A mesmerizing tale of adventure and romance: An anomaly of time transports a twentieth-century man backward through history toward the greatest catastrophe the world has ever known Looking out over the Pacific Ocean from the deck of a luxury cruise liner, American architect Duncan Reid is suddenly caught up in an inexplicable event--and when he awakens he is somewhere . . . different. Duncan has inadvertently fallen victim to a fatally malfunctioning time machine from the future, along with three equally startled companions from vastly different epochs and civilizations, and now he stands with them on the rocky Mediterranean coast of Egypt in the year 4000 BCE. With the aid of miraculous technology supplied by the dying time machine, the displaced four are able to communicate and share their stories, the most startling being the tale told by the one woman among them, the bewitching Erissa. Only decades removed from her actual time, she claims to be a priestess from Atlantis who views Duncan as a god, and she represents perhaps their only hope of returning to their rightful eras. But to do so will entail immersing themselves in the savage turmoil of an ancient world and placing themselves in harm's way on the eve of the most terrible devastation in human history.   A true giant of twentieth-century fantasy and science fiction, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner Poul Anderson astounds once more with a powerful adventure through history and legend that set a towering standard for time travel fiction.