You're not a person, they say, circling. You're one of Them. From the other side.

When the intercom on his desk buzzed, Marc's head snapped up, instantly awake. He'd been dozing in his chair. His finger stabbed the button that told the boss he was on his way. He stood up and straightened his rumpled gray suit before glancing at his watch. One seventeen AM. It figures. The boss tried to cut him as much slack as he could, but humans just couldn't keep the same pace as the Vrith, who came from the sunny side of a tidally locked planet and didn't sleep at all.

Spread like sails and pushed by distant starlight and supernovae, the four objects drift into the system. They are huge beyond understanding, incomprehensible in their composition. All our probes and all our science leave us no wiser.