In the late twenty-first century, earth is wracked by political and
ecological crises, and the Aeon Foundation launches a starship to find
a new world and found a new civilization, with all the advances of
science and without the mistakes made on earth. Catharin Gault is the
idealistic astronaut-physician in Aeon's primary crew. Along with the
rest of the crew and passenger-colonists, she goes into stasis – cold
suspended animation – for the long journey across the stars, their
collective fate surrendered to the ship's artificial intelligence.
Things
go amiss even before the new world's beginning. Programmed to search
for a planet with a large moon (the only way to guarantee stable
seasons, tides, and an earthlike ecosystem after terraforming), the
ship takes far too long, then finds a destination better than Catharin
ever dared hope for: two earth-sized planets locked in orbit around
each other. The one dubbed "Planet Green" has abundant plant life and a
paucity of large animals. "Planet Blue" is an oceanic world covered
with hurricanes. Several things about Blue baffle Aeon's planetary
scientists. To everyone else, it's simply a big, blue moon.
Revived
from stasis more than a thousand years after the starship left earth,
Catharin makes a horrible discovery. The long stasis damaged the
complex organic molecules in human bodies. Unless the human genome can
be repaired, there will be no future on idyllic Planet Green.
Aeon
has tremendous biomedical resources, but Catharin needs more. She needs
a genetic miracle-worker – and she has one. She revives Joseph Devreze:
a uniquely talented molecular biologist and maddeningly irresponsible
genius. A crown prince of the science of his century, Devreze made a
terrible mistake, followed a seductive line of research too far, and
made one powerful enemy too many. In a trap of his own unwitting
making, he saw only one way out: escape to the other side of the stars.
Now, Catharin must rely on this untrustworthy maverick to help her save
humanity on Green. Their mutual attraction ratchets up as their
conflict with each other escalates. Together Catharin and Joe must
decide how they can face, and embrace, a future utterly at odds with
the Foundation's plans and their own expectations. And all the while
the mystery of the Hurricane Moon looms over them.
