Book 09: Gethsemane
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When Pegasus arrives at Gethsemane, they find a planet than only has a few days to live. A Rogue Planet has entered the system and will collide with Gethsemane in just a few days. (The planet was unleashed when its own star was destroyed by the Marauding Meta-Goths of Mensa during the Fifth Crusade).
Most of the planet has already evacuated via "Heaven's Gate," an enormous city-sized machine that Gethsemanites believe allows them to enter heaven directly without dying, and, in some cases, return. Commander Keeler is intrigued by the machine, and against the advice of Dead Keeler, travels through the machine hoping to meet his deceased wife Delia. Instead, he finds himself on an alternate Sapphire, one where he never left to command Pegasus, and where his wife didn't die.
Meanwhile, most of the crew takes an opportunity to enjoy shore leave on the doomed planet, even as groundquakes and tidal waves make the surface increasingly inhospitable, and the Rogue Planet looms ever larger in the heavens. Trajan Lear discovers a hidden tragedy. Children can not pass through Heaven's Gate. The Gethsemanites, knowing their fate, had virtually stopped reproducing, but there are still some 10,000 children under the age of 15 who will be doomed when the planet collides. Trajan Lear undertakes to rescue them and bring them to Pegasus, against the opposition of the colony's leader, who would rather see the children dead than raised in the strange ways of the Pegasus crew.
Finally, as the two worlds close in for their final collision, the Heaven's Gate swings outward, being not only a gate to Heaven, but a gate to Hell as well. Pegasus fights the largest battle of its journey against the horrible and nightmarish creatures that emerge from the gate not just in space, but on the ship itself.