Book 2 of The Age of Aether After years in exile on Earth, Jack Branham finally returned to Mars. Now agents of the Tharsis Company have abandoned him to die in the ruins of the ancient Martian city Odusar, while anarchists have kidnapped the beautiful Charlotte, the woman he loves. Jack must survive duels between mighty airships, attacks by Martian assassins, and the terrible dust storms that sweep across the face of the entire planet to follow their trail into the uncharted wilds of southern Mars. There, hidden inside a ring of lofty mountains, he discovers a lost civilization on the shores of the mysterious Silver Sea. In the magnificent city of Kor Vosheth, he must defeat a cabal of priests and princes to save the throne of the young queen who holds his only hope of resuming his quest--or of dooming it forever. The Age of Aether takes place in a universe where the social revolutions of the 18th Century never happened. Mighty airships fill the skies while Cavorite-hulled aetherships ply the airless voids between the planets. From the torrid jungles of Venus to the frigid deserts of Mars, the British Empire has truly become "the Empire on which the sun never sets." The crowned heads of Europe share power with the immensely wealthy chartered companies created to exploit the wealth of the Solar System, while anarchist and republican terrorists try to stir up revolution in the colonial territories. Political activists and dissidents are shipped offworld to work alongside criminal transportees in the company towns of Mars and Venus. The Empires of Mexico and Brazil dominate the Americas, while Japan is a rising force in the East, and from the deep fastness of Nix Olympica the Martian High Emperor reigns over the remnants of his slowly dying planet.