The Ship Who Searched: Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey

Book III of Brainships. Tia, a bright and precocious seven year old, becomes afflicted by a paralysing alien virus while accompanying her archeologist parents on a dig. Too broud to let them know, she hides the progressing symptoms until it is too late - until she can be given no life at all outside a mechanical support system. But Tia refuses to glide through life like a ghost in a glorified wheelchair - she'd rather strap on a spaceship. her mission - to seek out whatever it was that laid her low, to understand it and then eliminate it. Cover art by Mark Harrison.