Title: The braided world
Description: "Come find what you have lost..."Heeding this cryptic message from deep space, the crew of the starship Restoration journeys from Earth to a distant planet, hoping to find humanity's lost genetic diversity.   But with the human race on the verge of extinction from the twin horrors of plague and a mysterious scourge of dark matter, how can an alien world harbor any remedies for Earth's declining populations?  Worse, the Restoration arrives depleted: its captain is dead, its crew demoralized--except for an indomitable old woman whose power and wealth give her the privilege of naming the new captain.  Anton Prados, a young, untested officer, will now preside over humanity's first contact with an alien race.  An alien race that, improbably, looks exactly like humans.  Only, the Dassa possess highly unusual breeding habits--and a reproductive process that seems to be the nullification of all that is human.  And they think much the same about humanity...From the Paperback edition.
Subjects: American Science fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction