Voyage of the Stardancer

Preface

I have been an avid reader of sci-fi for most of my life, and after reading hundreds of books; I have had the seed of this story bouncing around in the back of my head for a number of years. I am not a writer, having hated the subject in school, but after leaving school and finding more time, a friend of mine lent me a book to read and for the first time, realised what a wonderful world of imagination that you could lose yourself in.

The story centres on memorable entries in the personal log of Geoffrey Logan, who like an explorer of old, ventures out on a five year deep space exploration mission. The Stardancer, a huge Starship on its maiden voyage sets off to explore a series of star systems that the Earth astronomers speculate may contain life.

The voyage at first is uneventful with the star systems that they visit, for although some contained life and may be ear marked for possible colonisation, none were found to have sentient life.

The main story begins when entering the Star system of "61 Virginis", one of the last on the voyage when an odd VHF transmission is picked up. Intrigued by the content of the message, Captain John Mercia orders the Stardancer's command crew to bring her into a low orbit to observe the planet, but after sending down a scout ship for a closer look, all hell breaks out with Stardancer damaged with missiles, the scout ship destroyed and the crew marooned on a planet in the grip of a world war. Now with the Stardancer's stardrive crippled and unable to land on the war ravaged planet to make repairs to return home to Earth.