Tomorrow, the Stars! - William Walling

Perplexed after a series of inexplicable appearances, Cosmologist Roger Shore is dismayed when an unearthly stranger materializes aboard orbiting Galileo Observatory and pointedly questions him about faster-than-light spacecraft development. Further baffled when only his voice registers on a recording of the exchange, Shore becomes fascinated when Galileo's director reveals the existence of a clandestine effort to make interstellar flight a reality. Sponsored by Alexis Lemmon, wealthy daughter of the revered Nobelist who "fathered" thermonuclear fusion power, Project Demeter was founded on the technological quantum leap achieved by a Chinese physicist. Invited to lend their expertise, Shore and a colleague join the intrepid crew in transit to Demeter's base in the asteroid belt, far from prying eyes among the sunward planets, where earthly Third World "have-nots" would violently oppose a profligate waste of resources on some fairy tale like starflight. The base's total isolation leaves Demeter's personnel vulnerable to hindrance and then near-lethal interference from a malicious, dedicated alien entity, for the stakes, Shore and his associates learn, are infinitely greater than they can imagine. Reaching the nearest star system-a culture-defining benchmark as well as triumph of technology-will apparently qualify humanity for inclusion in a vast, unnamed forum of intergalactic intelligences.