There are many people living on Earth who have come from a distant planet called Orbsey-and others who have come home. The price for the return trip was all memory of their time on Orbsey, but even their technology can't fully eradicate all memories. So many experience small glimpses of what could be a dream of their past lives on an alien world, but they are afraid to speak of them, for fear of being ridiculed. But the hidden burden of their experience cannot be denied.
Stolen from Earth and forced to serve on Orbsey for at least five years, these lost children of humanity struggle to rebuild their lives upon their return to Mother Earth. Taken for research purposes, they were the subjects of Orbsien studies on the very human predilection for violence. But despite the methodology, the motives were noble: the scientists of Orbsey want to find the cure for violence. But two thousand years of observation and research have failed.
Now, two Orbsien students have been given a grant to travel back in time to do a full-time study on Earth. These young aliens take human wives and settle into Earth culture. When they devise a plan to return to Orbsey with their wives, their plans become complicated by temporal issues: can these women from Earth's past adjust to life in its present-let alone the future on Orbsey? T
hese students risk it all in the name of love-proving that some things are universal after all.