What's the name & author of this book?

[mgerman]

Hi all.
I've been racking my brain trying to remember the name & author of a sci-fi book that I read many years ago.
The story was about a group of people that were sent from earth on a mission to search the universe until the found other life. They searched for many generations and were never able to find life of any kind. Finally they returned to earth. The whole time / space thing caused their return to earth to be many thousands of years from the time they left (although by their time they were gone for a few hundred years).
They returned to earth to find that mankind had been eliminated on earth and they were the last of the species.
As a final twist, there was a spaceship from another civilization orbiting earth in it's own quest to find life.
About the only other thing I remember is that the main character had a nickname of "Sparrow".
I would really like to figure out what this book is so that I can find a copy of it.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you may provide.
Marty

 

[kelsi]

OMG, that so sounds familiar!!!

But not the same.

I was reading a book that is kinda similar, by Christopher Pike. Can't remeber the title. And the main character wasn't called Sparrow, but the plot seems very familiar. There was someone called Tem, and she was called Alpha/Paige (all explained int eh book)

Does that help at all? Was that the book you were looking for?