I was browsing my shelves late last night because I wasn't yet tired, although I should have been. That's when I discovered that this book is the sequel to the one I read earlier (Chain of Attack). The Enterprise goes back to the anomaly to find out why people coming near it and similar openings seem to be experiencing terror and paranoia. Spock and Kirk believe that this may be the reason why there was so much destruction in the area where the anomaly/nexus left them in the last book. The author does a good job of explaining the physics theories that are the basis of the existence of the nexus and the cause of the terror, but it wasn't as interesting to me as the first book.
Uncounted centuries ago, an unknown race frombeyond our galaxy created a series of intestellar gates -- shortcuts across our universe - and then disappeared, leaving behind no clues to their fate, or the operaation of their system. Twice before, teh enterprise has used the system to traverse the galaxy, and returned each time no wiser to the gate's operation. Now it is imperative that they find out. For the gates aer breaking down, taking th every stars in the sky with them. The fate of hte galaxy rests in teh hand sof the Enterprise crew, and their ability to communicate not only with creatures from another world -- but from another universe as well.