The starstream is beautiful. But beauty turns deadly when an ancient AI bent on destruction uses it to travel uptime, to humanity's future. The Mindaru are dead. Or so exiled-Earthman John Bandicut and his alien companions believe, after their intervention to save the Orion Nebula and surrounding worlds. But now a part of this ancient and malicious AI colony is swarming toward the present from its birthplace deep in the past. Their opening:...