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==Plot==
As the story opens, eighteen-year-old Joel Johnston has fallen in love with Jinny Hamilton, a student about his age. Both are orphans, and apparently virtually penniless — though he is the son of a Nobel Prize winner and a farmer from Ganymede. He then learns his beloved is the granddaughter of the world's richest man, Conrad, head of the Conrad family, which controls much of the solar system's commerce. In a meeting at the family estate, Joel learns that he is to be groomed for a role in the family business, and to be a 'stud' for the family, hopefully having as many children as possible. Preferring to control his own destiny (a composer), he escapes the estate with the help of Jinny's cousin, seven-year-old Evelyn Conrad.
He promptly goes on a massive bender and ends up signing on to the crew of RSS ''Charles Sheffield'' (presumably named in honor of mathematician, physicist and science fiction author [[Charles Sheffield]]), which is headed for a distant star on a twenty-year (subjective time) voyage. It keeps in touch with Earth both by laser and by telepathy between close relatives (twins in most cases). Joel is maladjusted emotionally, and ends up being required to see a healer, who helps him gain some insight into his actions.
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The next year, as Joel is watching one of the telepaths at work with his partner back on Earth, disaster strikes. The telepath starts screaming uncontrollably. While trying to get medical help, Joel is injured. He wakes up in an autodoc to horrific news. The sun has gone nova, contrary to all theories. The scattered starships and beginning colonies are all that is left of humanity. The ship is completely devastated. The ship must keep going, land at its target, and prepare against the wavefront of gamma radiation following at lightspeed. One of the relativists commits suicide. The three relativists who remain try valiantly, but the ramthrust drive goes out in less than two weeks. The ship will coast along at .9 c until overtaken by the wave, when all will die.
Later Joel is called to the bridge. The ship has been overtaken by a faster than light ship, with the Conrads aboard, including Evelyn, who has aged much faster than Joel. She is nineteen now, and explains that she bullied her grandfather into coming to get him so that she could marry him. The ship is piloted by Jinny's husband, the inventor of the FTL drive, Andrew Jackson Conrad (since males marrying into the Conrad family change their last names to Conrad, it can be assumed his "maiden name" was Libby). An evacuation plan is worked out, as the ship can be used to shuttle people to the destination. Joel then realizes that the ship will never return, that Conrad was going to take supplies and leave the ''Sheffield'' continuing onward. When Joel forces the issue, the resulting confrontation leaves the plutocrat restrained and his bodyguards dead. The FTL engine is transferred to the ''Sheffield'', allowing the ship to complete its journey.
As the story ends, Joel and Evelyn, now married, are visiting each of the colony worlds to warn them of the coming radioactive wave. Joel intends to live his life aboard ship with his wife and his young child, and to save as much of mankind as possible.
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