The Shattered Sphere

Dramatis Personae

The Autocrat of Ceres. The absolute ruler of Ceres, and de facto hegemonic leader of the entire Asteroid Belt. By tradition, the holder of the office renounces his or her name and all links to his or her previous life upon entry into office.

Joanne Beadle. Operations technician at Kourou Spaceport, South America. She acts, rather reluctantly, as Wolf Bernhardt’s personal assistant during his stay there.

Dr. Wolf Bernhardt. Head of the U.N. Directorate of Spatial Investigation (DSI) and Director of the Multisystem Research Institute (MRI).

Dr. Sondra Berghoff. Director of the Ring of Charon Gravities Research Station at Plutopoint.

Canpopper Notworthit. A rather inefficient cargo handler on NaPurHab.

Dr. Selby Bogsworth-Stapleton. A “Leftover,” that is, a citizen of Earth stranded in the Solar System by the Abduction. The only trained archaeologist on the Moon, she heads the exploration of the Lunar Wheel and the Wheelway Tunnel system.

Sianna Colette. A young woman, orphaned as a teenager by the pulsequakes of the Abduction. As the book opens, she is a graduate student working at the Multisystem Research Institute (MRI) in New York.

Dr. Larry O’Shawnessy Chao. Formerly a youthful and very junior researcher at the Gravities Research Station, Pluto. Chao accidentally activated the huge Charonian being, the Lunar Wheel, and thus inadvertently set in motion the events leading to the Abduction. As the book opens, he is working on the Graviton project.

Lucian Dreyfuss. Once a technician at the Moon’s Orbital Traffic Control Center, he was captured by the Charonians in the Rabbit Hole. He is presumed dead.

Eyeballer Maximus Lock-on. A rather moody and forceful woman, she is head of navigation and guidance on NaPurHab.

Dr. Ursula Gruber. Director of Observational Studies at MRI and a key adviser to Wolf Bernhardt.

Dr. Gerald MacDougal. Second-in-command of the Terra Nova. He is married to Marcia MacDougal. A born-again Christian, he is a trained exobiologist.

Dr. Marcia MacDougal. Once a planetary engineer on Venus Initial Station for Operational Research (VISOR), now a researcher in Charonian symbology. She escaped from the Naked Purple Movement in Tycho Purple Penal as a teenager. She returned to the Moon when VISOR was moth-balled. As the book opens, she is based at the Lunar North Pole and involved in research into Charonian language and behavior there.

Wally Sturgis. An expert in computer modeling. As the book opens, he is employed at the Multisystem Research Institute.

Ohio Template Windbag. The Maximum Windbag, or leader, of the Naked Purple Habitat (NaPurHab).

Tyrone Vespasian. Director of the Lucian Dreyfuss Memorial Research Station (a.k.a. “The Rabbit Hole”) at the Moon’s North Pole.