelly aliens were a peaceful civilization that carved giant profiles of themselves and a palace city into the canyon cliff; it is now ruined.

The jellyfish aliens are pear-shaped beings with wax-white tendrils for limbs; in the visions they drive carts pulled by five-legged bovine animals.

A scoutship due back at Anshun in ten days; it has found nothing at the first eleven of its fifteen stars.

The canyon has iron-red walls two-thirds of a mile high, no plants, and a double avenue of giant black conical trees beside the river.

Bjou is a Guardian at the Lemule warehouse who helps prepare disguised shipments for Far Away and recover the case.

China, the old bald barman with glowing OCtattoos, switched off the show and offered Mark a free refill, calling it a stitch-up.

Gareth is a Guardian who walked past Stig wearing a gray jacket over a yellow shirt as a dead-recovery signal.

Kareem's former college classmate with a criminal record in narcoware; he gave Hoshe an introduction to Kareem under pressure.

A giant Prime wormhole; Dimitri's team theorizes it is a species survival route, a path to confront the barrier builders, or a route to the Commonwealth.

Jenny is a Guardian at the Lemule warehouse who monitors the S&Ibot and retrieves the case from its limb.

Software-writing young man preparing to flee to Silvergalde with survival gear; he takes private contracts and has had another private contract this week.

Kieran runs onlook software on Stig's train and reports Paula Myo's arrival at LA Galactic to Adam.

Guardian front company at LA Galactic with an office floor in Henley Tower and a warehouse in the Arlee district; twenty Guardians work there.

Tactical analysis academician from the StPetersburg Institute, pale and podgy; his team named the Prime wormhole Hell's Gateway and advises the executive.

Marisa detected the navy's encrypted box formation on Stig's train and prepared the recovery bots.

Napo Langsal used to take tourists on his tour boat to the cave now used as the resistance hideout.

A cluster of starship assembly platforms 30–40 km from the High Angel, with navy administration, design, training and research housed in the Babuyan Atoll dome.

Location of the Presidential Palace, where Doi feels more secure; over a thousand light-years from the Primes.

Panda is the Vernons' young white Labrador, nearly a year old, who obeys only Barry.

Thirty-story five-sided navy tower at the center of the Babuyan Atoll campus, nicknamed by Alessandra Baron; Wilson's office is on its top floor.

The escaped Guardian was a seventh or eighth generation descendant of Robert and Minette McSobel, from the Far Away clans, per DNA.

The Guardians cloned a utility-company S&Ibot to travel through LA Galactic's sewers and retrieve Stig's flushed case at the warehouse.

The professional is an enhanced assassin who hijacked the Clinton Estate network to divert emergency signals so Senator Burnelli's alerts would go nowhere.

The navy wants a series of such stations on the southern continent to detect any wormhole the Primes open inside Commonwealth boundaries.

Paula's earlier advisor and Leonard's great-grandfather; they had a short intense affair and he kept her letters.

Baron's show claims all of Randtown is antihuman and keeps using the phrase, worrying locals about the economy.

The gas halo has a circular cross section about two million km across and orbits 150 million km from its star, contained by an apparent force field.

Navy heavy-lift double-rotor helicopters, at least fifteen, are landing beside Goi'al to bring in the detector station.

In 2243 Johansson's team stole 1.17 billion dollars from Las Vegas casinos through a wormhole opened from the California Technological Heritage Museum.

A beautiful young woman in her early twenties, with long blond hair and ice-blue eyes, who lives with Leonard.

Wessex is the twenty-fourth planet attacked; Narrabri is its megacity.

Alessandra is Mellanie's editor and lover; she lets Mellanie chase the Myo story for forty-eight hours before requiring her back on Elan.

Dauntless is a new 300-meter teardrop warship with marque 4 hyperdrive, fifty missiles, thirty beam weapons and fifteen niling d-sinks; it launched from High Angel.

Defender is the next warship due out, and Oscar Monroe is offered command of her.

A pearl-white glowing interface room in Tulip Mansion with morphing chairs, constantly upgraded by family laboratories.

