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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: A great interstellar migration has begun, down the gateway known as the starstream. Remnant of the Betelgeuse supernova, the starstream is a grand, ethereal highway deep into the Milky Way. It is also a living entity: born of the merged souls of the once-living star and the other beings who died in its creation. Who could have predicted the wonders of the starstream, or the perils it unleashed? Among the perils is a terrifying race known as the Throgs--shadowy beings that live in the n-space of the starstream. Entire worlds have died, destroyed by the Throgs. But life goes on, and colonists continue to settle new worlds. Colony-bound aboard the starship Charity are one Claudi Melnik, a child of uncommon talents--and an AI named Jeaves, who has his own interest in an encounter with Throgs. When the unthinkable occurs, Claudi must face alone the challenge from beyond space and time. And no one, not even Jeaves, could have predicted the final confrontation, or imagined where unexpected friendship would be found. Down the Stream of Stars, triumphant sequel to the bestselling From a Changeling Star, is a daring journey across the gulf between human and alien, to the heart of consciousness itself.

eBook Publisher: e-reads, Published: e-reads, 1990
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2002

31 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.2 MB], eReader (PDB) [348 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [344 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [311 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [304 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [326 KB], hiebook (KML) [857 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [486 KB], iSilo (PDB) [288 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [357 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [417 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [473 KB]
Words: 106491
Reading time: 304-425 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"It was no surprise that ... Jeffrey Carver's Down the Stream of Stars would have heavy emphasis on science as well as good writing. Best Novel of 1990."--Don D'Ammassa, SF Chronicle

"I enjoyed it immensely. Carver provides another wild ride through a deranged cosmos. His imagination is matched only by his compassion. Marvelous effort!"--Jack McDevitt, author of Infinity Beach and The Engines of God

"Carver's ingenuity is everywhere apparent."--Locus

Clouds of ejected star matter billowed luminously into space like the breath of a mythical god. The ghostly ball at their center was all that remained of the once-mighty sun, Betelgeuse. Three years before, the supergiant had blazed forth in a vast supernova explosion, transforming itself from a living star into a funeral pyre that had briefly outshone the Milky Way. Its ghostly appearance now betrayed the unusual nature of its death. No ordinary supernova--even one ending, as this had, in a black hole--would have contracted and darkened in quite this way. Its smoky translucence spoke eloquently of the invisible forces that had bound it into an oddity of cosmic proportion, an object of Promethean power and mystery.

Its outer layers blazed in the viewscreen as the starship sped inward through the remnant clouds. The display changed every few seconds, highlighting various aspects of its structure. Many on the bridge found their glances drawn repeatedly to the image on the viewscreen. Starship Elijah was diving toward the stellar remnant through the shifting reality of K-space, and tremendous computing power was at work creating that image out of the streams of data pouring into the ship.

Most of the crew were busy at their consoles. But one person, seated at the rear of the bridge, ignored all else but that irresistible vision of the star's ghost. She faced it with her eyes half closed, focusing on its presence with her memory, her imagination, her inner vision. Tamika Jones cared not at all about the astrophysical data streaming across the consoles. She was searching for just one thing, and that was the touch of a mind--a mind that she hoped still lived out there in the remnant of a once-living star. It was a mind she had not felt in three years, not since the moment of the star's death.

In that moment, she had felt him die, too--had mourned his death. But in the midst of her grief she had hoped, prayed, felt that the man without whose genius this strange, unprecedented thing would not exist, had somehow passed through the shadow of death, through the heat and fury of a supernova, and lived. And that was why she was here now, to search for this man who had perhaps survived death. She was here to find Willard Ruskin.

She felt the stirring and muttering of her shipmates' minds around her, like memory-voices chattering and distracting her. That was the effect of the continuous altering of the K-space that carried the ship inward toward the unknown. Transitions through K-space boundaries produced an involuntary cross-linking of neighboring minds--which could be alarming when unexpected--but they were counting upon it now to join them with Willard, or his companions, or whatever might remain of them. She hardly knew what the mind she was seeking might feel like--reaching to her across the gulf of space that separated them from the star, and from whatever lay in the twisted continuum beyond it.

She hardly knew, really, what she was hoping to find.

What her shipmates hoped to find deep within the supernova remnant, close to the black hole inhabiting its core, was the opening to a new interstellar gateway--a structure that would whisk Elijah and untold ships to follow at some unimaginable speed toward the galactic center. It was for that gateway that the majestic Betelgeuse had died at the hands of Project Breakstar. It was for that gateway that a fantastically stretched loop of flawed space had been caught and anchored to the resulting black hole. It was for that gateway that a man named Willard Ruskin, and his best friend Max, had died....

Elijah was flying headlong toward a singularity where known space-time ended and something else began. No one knew precisely where the passage into the gateway lay. Eight robot probes had failed to find it, or to return. At a nearby console, astrophysicist Thalia Sharaane was studying the data streams with ferocious concentration. Possibly she would find clues to the gateway's opening on those consoles, but her friend Tamika had no such hope. And yet Tamika knew that if she could just reach out to the mind of Willard Ruskin ... if she could locate and touch once more the man she had loved ... she might, just might learn from him the way to enter the gateway.

She squinted at the changing image of the sun, growing visibly larger by the second, and searched outward with her thoughts, desperately trying to ignore the jabber and clamor of human intelligence around her.

A movement by the captain made her aware of an announcement. "Sixty seconds from go-around point. Let me know, people, if you're getting anything." He queried the individual bridge officers, then Tamika. "Ms. Jones?" Not answering, Tamika strained to reach out ... beyond the prison of her own skull and her own mind ... to reach beyond the bounds of this ship with its clamoring crew....

The captain's voice became urgent. They dared not venture too close to the black hole, not even in K-space. "Thirty seconds, Ms. Jones. If you don't have anything, we've got to get out of here."

She drew a deep breath and exhaled with exquisite slowness, listening to the meaningless jabber around her, and was about to tell him, No, nothing, do what you have to do--

And then she saw it.

Saw him.

Saw the face of Willard Ruskin, peering at them out of the viewscreen. She pointed, unable to draw a breath, unable to speak. The captain turned, opened his mouth. "What--" And when he checked the time again, his face tightened with indecision.