To 14-year-old Seamus O'Neil, running away always seemed like the best way to handle any problem. That is, until he joined his parents on an ill-fated planetary survey of Corvus 2267. There, humanity's first contact with alien life quickly turns nasty, and Seamus soon finds himself in one precarious situation after another. As he journeys through a vast interstellar civilization on a quest to find his family and to return home, he begins to learn there are some things you can never run away from.