ANCIENT EARTH IS DOOMED... Earth's Sun will explode, not millions of years hence but in mere lifetimes-violently enough to scour Earth clean and leave the Empire of the Hundred Worlds adrift. The Empire's scientists deem that nothing can be done. The age of heroism is past: this is the long, stagnant afternoon of the human race. Until-over massive opposition-a single young woman makes her way to the Emperor with that rarity, a new scientific insight... and a plan, flowing from its implications, to mobilize humanity's slumbering energies toward a thousand year effort of applied astrophysics. Of engineering carried out on the hearts of stars. A plan to save the Earth. To save the Sun.