"Terrific futuristic aliens story"

In 2019 Baja, California, Russell Sutton owns Poseidon Projects, a relatively small marine biological research firm. Russell targets two to three projects a year, but none involving the American military having worked in the government back at the turn of the century. Thus, his highly regarded staff (six Ph.D.s) is stunned when Russell accepts US Navy Admiral Jack Halliburton deep-water salvage proposal. Lying on the bottom of an oceanic trench, seven miles form the surface, sits a metallic object that Jack wants raised.

Russell succeeds in lifting the small object out of the sea. In Samoa, they investigate the find, but the object is impregnable to their probes. While the scientific team continually fails in its query, two aliens roam the planet. The Changeling lived in the sea for millenniums before arriving on land nearly a century ago and dons any identity including an inanimate; the Chameleon has become the world's richest person. He also will kill without feeling any remorse. News surfaces about the object; along with the usual whackos in and out of the media and some intrigued scientists, the Changeling and the Chameleon have personal interests as both know that this is the key to their finally going home.

This futuristic aliens among us tale is a terrific story line that hooks the audience from the moment the object is lifted from the sea as readers will want to know what this artifact is as well as who are the Changeling and the Chameleon. Russell is a fabulous lead human protagonist, but clearly, the mystery of the two ETs and their "key" is what grips the audience in a fabulous thriller that needs a chlorine-based sequel.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 7, 2004

Summary

With prose "as clear and engaging as his ideas" (New York Times Book Review), award-winning author Joe Haldeman blends scientific fact and far-seeing fiction as he pulls readers into a mind-shattering undersea mystery-from outer space... An unidentified artifact, found seven miles below the surface of the sea, stumps the scientists examining it. But it calls out to the two immortal creatures who have wandered the Earth for centuries. Two creatures who have never crossed paths-until now...