Book excerpt: Traveling between the galaxies at sub-light velocities, entire worlds may live and die before the journey ends. When an alien threat passed through the Galaxy of Man, sowing destruction in its wake, humanity ran at any cost, reaching for the safety of the dimmest and most distant lights in the night skies. Little thought could be spared for what would become of survivors left behind while the voyagers slept their sleep of death, unchanging over eons. And now, less than a billion years before Andromeda and the Galaxy of Man are fated to pass through one other like wraiths in the night, the first sub-light transports are reaching Andromeda. Awaiting them as their cargo awaken are wonders and terrors beyond imagining. Few would survive without a helping hand. Chayn Jahil, born upon a derelict ark and rescued by a mysterious being beyond human ken, is joined by Villimy Dy, scion of a diminutive blue-skinned race with reflexes and intellect almost too quick to follow. Together they must struggle not only to survive, but to find and understand humanity's multitudinous offspring, starting anew at the far edge of time and space.