Former director of the Institute on Far Away; Justine remembers his utter conviction in his cause.

Internet billionaire who began building Tulip Mansion but went bankrupt when Jeff Baker's crystal memory destroyed his stock value.

Young first-life descendant of Thompson who is engaged to Starral Konstantin; she lives at Tulip Mansion and is sunny and affectionate.

Paul Cramley is a very old, skinny webhead living in Olika who deals in illicit information and keeps nostat pets.

Senate Security's European division occupies the top floor of an unmarked building in Whitehall, London, sharing it with other Commonwealth departments as cover.

Murielle's fiancé, from the Konstantin family, smitten with her.

Bicklu was furious that no one briefed him that the event audience was hostile.

Ainge, a strategic analyst, says the Primes attack only worlds nearest Dyson Alpha, suggesting a range limit on their wormhole generators.

Alan Hutchinson, founder of Wessex, takes charge of its defenses and shoots down Prime projectiles with aerobots.

Ant is Carys's agent, older than Nigel Sheldon, whose client list has been closed for over a century.

Balya dropped out of the unisphere after its station force fields were breached.

This New York legal firm funded the payments to Paul's attackers; Baron's messages were addressed to Pomanskie there, and the Starflyer likely used it before.

The Desperado was the last human warship left after four others, including the Dauntless, were destroyed over Anshun.

Immotile group clusters in the home system began considering defenses against another suicide attack.

Narrabri's CST station on Wessex became the clearing house for all forty million refugees from the Lost23; about two million remained there.

Olivenza dropped out of the unisphere after its station force fields were breached.

The Regents detector station is destroyed by a nuclear blast, vaporizing the mountain snow and crumbling the peaks.

Sligo was attacked by Prime during a flower festival; its force field survived about eight nuclear missile hits, but ground shocks caused heavy destruction.

The Turquino Valley is a narrow V-shaped dead-end valley where Mellanie opens a small wormhole five hundred meters in.

The Pathfinder is a raft of three log bundles with trunk decking, a woven palm-frond sail and a rudder, built in about a week.

Robin Dalsol is Goldreich's senior aide, ten years out of rejuvenation, coming to dinner at Alessandra's.

Salamanca is New Iberia's capital, a city of twelve million, now permanently under a force field after the invasion.

Catriona is a junior member of the Morishi Grand Family working at a Daroca bank; she shares the loft with Trisha and Isabella.

Daroca is the wealthy capital city of Arevalo, on the Caspe River.

Howard Liang is a false identity used by a Guardians operative who seduced Trisha, stole her author certificate and gave her a memory wipe.

Trisha is a young Halgarth Dynasty member and product placement worker at Veccdale, victimised by Liang; she fears public humiliation.

An underfunded radio astronomy observatory in the Andes, part of the Solwide array, staffed by two radio astronomers and four technicians.

A technician at the observatory for three and a half years, he erased the original Martian data after McFoster copied it.

Was Director when the Lambeth project began; reportedly moved to Berkak for a dean's post, and Renne will have him questioned.

Dislan is a Burnelli-owned electronics company that supplies equipment only to the family.

Foster Cortese got the visual recognition match identifying the assassin as Francis Rowden.

Gwyneth is seriously burned by plasma and ion fire during the attempt to arrest Tarlo but is expected to recover after healskin and regeneration.

Director of Antina Station for seven years, a radio astronomer who knows nothing of the Mars contract, which predates her.

Jim suggests seizing Stuhawks gang members for neurolock interrogation and memory reads to find Beard.

John was a technical forensic investigator in the old Directorate and is less hostile to Alic than the other senior lieutenants.

London-based funder of the Martian remote sensing project; it has never seen the data, and its purpose and funding are unknown.

The Society went virtual eight years ago and is now only an address and a program with funds; it is a Guardians front.

A Prime attack there killed tens of millions of humans who will never be re-lifed.

McFoster was killed carrying no data; his Pacific Pine Bank accounts are guarded and need a warrant.

Kazimir carried it in a secure belt pocket after his secret mission to Peru; Justine took it from his body.

