In the distant future, at the edge of the solar system, something is preying on spaceships. When the civilian ship, The Solonius, goes out on a field trip with a boatload of children on board, that same something strikes, forcing a handful of the survivors to pick up the pieces and solve the mystery. Where it takes them is to the wider galaxy, to worlds beyond our star, and to the terrors that exist twenty-thousand lightyears from Earth!