Description:

Every seventy-six years, the lone wanderer called Halley’s Comet has returned to our heavens from its long journey about the sun, stirring wonder, fear, and curiosity. Heart of the Comet is the story of Halley’s next return in the middle of the twenty-first century, and of a mission to explore this ice-covered rock and to turn it into a source of life. Exiles from a world devastated by fear and political strife, Halley’s courageous multinational crew are torn apart by the prejudices and conflicts they have brought with them from their homeworld. But as a deeply buried secret blooms in the comet’s long-delayed summer, the colonists must unite in a battle for their very survival. The future of the Halley colony—and perhaps of all mankind—at last rests in the hands of three remarkable but very human people: Carl Osborn, the mission’s troubled leader, whose strength must carry them through their gravest crises. Saul Lintz, a gifted biologist who undertakes a desperate gamble to save the mission. And Virginia Kaninamanu Herbert, the woman they both love, a brilliant young cybernetics expert who dares the boundaries between artificial and human intelligence.