The navy is investigating the observatory in Peru for the nature of the data on Kazimir's crystal.

A friend of Cufflin who introduced him to the anonymous security agent.

Wearing a force field suit, he shot Kazimir and fled through the Carralvo terminal, then vanished from the rail junction despite a surrounding perimeter.

Operates three robot freight ships that deposit sensors around the solar system on eight-year tours, and is considering shutting down Antina Station.

Vic is travelling to Cagayn to find Robin Beard, with local police liaison arranged.

The worldlet is an artificial water-covered body in the gas halo, about sixteen hundred kilometers across, with gravity projectors pulling the water around.

Edmund Li is a Boongate-born police technical officer seconded to the navy's Far Away freight inspectorate, which has 25 staff but few turn up.

Only female head of a Big15 Intersolar Dynasty; ruthless, politically sharp, and worried about realigning manufacturing capacity.

Senator Tam evades Michelangelo's questions about the Hell's Gateway attack, claiming navy intelligence must remain veiled.

The suspicious machinery shipment was addressed to Palamaro Ranch in the Taliong district, east of Armstrong City, said to be Barsoomian territory.

Guardian project that depends on Martian data and physical components shipped to Far Away; without data it relies on uncertain numerical modeling.

A weapon in development, possibly prototyped within months, that could take the fight directly to Dyson Alpha; Columbia says it may ultimately be used.

Urien, whose family are landowners on Dunedin, spotted odd heavy-duty wiring in agricultural machinery bound for Far Away.

Its first meeting was held in a secure underground room beneath the Senate Hall in Washington, DC, on Earth, chosen because the Dynasty leaders prefer Earth's rail links.

The Chronicle told Mellanie that Trevelyan Halgarth and Ferelith Alwon were killed in an ambush and their memorycells were retrieved.

Only about thirty aged blimpbots remain from the revitalization fleet of over 250, kept flying with cannibalised parts.

Dr. Friland is a tall Barsoomian whose face is hidden by a distortion field; he delivered bioprocessors to the clans and has stayed in Armstrong City.

Eemeli Aro is the CST technical officer responsible for the Port Evergreen wormhole generator.

The Governor signed 3F Plaza over to the Institute, which is packing it with troops and technicians.

Francis Rowden is the assassin's recorded identity; he entered the Commonwealth via Half Way gateway six months before Venice Coast, claiming to study at Kolhapur.

Griffith Applegate is an experienced traveler who has crossed many times and advises Mellanie to use only taxis licensed by the Governor's House.

The Carbon Goose is the largest aircraft ever built: 122 meters long, six micropile-turbine engines, cruising at Mach 0.9, with ten-hour flights between the stations.

Half Way is a barren, icy planet orbiting an M-class star with a neutron-star companion; no plant life or fossils have ever been found there.

Halkin Ironmongery is the secure base of operations of Stig and the Guardians.

Keely monitors from the room above Halkin Ironmongery and reports the Institute is cutting the city net's links to CST.

Langford Towers is a four-floor hotel with an Indian-themed bar; Mellanie and Dudley are its only residents in the Royal Suite.

Market Wall deflected the fuel-air bomb's blast upward, saving much of the city, but was reduced to two-thirds of its height.

Michelangelo is a senior show reporter who gives Mellanie a tutorial and a lead on where the fugitive lawyers hid.

Niall is a star-struck fan of Mellanie working at Grand Triad Adventures; he insists on staying on Boongate because it is his home.

Olwen is Stig's bodyguard colleague who says she will alert the raiders.

Port Evergreen is Half Way's second gateway station, on a bare rock island over ten thousand kilometers from Shackleton, connecting to Far Away.

Shackleton is the Half Way gateway station linking to Boongate, with huts, hangars, train staff, air crews and a marine science team.

The stormrider is a giant solar-wind windmill with sixteen blades at the Half Way Lagrange point, powering the Far Away wormhole for five hours per cycle.

Trevelyan Halgarth and Ferelith Alwon were in Institute vehicles destroyed by mortars and masers outside the city, killed along with their Land Rover.

