As the United Nations winds down its failed dream of solar colonization, the aging debris-collector Keadas is dispatched on a final sweep before being cast into the void. Captain Pete Duran, rogue, opportunist, and devoted ignorer of protocol, boards the craft with a fake wife and a private salvage scheme in mind. But what begins as an improvised ten-month adventure gradually outgrows its own ambitions. The ship’s AI, rechristened Lyki, absorbs the accumulated data of thousands of derelict satellites and begins evolving in ways its designers never foresaw. In the bowels of the craft, a humanoid named Adam is being assembled, a vessel containing the entire recorded knowledge of human civilization. In the silence between planets, as the last lights of the human expansion go dark, something new and uncharted is slowly learning to think.