[1] The second book in the Xeelee Sequence, Timelike Infinity introduces a universe of powerful alien species and technologies that manages to maintain a realistic edge because of Baxter's physics background.

It largely sets the stage for the magnum opus of the Xeelee Sequence, Ring (as opposed to Vacuum Diagrams, Flux, or Raft, which concern themselves with side stories).

Miriam Berg is more concerned over the immediate fate of humanity, with the threat of the future Qax, and transmits a 'help' message to the gate designer Michael Poole.

The Qax goes on to speculate that the torus created a Kerr metric, and that it allowed egress from the current universe, that it was in effect an escape route for the Xeelee.

Regardless, Bolder escaped the Great Attractor and returned to the Qax home system, where he was supposed to be taken into custody by dozens of Spline warships wielding gravitational-wave based "starbreakers" and his priceless data on the god-like Xeelee's ultimate project secured.

Bolder either did not, or somehow escaped; in the ensuing fight, the starbreakers were accidentally fired at the Qax system primary star, and true to their name, destabilised it, causing it to go nova.

In the past, Poole joins Berg on the Friend vessel shortly before the Qax emerges, having travelled aboard his ship, Hermit Crab, from the Oort cloud.

Miriam Berg commandeers the singularity cannon used to sculpt Jupiter and fires a pair of black holes into the Spline, which merge and disable it.

Meanwhile, aided by Jasoft Parz's internal sabotage, Poole succeeds in ramming the Hermit Crab into the second Spline, killing the sapience of the vessel and the entangled Qax, second Governor of Earth, with it.

As the hyperdrive activates, it somewhat shatters space-time, forming a long series of interconnected wormholes that hurl Poole 5 million years forward into the far future.