The Ables ND47 is a thirty-year-old nuclear train engine, being refurbished at Baraki and to be armed with defenses before running the Boongate wormhole.

Isabella's mother is an idle-rich society hostess on EdenBurg and did not even know Isabella had disconnected her unisphere address.

The Cat is a frivolous, dangerous convict who was put into suspension long before Morton's birth; her crimes against innocent humans are feared and never discussed.

Cat's Claws is a five-member squad of convicts, designated ERT03, training for the navy's counteroffensive against the alien invaders.

Christabel heads Halgarth family security and gave Renne permission to travel to Solidade.

Doc Roberts was a syndicate member who wiped memories and sold some on the snuff market; convicted as accessory after the fact.

Dr. Forole is the physician who revives Morton from suspension after only about two and a half years.

Nonexistent news company used as a cover identity by Bradley Johansson.

Mellanie bought it from Paul Cramley; it hides her private message inside the sensorium datastream Morton sends to the show and decrypts her messages to him.

Foster Transport is another LA Galactic front company Adam created, ostensibly to haul ore to Bidar's refineries.

Giselle Swinsol, an arrogant Sheldon Dynasty representative, recruits Mark for a secret project on Cressat, offering to pay off all his debts.

Kingsville is a vast desert navy training camp with twenty-three sections; it is reachable only by aircraft and may be on Kerensk.

Nostats are alien creatures resembling mobile fur rugs, able to change shape and squeeze through gaps.

Parker is a former enforcer and thug who loves the squad's weapons and struggles to work in a team.

The motile hijacked by Dudley walks Randtown at night, noting blood-stained concrete and reading human writing for the first time.

Relativistic missiles use hyperdrive technology and are expected to be hard for the Primes to defend against.

Requested the interview with Christabel without telling Commander Hogan, hoping to bypass bureaucracy as Paula would have.

Megacity on Sybraska, EdenBurg, built mostly of monolithic apartment blocks; Saratov district is its financial and administrative heart.

Crablike scout robots that screen the squad, probing for movement, bodies or electronics and going dormant to hide.

Warren Yves Halgarth, a Halgarth security member, escorted Renne from Rialto station.

Troops at Kingsville receive wetwiring sessions three days apart; two more remain for Morton's squad, and weapons memories are implanted nightly.

In Ozzie's story, its sun shrank and turned orange, the planet froze, glaciers advanced, and over five million people had to evacuate.

Annabelle was Ozzie's English wife on Akreos, famous on Earth, rejuvenated several times.

Benjamin is Nigel's first grandson and the Dynasty's comptroller, with massive memory augmentation that enlarged his skull.

The Dynasty is building both lifeboats and new warship frigates to protect the fleet; only lifeboat workers are allowed in the town.

Winged Silfen soar through the gas halo on membrane sails; they keep arms and legs, resembling demons.

Hardrock was a borderline H-congruous world used by CST as a dumping ground for convicts, who were left to fend for themselves.

Island Two is a 38 km long, 9 km wide fragment of land covered in forest, with artificial gravity of about a third Earth standard.

Jessica is the Augusta Senator, in the post for seventy years.

Seventeen trans-galactic colonizer starships are in production and twelve more planned, funded by Dynasties and billionaires hedging against the Primes; the Big15 each host one.

Marlon is a huge, biochemically boosted thug and long-time criminal partner of Roderick, who is unbothered by danger.

John King's target had odd DNA with variants across the body, some matching Daltra.

Nelson is the Dynasty security chief and Nigel's twentieth child.

Perdita is the Dynasty's media director.

Matthew's team positively identified one of the two dead hostiles from the Fenay suite as Pomanskie.

Renne travelled to EdenBurg to interview Isabella's parents and learned nothing about Isabella's whereabouts; Hogan orders her to drop the Isabella pursuit.

The navy team acquired the Reynolds beacon three kilometers away, where science equipment is to be examined.

Roderick is a Tulosa-based criminal with cybernetic inserts, who breaks into Paul's bungalow with Marlon on behalf of Lo Kin's associate.

Geena Seaton claims her husband is at a Texas legal convention, and mentions threatening a reporter named Mellanie who worked for Alessandra Baron.

