Here's the publisher's back cover copy for
There and Back Again
Nebula Award-winning author Pat Murphy (collaborating with her imaginary
friend, Max Merriwell) takes a break from serious themes and historical
research, to send us on a wild, fantastic journey through space and time,
from the asteroid belts of the Solar System to the very heart of the galaxy.
Bailey was heading home in his steam-powered rocket when he found a message
pod. It was only by luck that he spotted it, disabled and drifting in an
eccentric orbit around a large M-type asteroid. Strange to find a message
pod so far from interstellar trade routes. The pod's radio signal was silent;
Bailey could see in the viewscreen that its antenna had been snapped off.
Just luck that Bailey had taken that route home, that the pod was in orbit
around that particular asteroid, that Bailey had happened to be in a scavenging
mood and that his detectors had called his attention to the blip that was
the pod. Otherwise, centuries might have passed before anyone found it.
The asteroid belt was crowded with tumbling rocks and bits of space debris
and there was no reason for this one to attract any attention.
Bailey picked up the message pod, and notified its owners that he had it.
And that was the beginning of the adventure. The next thing he knew, the
legendary Gitana, adventurer extraordinaire, was arriving at Bailey's asteroid
home.
With her were a crew of Farrs, members of the oldest and richest clone family
in the galaxy ó a clone family that made its fortune by mapping the
wormholes that permit faster than light travel. The message pod had been
for the Farrs. And now here was Gitana, insisting that Bailey must join
in a quest to the center of the galaxy in search of an alien artifact that
may well be a map of the entire wormhole system.
It's a long way from the Asteriod Belt around Old Sol to the Galactic Center,
and the journey is fraught with danger: Pirates who lurk at the wormhole
exits, and Resurrectionists who believe that cloned humans are really just
spare parts. Weird alien lifeforms that will destroy a spaceship, and cybernetic
entities with the strangest loyalties. 'Pataphysicians and angry Farrs,
Bailey must meet them all, and win his way through, because the wormholes
only go in one direction, and if he doesn't get There, he will never get
Back Again.
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