Meanwhile, on Mir, a young astronomer named Abdikadir (son of one of the main characters of Time's Eye), while making observations on what appears to be planet Mars covered in oceans, is interrupted by Bisesa Dutt's old mobile phone ringing.

Back on Earth, the Space Council is preparing to launch an antimatter-fueled spacecraft to intercept the Q-bomb, while Bisesa arrives at a research station located at Mars' North Pole.

Babylon has been completely changed by Alexander the Great after his victory over the Mongols, becoming the center of his new empire and one of only two large cities on the planet (the other being a nineteenth-century Chicago).

On the way, her phone's AI determines that the universe containing Mir and the habitable version of Mars is rapidly decaying, and has only another 500 years left before it ends in a Big Rip.

After being copied and transmitted to nearby star systems in 2042, in an attempt to save a small bit of humankind should the shield project fail, she and another two AIs had reached a distant, inhabited planet, which had itself been almost sterilised by the Firstborn.

Athena's hypotheses was that all the Eyes were connected, and the destruction of one on Blue Mars would attract the Q-bomb to real-Mars, thereby destroying the planet completely but sparing Earth.

"[2] Publishers Weekly wrote "the narrative leaps about too much to develop characters, but Clarke has never been as interested in individuals as in humanity's ability to accept change as a species.