Saturn Run - John Sandford and Ctein
Spotting it was a happy accident, on the order of the discovery of penicillin – maybe even better. The deck of photographs of Saturn, taken at half-hour intervals by a telescope in Earth orbit, shouldn’t have shown anything interesting – but they did! A gigantic ship had entered our Solar System from interstellar space, decelerating to a halt in the sixth planet’s ring system. And although the ship soon departed without ever bothering to visit Earth, that planet’s two major powers immediately started a race to get to the tiny moonlet the ship had visited and collect the “alien tech” that surely must be there.
