Black-out

On a dying Mars, Old Thak is determined to revive astronomy before his world’s last civilization collapses. With painstaking effort, he has persuaded the elders to build a powerful new telescope, training a handful of eager students while military leaders accuse him of wasting precious resources. Mars has been ravaged by war, its population reduced, its knowledge scattered, and its future predicted to be grim.

Thak believes salvation may lie on the brilliant blue planet rising in the sky—the third world, whose inhabitants have been sending signals across space. By bending lines of power into a vast, unmistakable pattern, he has tried to answer them, but war interrupted the experiment. Now, as the telescope is finally completed, Thak and his students must learn whether the distant planet truly holds intelligent life—and whether its people possess the wisdom to save a dying world. Their hope rests on a fragile attempt at communication, pursued under the shadow of dwindling time and an increasingly hostile society.