McDevitt, Jack. Polaris. New York: Ace Books, 2004. ISBN 0-441-01253-1.

Summary: A science-fiction thriller, set a few thousand years in the future. Six celebrities (a distinguished elderly scientist in failing health, a couple of high-powered microbiologists, a science journalist, a psychiatrist, a politician) board a small spacecraft, the Polaris, and make a long trip to the frontier of human-explored space to watch (from a safe distance) the collision of two stars. They see what they came for and start to leave. Then they and their pilot disappear; a week later, a rescue team finds the Polaris operational and undamaged, but unoccupied. Efforts to find the missing people, or at least to figure out what happened to them, continue for many years, but are totally unsuccessful.

Sixty years later, when a museum starts to pull together materials for a memorial exhibition, it becomes apparent that some physical clue to the solution of the mystery may still exist, and that someone is trying to ensure that it will not be found. The museum is bombed and most of the exhibition materials reduced to ashes; collectors of memorabilia from the Polaris are visited by intrusive inquisitors. A professional dealer in curiosities is interested enough to put in some detective work, and uncovers a large and consequential secret.