The starship Starfarer is poised for our first voyage to another star
system. The Alien Contact Team--physicist Victoria Fraser MacKenzie,
geneticist Stephen Thomas Gregory, geographer Satoshi Lono, and alien
contact specialist J.D. Sauvage--and the rest of the faculty and staff
prepare for humanity's most ambitious exploratory expedition. But the
world has changed. A new regime orders the vessel to be abandoned. It
will be turned into an instrument of war. What do the Starfarers do?
They do what any red-blooded Alien Contact Team would do. They steal the
starship.