Saturn's Race

Saturn's Race is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven, published in 2000. Xanadu is a closed community reserved for the wealthiest people alive, and Chaz Koto is one of the citizens who lives there on the understanding that certain parts of the arrangement are never discussed with outsiders.

Lenore Myles arrives as a student and becomes involved with Koto, and when he lends her his access codes without thinking about what they open she uses them. What she finds is the basis on which Xanadu is exclusive and comfortable, and once she has seen it she becomes a problem that the settlement cannot leave alone.

The pursuit is run by Saturn, a mysterious entity that moves aggressively to contain the security breach and has powerful technology to work with. Lenore is a student rather than an agent, and the book measures the distance between her and the machinery now looking for her, and asks how quickly an apparently perfect society can become a trap for somebody who was only curious. Koto carries the burden of the same secret himself, and he ends up caught between the community he belongs to and the student he has involved in it.