Kyle Gustafson had been doing work he loved, with the space program, anemic though it was, until disaster struck and a shuttle was lost on takeoff. There had to be a fall guy, and Kyle was picked-but a few months later, the American space program instantly became a quaint relic when aliens in a gigantic starship orbited the moon and made contact with Earth. They said that they represented a vast federation of intelligent races and they hoped that Earth would prove eligible to join the Federation. Kyle found himself back in good favor, picked to interface with the alien representatives sent to Earth. But there were a few false notes in the utopian front the aliens presented. Surveillance and other satellites were disappearing from orbit in a way that might have made the Americans suspect the Russians and the Russians suspect the Americans, except that each was aware of the other side's disappearances. And when the aliens began handing out small objects of alien art to world leaders as tokens of friendship, Kyle became suspicious. Technicians investigated and found that the items were actually listening devices. Worse, odd events were happening all over the world which seemed deliberately planned to provoke the U.S. and Russia into war, possibly even a nuclear holocaust. Were the aliens trying to get Earth to wipe itself out? And why? Kyle would find that he had an ally among the aliens, but one who was regarded as a freak by her own kind. Her influence was limited, but Kyle had to find a way out of the crisis before the world exploded in nuclear flames, or else the aliens grew impatient and decided to do the job themselves. . . .

Genre: Science Fiction