"The 0.01% have decided Earth is history. Dariusz is an engineer whose career ended years ago: now, a man he's never met sits in a bar that doesn't exist and offers him a fresh start-- at a price. Cassandra-- 'Sand, ' to her friends-- is a space pilot, who itches to get her hands on the controls and actually fly a ship rather than watch computers do it for her. The 'Pointers'-- the elite 0.01% who control virtually all wealth-- have seen the limitations of a plundered Earth and set their eyes on the stars. And now Dariusz and Sand, and a half-million ambitious men and women just like them, are sent out to extend the Pointers' and the Market's influence across the galaxy. But the colony fleet is sabotaged and the ESS Adam Mickiewicz crashes, on an alien planet where one hemisphere is seared by perpetual daylight and the other shrouded in eternal night. The castaways have the chance to create society from scratch-- but the hostile planet-- or their own leaders-- may destroy them before they can even begin"--Page 4 of cover.