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Second volume of the Manifold trilogy, Time has been published in 2001 by
Stephen Baxter.
2020. Reid Malenfant, a former NASA astronaut discovers with the help of
Nemoto, a Japanase astronomer living in a lunar colony, the presence of aliens
in the asteroid belt. A probe sent there proves their presence, and Malenfant
conjectures that they must have arrived into the solar system through a
gateway, which is most probably located at the focal point of the Sun's
gravity field. He launches a solo mission to this point, where he actually
finds a gateway, goes through it, and meets the aliens called the Gaijin. They
take him for a long journey across a large portion of the galaxy, using the
network of gateways to show him many worlds, most of which have either a
rudimentary form of life, or have been sterilized by an unknown cause. A
gateway jump is no faster than lightspeep, and Malenfant therefore spends
hundreds of years travelling. Meanwhile, on Earth, Nemoto charges Madeleine
Meacher, a weapon smuggler, to be the next star traveller with the Gaijin. The
Gaijin again take her to many worlds, without her really understanding what
they want to show her. Most of the story decribes the evolution of the solar
system, first the lunar colony finding oxygen and other vital elements by
digging to the core of the moon, the Earth regressing and eating up most of
its resources while the Gaijin fiddle with DNA to re-create extinct species.
Some time later, the Earth suffers from a new ice age, while the moon colony
is dying. Meacher takes australian aboriginals to colonize Triton. Malenfant
comes back to Earth where he discovers that Nemoto is still alive and
manipulating him again. Malenfant ends up on Io with a colony of Neanderthal
before disappearing again. Finally, Meacher is contacted by Nemoto (now 1700
years old) to warn the inhabitants of the solar system that another alien
specie called the Crackers are on their way to turn the Sun into a supernova,
their way to get enough energy to expand and fly to the next star, where they
will do the same and so on. Now the remnants of human descendants (and
Nemoto) are on Mercury, the last human colony, and manage to defeat the
Crackers before they distroy the Sun. Meacher leaves to Io and finally finds
Malendant. They are both (along with Neanderthals) dematerialized and stored
on a 10 cm long ship heading for the center of the galaxy. The Gaijin have
discovered that binary star systems turning into neutron stars explode at more
or less regular intervals, delivering a huge amount of gamma and cosmic rays,
sterilizing all life in a radius of thousands of lightyears, preventing any
life form to evolve enough to actually become able to colonize the galaxy.
Before a previous sterilization took place, an unknown species had started to
build a device that would prevent one specific binary star to sterilize this
quadrant of the galaxy. A coalition of current species is working on the
device, but internal dissensions prevent them to complete it. The Gaijin need
human's sense of self and therefore of self sacrifice for a greater good in
order to unite the coalition long enough to complete the task.
