Mission: travel to a nebula called Starmaker. Discover what is threatening not just the star nursery, but every world within a
thousand light-years.

As this fourth volume of The Chaos Chronicles opens, John Bandicut and his companions are tired. Would it be too much to
ask for a little rest? Apparently so. They reach an interstellar
waystation, only to find it being hammered by shock waves from
the nearby Starmaker, known to Bandicut as the Great Orion Nebula.
What's the cause? No one knows. But they need to find out, not only
because their present shelter is threatened with destruction, but
because sentient stars in the nebula are dying. And the danger could
cascade across thousands of light-years, threatening uncounted
worlds--including Earth.

Aboard a ship called The Long View, Bandicut and his band of
exiles journey not just into the perils of a star-forming nebula, but
into confrontation with a billion-year-old adversary of life as they
know it. Whatever chance they have of stopping the terrifying Mindaru
may be found only in the fiery heart of an intelligent sun.