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Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Ian Douglas 2014
Cover Art © Gregory Bridges
Ian Douglas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007483778
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007483785
Version: 2016-11-17
Praise for IAN DOUGLAS
and his thrilling
STAR CARRIER SERIES!
“The action is full-blooded and almost nonstop, yet the well-developed background is surprisingly rich and logical. . . . As immersive as it is impressive.”
Kirkus, starred review for Deep Space
“Douglas knows his SF.”
Publishers Weekly
“Well researched and quite imaginative.”
CNN Online
DEEP SPACE was voted one of the Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2013 by Kirkus.
Dedication
As always,
throughout the multiverse,
worlds without end,
for Brea
Contents
Prologue
They called themselves the Consciousness.
Following the faint but telltale leakage of gravity from one universe to another, they’d detected the circle of whirling masses as they opened a passageway between the ’branes, emerging in a four-dimensional space subtly different from other, known realities. They were working now to create a permanent gateway between universes, creating girders and connectors spanning light years, coaxing solid light from the vacuum energy itself, anchoring suns, mining starcores, imbedding the structural components within the fabric of spacetime itself.
At this point, the scope of the Consciousness spanned a number of universes. A metamind, a hive mentality, it was an emergent epiphenomenon arising from the interplay of some hundreds of quadrillions of individual minds,