WHO OWNS THE STARS?For ten thousand years Nova Babylonia has been the greatest city of the Second Sphere, an interstellar civilization of human and other beings who have been secretly removed, throughout history, from Earth. Now humans from the far reaches of the Sphere have come, to offer immortality-and to urge them to build defenses against the alien invasion they know is coming.As humans and aliens compete and conspire, the wheels of history will lathe all the players into shapes new and surprising. The alien invasion will reach New Babylon at last-led by the most alien figure of all.