Mark expects to spend a few weeks updating the software at Solar System Events monitoring. He arrives there to find that SSEM is in long-term decline and now has only one full-time employee; a girl called Robin. When the system fails to detect an incoming meteorite attention focuses on the weaknesses of SSEM. To ensure these failings are not revealed by Mark or Robin they are sent to a remote part of Russia to witness the passage of the meteorite. There they meet Gregor a Russian professor, and the three of them search the snowfields in the hope of recovering a fragment of meteorite that fell to earth. The events that follow become increasingly mysterious and dangerous as Robin volunteers for a risky assignment, and Mark wonders whether Gregor can be trusted.