The weapon breaks down quantum-level cohesion of matter in its field, converting it to energy, and is meant as a decisive weapon against the Primes.

Giant free-flying trees of blue and violet sponge drift in the halo; Ozzie hopes they hold water and fruit.

Armored humans wage guerrilla war on every captured world, using sabotage, fusion bombs, and vanishing tactics, and fight to the death by triggering fusion bombs when cornered.

Biewn is a hastily built, well-equipped dormitory village forty kilometers from Illanum, housing technicians and experts working on the secret project.

A three-meter plyplastic sphere filled with impact gel, stealthed against Prime sensors, with a caterpillar track; used to deploy soldiers onto the enemy-held planet through wormholes.

Georgia is one of Simon's earliest believers and helped build the highway.

Gigalife is alien nanonic-based organisms: huge circular groundplants, floating waterplants, and spaceflowers grown on asteroids as moons. The Dynasty is studying them for commercial application.

The hyper-rifle is a small atom laser designed to puncture alien armor force fields, and works on Prime suits.

Illanum is a town on Cressat serving the Sheldon Dynasty's estates with a supply depot, airport, malls, schools and leisure clubs.

Surviving locals use captured Prime guns and jamming to ambush a Prime patrol in a ravine, drawing Prime flyers.

The starship Moscow emerges from hyperspace above a gas giant in an uninhabitable M-class star system near Granada.

The unknown Planters technoformed the planet about twenty thousand years ago, leaving only the gigalife; they may return when the spaceflower kernels run out of material.

A huge refinery-like structure along the Randtown shore pumps out foaming water; the Primes use the lake to breed creatures, bioforming the planet.

Sneekbot 411 detected an infrared heat source in a ruined house, an unarmored alien plugged into a human handheld array.

Valetta ambushed Justine in committee by calling for Paula Myo's withdrawal from Senate Security.

Douvoir missiles need tripartite arming codes: three crew members must authorize a launch.

Moscow-class warships are 150-meter weapons-delivery ships with force-field shielding, built on nine assembly platforms linked to Kerensk by wormhole; twelve are operational.

Petch is a huge bouncer with metallic muscle implants who knows Paula by name and lets her skip the queue.

The Institute recommends continued scout flights, including another flyby of Dyson Alpha, and believes the Primes can only be dealt with by total victory.

Paula suspects one of these satellites contained a device that shut down the barrier around the Primes, so hardware may have been sabotaged.

A treatment that permanently alters DNA in every cell so a person is genetically a different person, defeating DNA identification.

The new frigates are smaller and faster than the Moscow-class and have a different, undisclosed drive and weapons.

Illuminatus hosts ultra-discreet clinics offering baseline DNA modification and is not the safest place in the Commonwealth.

Lucius is a probationary detective in NorthHarbor precinct, stuck with tedious work and night stakeouts under his mentor Marhol.

Marhol is a detective sergeant and Lucius's mentor who treats informers as drinking buddies and claims beer on expenses.

The clinic occupies seven floors of Greenford Tower from the thirty-eighth story; its own security is strong, but the Tower's door security clears staff beforehand.

According to an informant, the Stuhawks from SouthCentral, in debt to a syndicate, scout and provide muscle for the carjackings in NorthHarbor.

A city of twenty-four million on a reclaimed island at the meeting of three rivers, with kilometer-high skyscrapers and airships; politically fractious, a crime hub.

The Cypress Island's cybersphere node was physically damaged, cutting passengers off from the unisphere while it sailed through jungle.

Dorian is a handsome young clubber with scarlet dragon tattoos who approaches Mellanie on the Cypress Island and offers her a drink.

A skeletal band suit worn over or under clothes that generates a force field; it must be switched on in advance to protect fully.

Part of the tower's core elevator shaft was breached, letting one or more persons escape through the subbasements.

Jamas organized the ground transport and helped pack the crates; he is accused of possible involvement but denies it.

Kaspar Murdo is a dominant S&M club regular who targets apparent newcomers; he meets a girl calling herself Saskia at the bar.

