Plot: 4/9.

Dr. Gothon, an honorable scientist who had lived a quarter of a million years old, demonstrated her theory with circumstantial evidences such as newly excavated pots, fossils and concrete supporting statistics to the fifth lord-navigator Desan, arguing that the sapient species of this planet, on which they landed now, had been exterminated long time ago as being incapable of escaping from the catastrophic atomics.

Desan didn’t believe the revelation to other magistrates would incur a murder envisioned by these terrified scientists, and therefor sent the message under some precaution, only to get the anticipated murder aiming for their silence.

Fortunately, Desan had a more competitive space military dealing with other magistrates without his particular commands, but he himself was deeply injured while doing away with the enemy AI vehicle.

At last, scientists who had prepared well for this foreseeable civil war, survived the raid and rescued the dying Desan just in time, but Desan insisted on continuing his voyage for the dreamlike civilisation whose message they had once received a quarter of million years ago. Consequently Gothon, who were determined to inhabit on this planet on which she and other scientists believed the civilisation had already been found, bade farewell to him.

Core: 5/9. Would it be better if the purpose of their expedition was revealed from the outset?

The storyline of getting involved into a conspired rebellion for the sake of truth was interesting yet not engaging, because I could not understand at first glance why debunking a faulty supposition would provoke such an intense reaction, what the tale of this planet really meant to these spacefarers in the future, and what kind of high stakes the five magistrates would lose that pushed them to annihilate their own colleagues. Compared with Asimov’s Nightfall—also an alien civilisation finding their entrenched belief was a lie—this work with an extremely limited third-person perspective failed to render proper emotions like wonders, empathy or anticipation, though it indeed showed much flair for Cherryh’s fabulous world building.

Character: 6/9. I was a little touched by the archaeologist who put the relics of a girl with her pet together in the gallery, and wondered what Gothon—the memorable and venerable woman who schemed and hosted the final report successfully—had initially felt at the moment when she discovered the vanity and futility of a project which she had witnessed from the inception and to which devoted all her passions.

World and Others: 5/9. I expected more marvelous deductions or details of this lost civilisation and the dramatic space war, especially on the aspect of killing the five magistrates with some state-of-the-art futuristic technology, other than the mundane scene of fighting against the clumsy AI vehicle.

Overall: 5/9.