Survival — Julie E. Czerneda

Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor--Mac to her friends and colleagues--was a trained biologist whose work was her life. And working at the Base, set in an ideal location just where the Tannu River sped down the west side of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, was the perfect situation for Mac. She and Or. Emily Mamani were just settling in to monitor the years salmon runs when their research was interrupted by the unprecedented arrival of Brymn, the first member of the Dhryn race to ever set foot on Earth,

Brymn was an archaeologist, and his research had focused on a region of space known as the Chasm, an area that was literally dead, its worlds empty of any life-forms, though traces existed of the civilizations that must once have flourished there.

Brymn had sought out Mac because she was a biologist--a discipline forbidden among his own people--and he felt she might be able to help him discover what had created the Chasm. Mac had lithe interest in alien races, and she tried to make it clear that she was unwilling to abandon her own work. But the decision was taken out of her hands when a mysterious attack resulted in Emily's abduction from the Base, and forced Mac to flee for her life with Brymn. It appeared that Earth itself might be under attack by the legendary race the Bryn called the Ro, beings that might be the destructive force behind the Chasm.

Suddenly, Mac found herself the only human on the Dhryn home world, in grave danger and charged with the responsibility of learning everything she could that might possibly aid Earth in protecting the human race from extinction....