Author: Charles Boyle:

ISBN: 0965721450

Charles Boyle's absorbing tale, Shuttle Rising: To Rendezvous With A Rumor makes excellent use of his profound knowledge of space research and technology resulting in some very imaginative plot twists. Boyle's writing has appeared in Science and Omni magazines and he has served as space flight editor for the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He was also the Educational Programs Manager for Earth Sciences at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

The narrative opens when the Technical Director of the CIA, Mike Benson, is informed by a doctoral candidate of a mysterious signal that has been detected from a listening scan of the night sky.

After some speculation, it is deduced that a Russian satellite, (given the name Ivan), is a remnant from the last century and seems to be calling somebody. However, it is not known who, how or why? In addition, it is believed that there is a timer set to go off once a year on the fourth of July, only over the continental USA, and in the hydrogen wavelength.

Due to the Soviet's practice of secrecy and their total absence of confessing to any shortcomings, you never knew when their space ventures succeeded or failed. Could it be the unthinkable that Ivan was one of their failures? That a Russian cosmonaut was used as fodder for their space experimentations and is dead in orbit?

Meanwhile, as the plot unfolds, the United Nations is presented with a resolution pertaining to the