Rosamund discovers a second set of scrutineer programs in the Octavious arrays, showing someone else is watching room 2317.

The three lawyers fled New York and have been receiving treatments at Saffron Clinic; one is in the Nicholas suite, two in the Fenay suite.

A criminal fixer in Tridelta City who supplies Adam with troops; he is motivated by money but claims he won't betray humanity.

Treetops is a wooden bar and restaurant platform in the jungle canopy, reachable only by a ten-kilometer, twenty-five-minute cable car ride.

Captain Turvill tries to detain Hoshe at the transit station, then apologizes and lets him through after Admiral Columbia orders him to back off.

The Charybdis is the first frigate under construction, to be a fifty-meter flattened ellipsoid with active-stealth composite hull; it is several days from completion.

Hector Del, commander of Justine's Senate Security bodyguard team, is killed by the intruder Bruce.

Merioneth is an Independent world that left the Commonwealth over a century ago.

Nitachie is Campbell Sheldon's private residence: a square artificial island, five kilometers a side, built in the Seychelles.

Otis is Nigel's son and will fly combat missions in the frigates; he notes that his father's weapon will effectively genocide the Primes.

The Searcher is a lifeboat starship that has done two test flights and is the most reliable choice for carrying the assembly bay and weapon section.

The Speedwell is a Dynasty colony ship of spherical hull sections on a central spine, much bigger than the Second Chance; its drive section is nearly complete.

A technologically advanced race younger than the Silfen who built the barrier generators around two systems to imprison the Dysons.

A winged male Silfen who speaks English with a German accent, chosen to sound authoritative because he resembles a legendary demon.

Dublin is a Moscow-class starship that can survive near a star; it flies there in hyperspace to scout the Prime wormhole above Hanko's sun.

A Prime device fired into a star's corona that disrupts magnetic flux lines to produce a huge, long-lasting particle radiation flare that sterilizes nearby planets.

Hanko is the only star where humans sent a starship to investigate the Prime incursion.

A vast shared realm of Silfen life and thought pervading the gas halo, binding the Silfen wherever they roam.

Thame is the Charybdis technical officer and a ninth-generation grandson of Nigel Sheldon.

Kumancho leads the Senate Security detail following Victor Halgarth to Boongate; they may be stranded there by the closed wormhole.

The navy lacks the roughly 170,000 Douvoir missiles needed to destroy Prime ships across the New48; production would take about nine months.

About thirty-two billion people live on the New48 worlds, not counting Wessex.

Fired into a star, the weapon releases a nova-level burst and destroys the star, sterilizing neighboring systems.

A quantumbuster whose energy is diverted to expand its own effect field, converting a measurable fraction of a star into a nova-scale explosion lethal within about thirty light-years.

Sunforge is a local Boongate transport and courier company whose warehouse Victor Halgarth visited.

Johansson will help track the Starflyer but demands Paula deliver the data Kazimir McFoster carried, fearing entrapment after 130 years of pursuit.

The GH7 is a huge engine with five cargo wagons and a heavy force field; it carries the Starflyer and escaped to Boongate.

An unregistered engine, the one earlier seen on a siding, pursues Alic's carriage onto the Boongate track three hundred meters behind.

The Half Way wormhole generator building is destroyed by large explosions, closing the gateway after the Guardians pass through.

Trevathan Gulf is a 700-kilometer fault valley in the Dessault range whose rivers irrigate nearly a quarter of the planet's farms.

Valentine is the convoy's technical chief, though Harvey says Samantha is the one who can drive the work on.

Zone killers are powerful weapons that destroyed the escort vehicles guarding the Far Away force field and left the rails intact.

Bilma is a world in phase two space, outside Ozzie's wormhole range; Ozzie emerged on its Dolon continent, far from the capital.

Cresset is a world reached via a lone gateway from Augusta's New Costa station; Nigel has a mansion outside Illanum town.

Eansor is a town of twenty-two thousand on Bilma, seventy-two kilometers from where the travelers emerged.

