William Shumway, a young, idealistic cellular biologist with a brilliant new idea for curing cancer, is recruited from a relative obscurity to Hill-Matheson, a major cancer research institute, by its charismatic director, Bob Brock, with the offer of his own lab and all the resources he will need to pursue that idea. As the pressure to show publishable results begins to build, fueled by unexpected competition from a rival lab at Oxford and the politically agile head of another department who has resentfully seen his own budget slashed to free up more funding for Shumway's lab, his research suddenly hits a snag. He is faced with having to choose between full disclosure of the problem, which would jeopardize the funding he needs, and making the more expedient decision to bend the rules just a little, which will buy him enough additional time to solve the problem.