Leaving Globe, the staff of the spaceship Discipline were prepared to get a routine assignment. Dispatched with the all-powerful Condition on a objective of interstellar exploration and colonization, Discipline was aided-and secretly spied upon-by Sharls Davis Kendy, an emotionless pc intelligence designed to monitor the commitment and obedience from the crew. What they weren’t prepared for, nevertheless, was the Smoke Ring-an immense, gaseous envelope that got produced around a neutron star directly in their route. The Smoke Band was home to a variety of vegetable and pet life-forms developed to flourish in circumstances of continual free fall. When Discipline encountered it, something went wrong. The crew abandoned ship and fled towards the unlikely space oasis.

500 years later on, the descendants of the Discipline crew living for the Smoke Ring no more remember their origins. Earth is more myth than memory, and no recollection of the Condition continues to be. But Kendy remembers. And outside the Smoke Ring, Discipline waits patiently to make contact with its wayward children.