Brittany spends her days fearing arrest from the humanz and the IMPACT police force for something that seems like it shouldn’t matter: she’s too tall. On Sympia, something like that is enough to get a person in deep trouble. When one day the IMPACT surrounds her building, Brittany’s only hope is to escape with another Sympian species, the spherical little silfs.

But there is another reason the IMPACT wants to capture Brittany: She is the carrier of a transmitting device that emits a signal to her human ancestor Alessandra McLean, captain of the galactic cruiser Strabo. As Brittany and her small crew of outcasts escape to space aboard the Strabo, guided by the holographic memory of Alessandra, they discover that beyond the stars, an even greater enemy lurks.