Prologue

1986

A few miles outside Sparti, Greece

"Look at this. It's some sort of grayish metal bar."

Dr. Susan Bradley, a bombshell blond who never failed to attract enough volunteers for her archaeological digs, stopped cleaning a vase to take a look at what Ruben, her fellow archaeologist, had found.

"Hmm, looks... strange. We'll probably have to send it off to the lab back at Cornell since it looks recent..."

Of course, at least one other strange thing had been found- like what appeared to be an entire village disappearing overnight in the late era of ancient Greece, right after the Peloponnesian War. Some other people had suggested a landslide or some other natural disaster swept the village away to an as yet undiscovered location, but Susan was also a geologist (overachiever both at work and in the bed, some of her detractors had said about her, in private) and had found no evidence at all for this theory. Susan was puzzled, both about the village and the bar and would have to wait for the lab results, since this bar looked machine-made. Strange, strange...

Cornell University

Ithaca, New York

"Professor Sagan! Professor Sagan!"

Carl Sagan turned around to find a tall, dark-haired young man in a standard lab coat running toward him. He seemed so excited and moving so fast... Sagan moved just in time to get our of the way of the skidding guy, who had not noticed the "Wet Floors" sign. The man managed somehow to regain his stability and balance, and started walking slowly toward the professor.

"Are you..."

"Yes, I'm okay. But look at this!

The lab coat held out a picture of a grayish metal bar, along with a LOT of lab test results in a folder, proceeding to shove the whole thing into Sagan's hands. The Professor of Astronomy frowned, but he looked at the documents instead of saying anything, since the lab tech...what was his name again?... seemed absolutely ecstatic about the results... what, is this true? Technetium center with an outside coating of an aluminum-lead alloy? It's about 2,400 years old?

As Sagan looked up, the tech... ah, Mark!... broke into an even bigger grin and nodded.

They had found something that would literally change history and allow them to test one of the most controversial ideas in science and astronomy.

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