Leaders on Argo determine that the weapon is not Argonaut technology and is explained by ancient Argo literature that tells of a trip to a Spider Star where various aliens meet to trade, and where one ancient Argonaut faction made a deal to obtain destructive technology. Rusk and his highly trained specialists are chosen to lead the mission, but Klingston is asked to join as co-commander due to his experience with alien contact. He reluctantly decides to go, leaving his wife and teenage sons on Argo for a risky mission that—even if successful—will last for decades.

After years of space travel in group hibernation, they arrive to find that the Spider Star is an enormous multi-armed alien space station built around dark matter with its own engineered atmosphere. When they contact the station using an Argonaut language, they are told where to dock, but are not otherwise greeted, and they slowly begin to explore the station. They soon encounter living aliens, as Klingston's group and Rusk's group are attacked by separate alien species—Klingston by descendants of the Argonauts and Rusk by multi-armed "Hydras"—and Griffin leads an armed team seeking to rescue them. During Klingston's captivity, we learn the startling true story of his historic but somewhat less than heroic alien encounter, and Klingston learns more about the weapon inside Pollux. When Klingston and Rusk finally meet less hostile aliens, the future of Argo rests on their ability to make a deal with aliens who care little about the fate of Argo or its human colony.

Space adventure in the Niven tradition

Brotherton's first novel, Star Dragon (2003), established him as a talented new author of hard-SF adventure fiction, with the potential to become a notable addition to the decade's purveyors of cutting-edge New Space Opera. With his second novel, Brotherton has moved instead toward a more traditional 1980s style of space adventure of the type we have come to enjoy in recent decades by such authors as Larry Niven and Jack McDevitt, featuring interstellar settings several centuries in the future, space expeditions led by likable characters, ancient alien ruins, alien races with their own agendas and the occasional massive, sense-of-wonder-inducing, alien engineering.

Brotherton is a professor of astronomy, and many of the best new ideas in the novel apply this hard-science background, including the alien weapon inside the sun and the Spider Star itself, which is a worthy addition to the SF tradition of enigmatic alien Big Dumb Objects. The aliens aboard the Spider Star are also interesting enough to make the reader wish that the humans had spent even more time exploring it. There are even fascinating throwaway ideas here, such as the group-hibernation method for long space flights, which present implications worthy of further exploration.

The society and characters of this 25th-century colony have not evolved, however, which is one of the key characteristics, or perhaps limitations, of this type of traditional SF adventure. Brotherton's characters are likable and comfortable, but they are not inspiringly competent Heinleinian protagonists, not colorful anti-heroes, and certainly not humans evolving toward transhumanity. They are likable people who succeed mainly by some determination and a lot of good luck.

One annoying tendency that I hope Brotherton will outgrow is seeking to obtain a cheap sense of wonder at the expense of believability by using nonsensically large numbers. Does it really make sense that the warring Argonauts species went relatively unchanged for more than a million years? That hundreds of thousands of years after their cultural demise, their Spider Star descendants remember intricate technical details from history? Would it not evoke an equal sense of wonder (and more verisimilitude) if these periods were millennia instead of megayears?

But these are minor cavils. Spider Star may not be cutting-edge science fiction, but it is nevertheless a novel well worth reading.