Vanished on Zorti

What is happening on Zorti? The colony there has gone hauntingly silent. It’s been nineteen years since Joy Grant, now a Star Guard captain but then a lieutenant and executive officer, made first contact with Zorti’s telepathic natives. This is the first time she’s been back, and she dreads planetfall even though she has wanted to return ever since; for on the planet’s surface she left behind her captain, a brash young rule breaker who vanished after insisting on staying overnight with the Zortians. What became of Kirk Rogers, Joy Grant’s lover as well as her captain (and father of the son she bore after that mission)? Star Guard wrote him off long ago, but Joy never has. Her job now is to deal with whatever has silenced the colony. But if she can also find out what’s become of Kirk—her son’s father, and the first man she genuinely loved—the uncertainty that’s haunted her sleep for nineteen years will be over at last. Whether or not she can tell whatever she learns to another human soul.