Gina Tochman was shepherding a group of virgin Moon Walkers across Mare Tranquilities.Megan Patterson was tending her geriatric patients in a nursing home with a very low orbit.The Titan Cartel was bringing 200-plus trillion tons of liquid natural gas down to Earth at a respectable fraction of light speed. It was perfectly safe to do so, of course.And maverick astrophysicist Hannibal Freede had bought himself a ringside seat to study the Sun, searching for signs that an old forgotten phenomenon was about to reappear.In the world of 2081, humankind had not yet reached the stars, but we owned the Solar System, and had broken it to our will--or so we thought. What everyone forgot was that ours is a truly variable star.