Maren Encounter (Gifts & Rifts, #2) / Gifts & Rifts (ePub)

As the second Book in the Gifts and Rifts Series, Maren Encounter continues the Series in its exploration of alien interactions and idiosyncrasies. It chronicles the Earth's establishment of its first human base outside its solar system in the Alpha Centauri system on a planet, called Alpha, orbiting one of its binary stars, as well as their encounters with both the Marens, advanced sentient beings, and related, but more warlike beings, called Thorens, from which the Marens had descended.
The complexities of the Marens, possessing certain telepathic abilities, being non-placental, uniquely spiritually developed, and their use of space-time portals that function similar to wormholes for travel posed critical elements in their relationship with humans. The population on Alpha had been largely subject to a genetic selection and development process from its original plan developed on Earth for populating a new planet. Alpha's reliance on genetic purity was extreme and the only exceptions were the acceptance of the new Earthling arrivals and one birth of a child with a genetic defect from Alpha's population.
The differences in these two species are a significant aspect of the rationale that resulted in a Maren craft crashing and a concealed telepathic joining of a Maren with a human to safeguard a Maren child. The differences in moral perspectives and technological development continued to skew the relationship with one exception, a particular human, Gunter Bartholomew, with his own unique background as the only human from Alpha born with a birth-defect, along his individually-fashioned belief system, that seems to earn the Marens' respect.