The captain of a spaceship had shot and killed two of his crewmen, and Major Maxwell Becker, a military lawyer, is assigned as his defense attorney. The captain claims that the two were aliens, and refuses to plead insanity. Becker decides the easiest way to get the captain to change his plea is to show him the futility of putting together the defense the captain insists upon – until his witnesses start dying and disappearing and being transferred offworld...and suddenly Becker is being hunted down by the very same space agency he has worked for all his adult life. "Taut and suspenseful, Second Contact resembles a good Cold War thriller." – Locus