Xeelee - Redemption - Stephen Baxter

Written by Stephen Baxter
Read by Dudley Hinton
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape….

This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here.

The Xeelee Belt has a radius 10,000 times Earth’s orbital distance. It is a light-year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system, it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun.

If it was at rest, it would have a surface area equivalent to about 30 billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near light speed. And because of relativistic effects, distances are compressed for inhabitants of the Belt and time drastically slowed.

The purpose of the Belt is to preserve a community of Xeelee into the very far future, when they will be able to tap dark energy, a universe-spanning antigravity field, for their own purposes.

But with time the Belt has attracted populations of lesser species, here for the immense surface area, the unending energy flows. Poole, Miriam and their party, having followed the Ghosts, must explore the artefact and survive encounters with its strange inhabitants - before Poole, at last, finds the Xeelee who led the destruction of Earth….