The MANN truck, carrying the Starflyer's shiny aluminum capsule, survived the zone killers and every attack inside a force field the attackers could not penetrate.

Starflyer agents fled through the wormhole in trucks, possibly carrying the Starflyer, and now wait on the other side to shoot anything coming through.

The road across the Aldrin Plains is decayed and the roads vanish altogether about 160 km south.

Clouddancer told Ozzie about the Anomine race, who built the barrier but will not repair it.

Jansis is a mansion security staff member who agrees to give Mellanie's farewell note to Orion in the morning.

Jasmine is a fifth-generation granddaughter of Nigel Sheldon, a first-lifer, who arrives at the mansion for her holiday and overrides the security staff.

Lady Georgina is a high-class madame on Augusta who provides first-life girls to the rich and famous.

The wormhole emerged in Schweickart Park, about twenty kilometers southwest of Armstrong City.

The frigate Scylla will not be ready for vacuum for another two days.

Vanora Kingsley is a new recruit of Lady Georgina chosen for a Sheldon Dynasty contract requiring a sweet girl; she will be extracted and confined in a safe house.

Anagaska is a phase three world eight light-years from Balkash, already advanced to predevelopment state, and is the destination for Hanko's refugees.

Hanko's Premier Speaker, hostile and resentful toward the evacuation plan, was forced by Nigel to go through the wormhole first to set an example.

The TD channel is a subfunction of the frigate's main drive and can be made directional to allow tracking.

Where the clans are making their biggest effort to intercept the Starflyer; the convoy is about two and a half hours away.

The Guardian demolition team destroyed the concrete arch bridge over the Anculan, dropping the central hundred meters of road into the river.

Anguilla grass is a modified Bermuda grass with a dense root mat that smothers everything, tailored for heat and moisture and thriving beyond expectations.

The clans are assembling all warriors in the eastern Dessault Mountains, with Barsoomian help, for a Final Raid on the Starflyer, Institute and arkship.

Judson, a Guardian rider with a Charlemagne, meets the Volvos to confirm their identity using coded songs and guides them toward Samantha.

Institute vehicles that are fleeing Armstrong City, ramming emergency vehicles and injured people; local police fear to intercept them.

Leads a demolitions team sent to destroy the bridge over the river Taran, 600 km south.

An ancient émigré from Earth who spent thirty years hand-planting giant GMredwoods along 160 km of Highway One at the equator.

Five leather couches with arrays provide skill memory implants; induction takes about a minute, implantation eight minutes, integrity review another minute.

Town on the wet desert west of the Aldrin Plains where tour companies hangar hypergliders; the team must reach it by tomorrow afternoon.

The wet desert is a flat, waterlogged former seabed near the Grand Triad, swept daily by storms and fog and devoid of life.

A tiny town of about twenty buildings at a T-junction on the edge of the advancing Aldrin grasslands, where the convoy refuels.

Petrosaur-like flying creatures with fifteen-meter wingspans, oyster-gray hide and three-meter heads; Barsoomians ride them but will not fly them into battle.

The stations across the Dessault range are linked by maser relays on high pinnacles protected by force fields; Samantha doubts they'll hold in the superstorm.

A sixteen-kilometer-high wall of sand and stone moving at five hundred km/h swept from the High Desert down onto the Institute valley.

Mount Idle is a small, crumbling peak whose cave holds the control center for the planet's revenge, guarded by force field and sentries.

Rebecca Gillespie leads a Barsoomian congregation riding genetically engineered king eagles; they come to safeguard the Raiel and to sharpshoot for the Guardians.

Sparks is the ring most disrupted by a single dark distortion; Ozzie calls it the spanner in the works, and Mark targets it.

Three zone killers detonated over the convoy, destroying most vehicles and a 300-meter stretch of Highway One, but did not harm the MANN truck.

Anna Kime is being re-lifed with a memory edit removing Starflyer contamination under the Doi amnesty.

The new desert, created by the planet's revenge a year earlier, is turning green and boggy, with rivers reappearing.

Tom and his brothers Andy and Hagen scavenge the new desert for pieces of the smashed alien starship; their home burned down in Armstrong City.