Anthropologist Anne Ryan had been content for a long time at the small Denver college where she taught. But gradually tedium had settled over her and she began to feel the need for some excitement in her life. Perhaps a summer return to field study would give her a new jolt of energy. The opportunity to be the first to record the culture of a small native community in southern Mexico was too good to turn down. Towering above the village, the mysterious rumbling mountain was forbidden to all but the shamans. The people of the village, descendants of the Maya, had believed for hundreds of years that the mountain was the home of powerful spirits. Before her summer of research was over, Anne would learn the startling truth about the mountain, and about the spirits that resided inside it. The shocking discovery would lead her to both romance and great peril, and draw her into the middle of an interplanetary war millions of miles from home. Cathryn Hupka is a Colorado writer with a degree in History and Anthropology and a lifelong interest in science fiction. She has always felt a special kind of energy in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Written in 1980, The Outpost combines elements of many of her personal interests into a story of adventure and excitement.