Trapped for twelve years within the claustrophobic confines of a spaceship, astronaut Tom Gray is getting close to the destination he's dreamt of all his life: Prote, the first known habitable planet outside the solar system, a primordial Eden. Tom's sole companion is Robert -- the ship's computer, and the downloaded brain of the C.E.O. of Neuroscape, the company that is financing the mission and that will claim ownership of Prote upon Tom's arrival. Their only link to life on Earth is a transmission they receive every five days -- and when that transmission stops coming, it's the beginning of Tom and Robert's descent out of their fragile equilibrium into paranoia, madness... and destruction.