Author Description

If you are reading this as a stand-alone novel, you might find the following information of interest. Five people landed on Mars: Colonel Preston Ashton, NASA. (Ash.) Friends with Jake Jensen, they had served in a squadron of F-22 Raptors before leaving the USAF for NASA.Colonel Jake Jennings, NASA. Ex-Raptor pilot.Svetlana Danilenko, Russia. Expert scuba diver, took up with the Cosmonaut facility at Baikonur.Squadron Leader Mark Singelton, RAF. Trained as a builder before joining the RAF. Most of the construction has been done by the Geralds, and other robots, but the human touch is essential, especially on the long journey to Mars and back.Hoshi Masuto from Japan. Scientist.Other characters in this story include Michelle Romero, a secretary at NASA, more than a friend to Ash.Semeramis, (Sem), the Goddess of communications. One of The Illuminate, you will know of Semeramis; said to be the model for the Statue of Liberty, and the face on the emblem of Starbucks. She had control of something called Hilbert Space, a means of communicating more akin to telepathy than speech. (qv; Google it, it really exists).The Marquis of Libeaux, known now as Marq. The family leader of The Illuminate, and only survivor from that family. Older than Zeus.Mark Singleton was killed whilst on Mars, but he discovered a secret; a strange set of people on Earth had been behind the Mars mission.This story is what happened to these people on Earth after most of The Illuminate; Romanov, Mrs Hapsburg, del Banco, Rockefeller, and Xanthros met a sticky end.But they left behind a secret experiment they had been toying with - a time machine. Unfortunately, only one human could use it - Marq. He was assisted in running this machine by Sem and an unknown number of humanoid robots called Geralds, who had been allowed to develop themselves - that is why they all looked the same.The old paradox of time travel, known as 'The Grandfather Paradox' has been solved by nature itself. Any person except Marq who