High over the windswept plains of Kazakhstan, three astronauts on board a Russian Soyuz capsule begin their reentry. A strange shimmer in the atmosphere, a blinding adobe flash of light, and the capsule vanishes within a blink as though it never been around.

On the ground, evidence points to a catastrophic failure, but a communications facility halfway around the world accumulates a transmission that could be among the astronauts. Tragedy averted, or simply delayed? A classified government project around the cutting edge of particle physics keeps the signs, and with lives at risk, there is short amount of time to waste.

Daniel Rice is definitely a federal government science investigator. Marie Kendrick is certainly a NASA functions analyst. Together, they must track down the cause of the most bizarre event in the history of individual spaceflight. They draw on scientific talents as they plunge in to the unusual globe of quantum physics, with impacts not only towards the lacking astronauts, but to the entire human race.