Four of her colleagues search for her using a specially-modified V/STOL craft connected to a 'tuberider', a device that allows the craft to be hitched to the tubular singularity that runs through the center of the Way.

They take her to Axis City, their main settlement. Olmy, a humanoid agent of the Hexamon, and his nameless Frant (alien) colleague, kidnap Vasquez because they understand that she is close to discovering secrets of the Stone and the Way. They have been secretly observing the explorers. The descendants of the Stone's creators live a million kilometers into the Way and 1,200 years into Vasquez’s future, in a civilization called the Hexamon. A Soviet attack on the Stone coincides with the Death, which triggers a nuclear winter on Earth and isolates survivors from all factions on the Stone. The USSR, while protesting restrictions placed upon its scientists, trains space assault teams. Since the Stone appears prior to the recorded date of the Death, and there is no record of the Stone’s appearance in its libraries, the scientists reason that the Stone may come from an alternate future, but it turns out the Death is indeed imminent even with the Stone.

Chinese and Russian science teams are present, but politically restricted. Only some NATO science teams are privy to this information. The physicist, Patricia Vasquez, arrives at the Stone and receives clearance for all the information discovered by the existing science teams, including libraries that describe a nuclear holocaust-“the Death”-taking place in 2005. The Stone’s original inhabitants have been evacuated into the Way at some time in its past, which is the explorers’ future.Īt the opening of the novel, in 2005, Judith Hoffmann, head of the commission that coordinates the exploration of the Stone, recruits a theoretical physicist.

Explorers of its interior discover that the end of the Stone's seventh chamber opens into “the Way”, a corridor that extends beyond the size of the asteroid. This small world is dubbed 'the Stone' by the Americans, 'the Potato' by the Soviets, “the Whale” ( 鲸) by the Chinese and “the Thistledown” by its absent makers. The chambers are terraformed, with the second and third containing cities that have been maintained by automatic systems for centuries. Juno has been hollowed out along its long axis, subdivided into seven cylindrical chambers, and rotates to provide artificial gravity. It moves into an eccentric near-Earth orbit where the rival polities of Earth each try to claim this mysterious object. Incidentally, a 290 km prolate spheroid has been detected following an anomalous energy burst just outside the solar system. In the early 21st century, NATO and the Soviet Union are on the verge of a second nuclear war. It is the first novel in The Way series followed by Eternity. Eon is a science fiction novel by American author Greg Bear published by Bluejay Books in 1985.

Eon by greg bear