Star Dragon — Mike Brotherton

The SS Cygni is 245 light-years from Earth. It sends back hours and hours of video, but only a few minutes matter--the four minutes that show a creature living, moving, dancing in the plasma fire of a double star's accretion disk. A dragon made of star stuff, more alien than anything seen before.

The crew of the Karamojo, sent to study, and perhaps capture, this dragon, will spend two years in deep space--and will return to an Earth where five hundred years-have passed. The small Crew all have their own reasons for saying good-bye to everyone they have ever known.

The crew of the Karamojo--human and A.I. alike--will risk every-thing to capture this creature of nuclear fire, and it will take all their technology, all their skills, and more courage than they knew they had, to come home alive.