Dix Mardun has spent his life trying to be a loner, yet responsibility has always found him. Now he's determined he wants the quiet life, but when he transmits an image of contraband from his ship, he finds himself again questioning that desire. The answer doesn't come cheap; his girlfriend's life, his faith in the scientific method, his own sanity. Could he lose them all? This is a story set in the middle of the twenty first century when the world has changed but the important things haven't: your ship, your lover, your friends and your species.