Have you ever looked at the night sky with its millions of stars and wondered whether there might be something living near one of those stars and looking back? When an exploratory craft from the planet Gaia picks up a weak, undecipherable signal from a distant backwater planet, the crew decides to take a risk and check it out. What they discover is Earth, a planet populated by the first sentient beings any Gaians have encountered beyond themselves. Even more intriguing, these beings may possess something missing from among the Gaians. The crew makes several attempts to contact and interact with humans, and eventually they find themselves approaching a secret US base located near Alice Springs. The Gaians struggle to work with these beings so unlike themselves, driven by emotion rather than reason and logic—but doing so may be their only hope of returning home. In this science fiction novel, a crew of explorers from the planet Gaia comes to Earth, where their first contact with humanity demonstrates the power of emotion.