Roger Mason is a prisoner locked away in a futuristic fortress of a jail. Desperate to escape and see his daughter, he keeps making attempt after attempt to break free, but each one is foiled just as he's about to gain his freedom. As his punishments include being frozen in suspended animation for years at a time, he stays the same age while his daughter grows older. As more time keeps being added to his sentence, he despairs of ever getting out.
Two sides, one known as the Alphas and the other the Rebels, struggle in a brutal war on Earth and in outer space. When a habitable planet is discovered in orbit around a star that is on the far side of a dangerous wormhole, the two sides mysteriously set aside their differences and send a joint mission to explore the planet. The mission of the starship Scylla is soon beset by political intrigue and treachery, jeopardizing not only the mission, but the lives of the entire crew
A salvage pilot and a bartender go up against a crazed computer programmer and the head of a criminal gang who have equipped a spaceship with nuclear warheads and plan to crash it into Earth.
