Somewhere in this 500-page tome, there is a pretty good 300-page story trying to escape. A man driven crazy by the deep conditioning that allows him to navigate the stars discovers an alien spacecraft on a planet symbolically named and creatively spelled Ragnarock. Give us that, a good antagonist, and a sensible explanation of the alien—and Bob’s your uncle. We do not need six more characters and a lot of flaccid dialogue. ( )