Human colony secretly develops interstellar travel and hides in another star system while the remaining humans try to develop it and find them

[fobbs]

I'm looking for a science fiction short story that I heard about, and I can only remember part of the plot. I believe it was written in English.

This story is about the solar system getting crowded, and one colony gets fed up of living there, so they secretly develop interstellar travel and then surprise everyone when they shoot off to another star system and hide behind the star, so they can't be studied. The rest of humanity races to develop that technology and find them, and it takes them a few hundred years. That's all I've got.

 

[Danny McG]

This puts me in mind of Nemesis by Asimov but that was a full length book - unless he maybe did a short story first and then expanded it.

 

[fobbs]

This puts me in mind of Nemesis by Asimov but that was a full length book - unless he maybe did a short story first and then expanded it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's not quite it and I did a little research and I don't think this story was the basis for Nemesis by Asimov.

If it helps anyone, the rest of civilization wasn't trying to develop interstellar/faster-than-light travel until they already left the solar system. First it was just this rogue colony that didn't want to hang out it in the solar system anymore. Then when the rest of civilization saw that it was possible, they started trying to develop it to find the rogue colony.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

How old is the story and how long ago did you read it? Because bits of it remind me of pieces of EE Doc Smiths Skylark series. And I know that a lot of what he published which later became the Skylark and Lensmen series, first started out as short stories in various publications.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Astro Pen]

This puts me in mind of Nemesis by Asimov but that was a full length book - unless he maybe did a short story first and then expanded it.

As a side note:
I really enjoyed Nemesis. Asimov's writing style seemed to have matured in it. More 'rounded'. (Not that I don't love his classics. )