Ex-astronaut turned physicist Keith Stoner knows that the signals he's picking up at his space station are anything but random. The fiery object heading toward Earth is an alien spacecraft. Yet the world may never know for Keith is trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy: his discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged within the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon. The powers that be would use anything at their command - fear and treachery and any other weapon from mind war to sabotage to keep the world in darkness about Stoner's discovery.