Search Worlds Without End

A father and son go searching for the stars, but much more than gravity will hold them back.

Born the year of the Moon landing, Chris Terence spends his life fighting to return humanity to that pinnacle. An engineering student with dreams of spaceflight, he finds upon graduation that the United States no longer has need for astronauts. Years of bureaucratic meddling have reduced the space program to a shell of itself, and it will take the greatest scientific find in history to send humanity skyward once more.

After years battling budget hawks, Chris finally gets his chance to walk on the Moon. While there, he finds evidence of an ancient alien civilization, the Tiberians, who visited Earth's satellite eight thousand years before. Understanding what happened to those long-forgotten travelers will define the lives of Chris and his son, as they fight against all odds to unlock the secrets of the universe.

When a tragic Shuttle accident kills a world-famous basketball player on his trip into space, a trip that had been planned as a PR coup for the space program, former astronaut Scott Blackstone is out of a job. Worse, he and his "Citizen Observer" program are vilified in the media, and he's being sued for a billion dollars. His older brother, Nick, research chief for a major aerospace firm, persuades Scott's estranged ex-wife, Thalia-a top-ranked attorney-to take on Scott's defense. Gradually, it begins to appear that the "accident" might not have been an accident at all.

Meanwhile, as long feared, India and Pakistan go to war-and, worse, Pakistan deploys a nuclear device high in the upper atmosphere, putting the crew of the orbiting International Space Station in iminent danger of destruction by radiation exposure. While the world's space vehicles are grounded by the radiation storm set off by the detonation, only a few weeks remain to rescue the crew, and there's no known way to do it. Save, perhaps, for a secret project of Nick's...

The Return is a story of outsized characters, global crises, and big, daring ideas...and-as told by Buzz Aldrin-it carries a ring of truth. He's been there. He's done that. And he's already helped change the world.