It is 1826 and distrust between Captain Jefferson and his Chinese trading partner leads to the theft of an unusual object desired by a Beijing astronomer. The loss of the object at sea, creates one of the most devastating natural disasters in the nineteenth century. Paul, who is a recently out-of-work physicist, joins a research team who specialise in looking for signs of primitive life in space. He teams up with Claire, a rather attractive biochemist, who has discovered bizarre characteristics in an extraterrestrial DNA sample. As they search for an explanation, they realise that they have...