fter a harrowing mission to rescue scientists studying a protostar, starship pilot Priscilla Hutchins is hoping to retire, and perhaps settle down and begin a relationship. But she is given one last assignment—to take members of a wealthy alien-contact society to investigate signals that might be evidence of the first aliens with superior technology.
Hutch is introduced to her new state-of-the-art ship and the six Contact-Society members, including a wealthy restaurant magnate and a successful artist who happens to be an old flame who still carries a torch for Hutch. They travel to the source of the signals, where they find a system of stealth satellites. Another ship sent to the destination of the signals finds more stealth satellites, but their mission ends disastrously. Hutch and another vessel follow to investigate, and find that the ancient satellites are protected by a nanotech repair unit. Hutch and crew narrowly escape.
They follow the signal to other systems, and endure some further serious setbacks, including a planet populated by an intelligent flying species they call "angels," that turn out to be more dangerous than they look. Eventually, they are led to a beautiful star system. Orbiting two gas giants is a vertical moon with an intriguing and scenic abandoned alien outpost. They discover a huge alien ship orbiting one of the gas giants, refueling. When it does not respond, one of the crew names it Chindi, after an Indian spirit god, and they decide to break in and explore. They begin to discover evidence within the miles-long ship to explain the mystery of Chindi and the satellites when the huge ship breaks orbit and strands one human onboard. Hutch must devise a novel strategy and take heroic efforts to save the man from a lonely death.
Superior SF in the classic mode
This is the third novel featuring Capt. Priscilla Hutchins, and Chindi follows her adventures with the same style and thematic focus as the earlier books, Engines of God and Deepsix. McDevitt continues his fascination with seeking contact with alien civilizations, but instead finding mostly ancient archeological evidence of alien cultures that have left or been destroyed.
The plotting and pacing are nearly perfect for an adventure novel, and the characters likable and interesting. The narrative alternates between tense periods of discovery and danger, as Hutch and her amateur-but-dedicated crew investigates the mystery of the alien satellites and starship, and times of introspection and characterization, as the ship travels between star systems.
In this series of novels, McDevitt is writing SF adventure completely in the traditional mode—except for a mention of nanotechnology, this novel could have been written any time in the past 50 years. The characters follow cultural norms more characteristic of the 1950s than today. This is quite common in SF in the classic mode, and does not usually ruin the verisimilitude of the future milieu—societal mores can be cyclic, even 300 years in the future—but it can be mildly annoying at times, especially when the characters are as likable as McDevitt's. Despite the fact that the romantic interests of Hutch and others play a major role in the book, all remains maddeningly chaste aboard Hutch's ship, and all love seems adolescently hesitant and unrequited.
There are also a few minor lapses in logic, such as when the alien nanotech repair unit dissolves an entire ship just to obtain enough material to rebuild a small satellite. Fans of traditional hard SF adventure will nevertheless find Chindi, like the other novels by Jack McDevitt, to be superior work and well worth reading.
