It's been twelve years since a massive solar flare destroyed communications with the American base on the far side of the Moon, killing the platinum mining workers and leaving just three adults to raise thirty-seven orphans. Isolated, the base has carried on, and the orphans-now teenagers-have taken up the mining. It's all they've ever known. But now enigmatic lights on the horizon and in the sky mark the arrival of someone-or something-that heralds an end to a patterned life of restraint and enforced duty. Katlin, the daughter of the base leader, has enjoyed the full education afforded by the base library, and finds her loyalties torn between her father and Van, the capable teenage leader who is ready to break the yoke of servitude and face the wonders available in the wide universe.