Hugh McCahan is in the information business: a technology spy, a thief of secrets. After the collapse of world patent laws sparked a black market in high-tech secrets, intellectual property became worth killing for. Among the urban legends of his business: tiny colonies of stranded aliens that are brokering a technological goldmine. One day Hugh feeds a homeless man at a diner, and is told about an explosion in Antarctica, an international cover-up and a well-guarded government warehouse in New Jersey. When Hugh finds out that the rumors of aliens are true, he is reunited with the charismatic Australian Jack Falstaff, who has been keeping a most deadly secret and one that could spell either the beginning or the end of both of them.