...there was relayed back to Earth a low-definition picture of the vessel which orbited silently and, some thought, implacably, like some tremendous battleship cruising off the coast of a tiny, backwards island. (...) two small, sophisticated, dugout canoes were hastily modified and readied for launching.

An intriguing and clever hard-sci-fi take on the first-contact story. A giant interstellar spaceship appears outside Mars, NASA dispatches two three-person crews to intercept it and, if possible, make contact. White averts the idea of god-like aliens very nicely, lets political considerations play out on several levels, and even if he's a bit overly fond of pop psychology his character work is nice too. The only problem is that his prose simply doesn't live up to it. There's never any time for the story to breathe, never any pauses or intense passages, just one long march of details across the page.