On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law and the reach of twenty-eighth-century science, waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to the Time Tombs. They seek the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives, and they have resolved to die before discovering anything less than the secrets of the universe itself.