Veteran drilling engineer Tu Nguyen Hao launches on a voyage across interplanetary space to join the striving colony on Mars. There he will meet his team leader Rho Harris, with whom he will work to drill for the water ice buried beneath the red desert. Though he shows dedication to the project, his new colleagues can see he is hiding something, and lacks their enthusiasm for humanities' greatest adventure. How will he adjust to life in the nascent interplanetary civilization, and overcome the terrifying challenges of a hostile world?