and Linen discover not only that duty and discipline sit very hard but that the Drake is the target of various saboteurs that are intent on foiling the mission in order to claim the ultimate prize: evidence of existing sentient alien life out there. With one secret surfacing that causes more than a headache, the two have to find their feet in a totally novel environment whilst carrying out their programmed research, fitting in with their rather more military-minded fellow-officers and trying to make sense of data that seems to suggest that there are aliens out there that might be less than friendly... New colleagues provide diversions, strange allies are met and dangerous foes must be outfaced before the mystery of who and what Spook was and is, and what his people were doing on Mars in the dim and distant past, can be solved.