Loose ends abound in this novel. I doubt this is deliberate. It looks to this reader that the publishers have cut out a lot of what made this book make any sense. What's left is a kind of Frank Herbert (particularly nasty British horror writer) sci-fi story. What's worse is that it gets really boring towards the middle of the book and never recovers. I have read most of Stephen Baxters books and this is an extremely poor example.