Leaving Earth, the crew of the spaceship Discipline prepared for a routine colonization assignment. What they weren't prepared for was the smoke ring: an immense, gaseous envelope that had formed around a neutron star directly in their path. The Smoke Ring was home to a variety of plant and animal life-forms evolved to thrive in conditions of continual free-fall. When the Discipline encountered it, something went wrong. The crew abandoned ship and fled to the unlikely space oasis.

Five hundred years later, the descendants of the Discipline crew living on the Smoke Ring no longer remember their origins. Earth is more myth than memory, and no recollection of the State remains. But Sharls Davis Kendy, the ship's cyborg cop, remembers. And just outside the Smoke Ring, the Discipline waits patiently to make contact with its wayward children.