To Captain Frank R. Carey, U.S.M.C., I.R., for providing all the right details. Thanks, Dad.


To Jack Lifton, my own private physical chemist and international intelligence source. (By the way—Clive? Eat your heart out.)


To David Forsmark, for helping hammer out the tough ethical questions—the ones with no easy answers—without which our books would be just more noise. Great minds and all that.


To Nicole Harsch, expert in space psychology—you found all the right articles and led us through them unerringly. Ever tried swordfighting?


And to Star Trek editor Dave Stern—saving the best for last. You make all the editorial arm-wrestling easier to tolerate, and I appreciate you.


Gregory . . . you did it again.


These are the kind of people I’m talking about when readers ask me how I manage to write scientific, military and philosophical passages with accuracy. They are the people I mean when I cagily answer, “Oh . . . I have my sources.”