They are the Travelers: eight highly-trained young adults who command the Taueret, an interstellar spacecraft containing several thousand fellow explorers. They are, without hyperbole, humanity's last hope for the future. But one of them may bring that dream to ruin.

After seven years in deep space, the Travelers awaken from the "long sleep"-artificially induced comas to conserve resources-and orbit the planet Kurova, a strange world of deadly lifeforms and an advanced, enigmatic alien race.

As the Travelers explore the new planet, their actions unexpectedly influence two...