For color prints of Michael Whelan paintings, please contact: Glass Onion Graphics
DAW Book Collectors No. 941.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin U.S.A.
Cherryh, C J – [Foreigner 01] Foreigner
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
First Printing, November 1994
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
It was the deep dark, unexplored except for robotic visitors. The mass that existed here was Earth’s second stepping-stone toward a strand of promising stars; and, for the first manned ship to drop into its influence, the mass point was a lonely place, void of the electromagnetic chaff that filled human space, the gossip and chatter of trade, the instructions of human control to ships and crews, the fast, sporadic communication of machine talking to machine. Here, only the radiation of the mass, the distant stars, and the background whisper of existence itself rubbed up against the sensors with force enough to attract attention.
