Starfog

Chronologically the last story in Poul Anderson's Technic History, Starfog sends the explorer Laure into a dense, star-choked nebula to help a band of travelers find their way home. What begins as a rescue turns into something larger, since the passage through that crowded, glowing cluster carries consequences none of them anticipated. Anderson closes his sprawling future history on this smaller, more personal note, far from the empires and wars that dominate its earlier volumes.