Professor Edward Kitchener: a double Nobel Laureate researching quantum cosmology for the Event Horizon conglomerate - but no good to anybody dead and with his lungs spread out on either side of his open chest. The security system at Launde was premier-grade gear. But a mercenary could have got through and there were plenty of people anxious to stop his work who would pay the necessary. But why would a professional waste their time ritually slaughtering their target? Something doesn't gel. Was Kitchener the victim of industrial espionage, personal revenge or of a crime of passion committed by one of his live-wire students? Event Horizon need to know, and fast, so Greg Mandel, Psi-boosted ex-private eye, is enticed out of retirement to find himself on a convoluted trail that ends in a confrontation with a past which, according to Kitchener's theories, might never have happened.