The neutron star Half a million years ago and 50
light-years from Earth, a star in the
constellation Draco turns
supernova, and the star's remnant becomes a
neutron star. The
radiation from the explosion causes
mutations in many Earth organisms, including a group of
hominina that become the ancestors of
Homo sapiens. The star's short-lived
plasma jets are lop-sided because of anomalies in its
magnetic field, and
set it on a course passing within 250
astronomical units of the
Sun. In 2020 AD, human astronomers detect the neutron star, call it "Dragon's Egg", and in 2050 they send an expedition to explore it. The star contains about half of a
solar mass of matter, compressed into a
diameter of about , making its
surface gravity 67
billion times that of Earth. Its outer crust, compressed to about 7,000 kg per
cubic centimeter, is mainly iron
nuclei with a high concentration of
neutrons, Around 3000
BC Dragon's Egg cools enough to allow a stable equivalent of "
chemistry", in which "
compounds" are constructed of
nuclei bound by the
strong force, rather than of Earth's
atoms bound by the
electromagnetic force. As the star's chemical processes are about one million times faster than Earth's,
self-replicating "molecules" appear shortly and
life begins on the star. As the star continues to cool, more complex life evolves, until plant-like organisms appear around 1000 BC. One lineage of these later became the first "animals", the earliest of these stealing seedpods from
sessile organisms and some later lineages becoming
predators. The adults of the star's most intelligent species, called cheela (no flexion for gender or number), have about the same mass as an adult human. However, the extreme gravity of Dragon's Egg compresses the cheela to the volume of a
sesame seed, One clan organizes the first cheela agriculture, which brings predictable food supply but provokes grumbling about the repetitive work. Shortly after, a volcano emerges in the area, and the clan invents the first
sledge to carry food from more distant sources. However, within a few generations the volcano pollutes the soil. One clan leads its population on a long, arduous journey to new territory that is fertile and uninhabited. Although one genius invents
mathematics to calculate and measure the band's food supply, the situation is desperate and the clan's survival depends on the self-sacrifice of the oldest members. Over the course of generations, the cheela come to worship the humans' spacecraft as a god, and their records of its satellites' movements cause them to develop writing. Several generations later, the cheela build an arena to accommodate thousands of worshippers. The humans notice this novel and very regular feature, conclude that intelligent beings inhabit the star, and use a laser to send simple messages. Cheela astronomers gradually realize that these are diagrams of the spaceships, its satellites and its crew – impossibly spindly creatures, who communicate with frustrating slowness, and are apparently almost 10% as long as the cheela's great arena. A cheela engineer proposes to send messages to the humans. As her attempts to transmit from the civilization's territory are ineffective, she travels to a mountain range to transmit directly under the spacecraft – conquering the fear of heights that is instinctive for flattened creatures living in 67 billion
g. The humans recognize her message and realize that the cheela live a million times faster than humans. Since real-time conversations are impossible, the humans send sections of the expedition's library. After reading an astronomy article, a cheela realizes that the supernova half a million human years ago created both their races. Many cheela generations later, but only a few hours for humans, cheelas develop
gravity manipulation. A few generations later, a cheela spacecraft visits the human one. Although they still need extreme gravity fields to survive, the cheela can now control them precisely enough for both races to see each other face-to-face in safety. The cheela have decided that transferring their technologies, now far advanced of humans', would stunt humanity's development. However the cheela leave clues in several challenging locations, before going their separate ways. ==Plot introduction==