From Nebula Award winner Jack McDevitt comes the eighth installment in the popular The Academy series-Priscilla ‘Hutch’ Hutchins discovers an interstellar message from a highly advanced race that might be her last chance for a mission before the system is shut down for good. Hutch continues to be the Academy’s greatest pilot for many years. She’s had numerous first contact encounters and even became a minor celebrity. But globe politics have shifted from exploration to a growing fear that this program will about The Long Sunset come across an extraterrestrial race more complex than mankind and war. Despite taking part in the recent scientific discovery that rejuvenates the body and expands one’s life expectancy, Hutch discovers herself as a well-known interstellar pilot with small to do, until a message from an alien race arrives. The message is a bit of music from an unexplored area. Even though this alien competition could pose an excellent danger and that message could have taken several thousand years to travel, the program prepares the final interstellar ship for the trip. As the paranoia increases, Hutch and her staff make an early escape-but what they discover at the additional end of the galaxy is completely unexpected.