Omega by Jack McDevitt

To call this the sequel to Chindi would be misleading, but the book is set shortly after the Chindi story and does indeed touch upon the former book. Fortunately, one doesn't have to read Chindi to understand Omega.

Again, the known universe is beset with an "unknown object" - this time it is the Omegas, deep space clouds that portend great disaster and attack anything with right angles. Cities, past civilizations, spaceships, doesn't matter; if it has a right angle it is utterly destroyed with lightening, tornadoes, gale force winds and tsunamis.

Pricillia Hutchins is in charge of the Academy, an organization that regulates space research and exploration. One of their ships has discovered a planet complete with an advanced alien race and one of the omegas is heading right for it. Hutchins diverts what meager resources she has at her disposal and attempts two rash plans: one to try and destroy the omega (which no one has done yet) and the other to try and establish incognito communication with the planets inhabitants and convince them to flee the city before the onset of the clouds destruction in 9 months earth-time.

A ship of linguists is dispatched on a rickety ship and they quickly decipher and learn the language of the goompahs as they are named. Meanwhile, a smaller research vessel that happened to be in the area is tasked with sending the linguists as much as they can of the Goompahs language, social habits, government, etc. Surprise, surprise, the linguists rickety ship breaks down and only one of them can continue on with the the second mission ship, and it just happens to be the most obnoxious person on the ship.

Meanwhile, we leave Hutch and spend the bulk of the story with Digger and his fiance Kellie as they wander invisible around the planet - now called Lookout - planting recording devices and then moving them at the direction of the linguists. They attempt to contact one of the Goompahs and discover that the human body shape is thought to be demonic to the Goompahs and worthy of exorcisms. But somehow, the humans persevere and the Goompahs are convinced to move to higher ground just hours before the omega lashes Lookout. The attempt to divert or kill the omega failed.

This was just an okay book. Like Chindi, McDevitt leaves the great unknown hanging, unsolved, perhaps unsolvable. I appreciate that. Not everything can be answered. It was the alien content/contact that was...tedious. The main characters spend months wandering around the cities of Lookout, trying to figure out the Goompah language, their habits, inadvertently revealing themselves at awkward times (which is against "Protocol") only in the end to figure out all they needed to do to get the Goompahs to leave the cities was to invoke their gods and create some holographic projections.

So the story had some cool science and some so-so characters. And, as trivial as it is, this book had a lot of spelling errors and one obvious inconsistency toward the end of the book. Messy messy.