The human race is losing an interstellar war against the mysterious alien Fallers. A shipload of scientists from Earth is sent to study the enigmatic artifact discovered on a distant planet, while the military crew of their ship is secretly holding prisoner, for study, the only live Faller ever captured. The artifact is not only a powerful weapon, but possibly the key to a lost superscience that the Fallers may have decoded. Or it may be a doomsday machine for everyone, human and alien.