Publisher's Synopsis
Imagine you were handed the key to a shrine, one that is universally acknowledged to contain irrefutable evidence ( one way or the other ) of God's existence; would your curiosity prevail over caution? Professor Michael Henniker faces such a dilemma and succumbs to invitations made by the Guardian Priesthood of Ipri-Axis to reopen a shrine, long closed and inaccessible to them. A Temple said to contain a means of communicating directly with God. Believing that reactivating and such a relic would justify planet-wide war to annihilate rival sects, the Priesthood encourage their human captive to decrypt the clues using the first of three books he unearthed from the melting ice sheets of Greenland. Not understanding why his uncle disappeared years beforehand, Nicholas Hartwell rediscovers the conduit and inadvertently finds himself on Ipri-Axis. His unexpected appearance triggers political rivalries as the Priesthood realise that with two humans, they now have a courier they can persuade to return the missing volumes without risking the Professor's escape. In deep space, an experiment to alter the universal constants is sabotaged, with cataclysmic consequences. But when the physicists realise the culprit is most likely the Temple's mysterious resident, they too want access to it. Hostilities are declared as science clashes with religion in a battle to complete the opening sequence and gain control the ancient monument. But nobody has considered that perhaps what dwells within, is not as benign and benevolent as they hoped, and has an altogether different reason for wanting to escape its tomb.
