From the fertile imaginations of two of science fiction's most formidable talents, Nebula award-winners Gregory Benford and David Brin, comes a compelling and visionary novel of epic proportions... a story of drama and power, of deep human courage and consequence, of astonishing authenticity and exciting speculation ... an odyssey of discovery from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful o f men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future...