A pilot in the Interplanetary Era, it was never Captain Stellon's intention to get caught up in the big questions of his time. But artificial systems and human agents have a worrying habit of finding him useful in their efforts to shape events. Kaitar, for example, an astrobiologist fixated on a return to Earth, would never have been chosen for him by a dating algorithm. They're just galaxies apart in everything they say and do. Yet their destinies get strangely entangled. And if that weren't enough, A.S. itself decides our young, hapless hero is just the person it needs for a spot of undercover work...