The year is 2239 and the overburdened Earth groans beneath the weight of 200 billion people. By century's end, the human race will have ceased to exist. The last salvation of humanity is traveling with the crew of the starship Mother Night, on a colonizing mission to Alpha Centauri. But a terrorist plague has infiltrated the ship, planting the seeds of failure and extinction in every man and woman on board. And a miraculous relic of an earlier doomed race awaits them of journey's end: a puzzling and impossibly ancient artifact that offers hope beyond all mortal comprehension. . .or stands as a grim harbinger of the impending death of everything human.