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.”

Copyright © 1994 by Abbenford Associates

Excerpt from The Sunborn copyright © 2004 by Abbenford Associates

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books

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ISBN: 978-0-446-55904-1

First eBook Edition: February 2005

Contents

Copyright Page

PROLOGUE: True Center

PARTICLE STORM

PART ONE: Far Antiquity

ONE: Techno-Nomads

TWO: The Sail-Snake

THREE: The Rule of Number

FOUR: Pale Immensities

FIVE: Ancient Flavors

SIX: The Song of Electrons

PART II: The Eater of All Things

ONE: Hard Pursuit

TWO: The Shredded Star

THREE: Besik Bay

FOUR: Motes Such As You

FIVE: Tiny Minds

SIX: Lightning Life

SEVEN: A Taste of the Void

EIGHT: The Aperture Moment

NINE: The Cyaneans

Photovores

PART THREE: The Time Pit

ONE: Deep Reality

TWO: Honeycomb Home

THREE: The Far Black

FOUR: A Day in Court

FIVE: Trans-History

SIX: The Charm of Commerce

SEVEN: Animal Spirits

PART FOUR: Gravity’s Gullet

ONE: The Esty Wind

TWO: Time’s Grip

THREE: The Rock of Chaos

FOUR: Unsettled Movement

FIVE: Hard Spark

SIX: Mind Surgery

PART FIVE: Malign Attentions

ONE: The Pain of Eternity

TWO: Rational Laughter

THREE: Casualties

FOUR: Salvage

FIVE: The Sea of Sand

SIX: Eating the Storm

SEVEN: Passing Currents

Timeline of Galactic Series

About the Author

A preview of “The Sunborn”

The Galactic Center Series by Gregory Benford

TIME’S GRIP

He lifted his right hand—

—and it wouldn’t budge. It lay palm-up on smooth, cool timestone. The flesh near his knuckles felt cold, stiff. He pulled harder. A little give, not much. “Quath, I’m stuck. It’s got me.”

He yanked harder. The right hand came free with an awful ripping sound—and a flash of white-hot pain.

<I should have realized. Timestone is not truly solid. It is compressed events, rendered as mass. Press against it long enough and you become part of the event.>

“What ‘event’? That stuff tried to eat me.”

<Do not ascribe intention to physical law. Your skin began to diffuse into the occurrence-space which this substance is.>

“You mean everything here can sop us up, like sponges?”

ACCLAIM FOR GREGORY BENFORD’S CLASSIC NOVELS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER

TIDES OF LIGHT

“Benford’s most adventurous, most philosophical, and most scientifically creative novel.”

—Houston Press

“Mr. Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings but about human desires and fears.”

—New York Times Book Review

SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY

“As at the end of any great symphony, one can only stand and applaud.”

—Asimov’s Science Fiction

“A worthy conclusion to what now should be acknowledged as the most important and involving hard SF series yet written.”

—Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY GREGORY BENFORD

Fiction

Beyond Infinity

The Sunborn

The Martian Race

Eater

The Stars in Shroud

Jupiter Project

Shiva Descending (with William Rostler)

Heart of the Comet (with David Brin)

A Darker Geometry (with Mark O. Martin)

Beyond the Fall of Night (with Arthur C. Clarke)

Against Infinity

Cosm

Foundation’s Fear

Artifact

Timescape

The Galactic Center Series

In the Ocean of Night

Across the Sea of Suns

Great Sky River

Tides of Light

Furious Gulf

Sailing Bright Eternity

Non-fiction

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia

For Joan, forever