and pursued war, this was merely an annoyance since the Xeelee were thinking on a larger scale about more potent enemies. The crew of the Great Northern and Lieserl discover the folly of their species. A Xeelee nightfighter is discovered in Callisto (referenced in the later story "Reality Dust"), rigged to piggyback the Great Northern to the Great Attractor. Fifty days later, they discover that the Xeelees' project has been destroyed, but a recently awakened virtual of Michael Poole shows Spinner-of-Rope, a primitive, how to pilot around the fragmented cosmic strings and travel into the past, using a closed time-like path. These last humans return to the Ring, in an era in which it was not destroyed; the Xeelee allow them through, and they briefly attempt to pick universes and find sanctuary in another younger universe, after passing through the Ring, and get to work on starting a new world. Michael Poole remains in the universe and witnesses the deaths of the last stars, and the decay of the last protons—the final victory of the dark matter lifeforms over the baryonic Xeelee and lesser races. Eventually, his consciousness disperses, and history ends. References External links 1994 British novels 1994 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Novels by Stephen Baxter Xeelee Sequence Generation ships in fiction HarperCollins books Hard science fiction