In a newborn twenty-first century, tunnels through space-time have connected our planet with hitherto unimagined alternate universes. The genius minds working at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project - a fifty-three-mile-long underground particle accelerator - George Griffin and Roger Coulton have realized their greatest dream, and novelist Alice Lancaster is there to witness their triumph. Reaching out into the vast cosmos, Griffin and Coulton have finally made contact. But with whom? Or rather...with what? For their message has been received by an ancient, hostile entity that combs the many universes searching for knowledge and life to absorb and annihilate. And now the entity has locked onto a faint, persisting signal emanating from a distant, uncommonly fertile feeding ground...called Earth.