On the damaged colony ship Strelka, limping toward the sanctuary of a nearby planet, Yuka and the other surviving colonists—even the children—struggle to keep the ship moving. They pilot remote rovers on the planet's inhospitable surface, searching for a region where they might have a chance at survival.

But tensions on the ship are high, and the few left uninjured in the disaster—the Fulls—hold themselves separate from the many who survived, but not intact. When Yuka's remote rover encounters a robotic explorer that didn't come from the Strelka, she's not sure what it means...or who to trust with the information. If she can communicate with it, she might gain valuable planetary data. But what if it poses a threat to the colony even more dangerous than the ones they already face?