Double Contact

by James White

Tor, 1999, ISBN 0-312-87041-8

A book review by Elisabeth Carey

This is, presumably, the last Sector General novel. Dr. Prilicla, everyone's favorite empathic flying insect, heads out in the ambulance ship Rhabwar in response to three distress beacons--at least one of which may not have been a distress beacon at all, but a nuclear warhead fired in anger. What Prilicla and company find is very confusing: one distressed Monitor Corp ship, whose crew refuse all contact and are in fact willing to risk destruction rather than allow themselves to be rescued, and one alien ship, totally silent, with puzzling damage, and not necessarily containing any survivors. These ships are in orbit above an apparently idyllic--and uninhabited--planet.

After this, of course, things get complicated. I won't say more about what's going on, but this is a fun book.

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