While on a routine mission, Lind is informed that Saturn's moon Janus has deviated from its normal orbit, and is accelerating out of the Solar System.

However, on their approach to the moon, revealed to be a camouflaged alien spacecraft, Lind and her crew are caught in the field of the ship's inertialess drive, causing them to travel farther and faster than expected, and beyond their capacity to return to Earth.

Realising their predicament, the crew decide to land on the moon and attempt to survive the flight out of the Solar System, wherever it may take them.

They work out a way of deriving power from some alien technology they find, and slowly start to improve their living conditions.

The Fountainheads are trading advanced technology with the colony in exchange for drilling rights on Janus, whose core is a vast energy resource.

The Fountainheads warn Bella of the arrival of another, repulsive (by human standards) race called Musk Dogs that will infect the colony and tear it apart in an effort to get at Janus' core.

When they arrive, Svetlana meets with the Musk Dogs and trades with them, she tries to regain control of the colony, but her actions set off a chain of events that destroys Janus and requires everyone to evacuate.

Her body remains in stasis for decades, waiting for the Fountainheads to restore her to life; she eventually awakens to learn that a new human colony has been established elsewhere in the structure.

The Congress has advanced femtotechnology granting the citizens fantastic capabilities such as near-instant travel, near-light speed spacecraft, immortality etc.

A representative known as Chromis Pasqueflower Bowerbird proposes sending a message to "The Benefactor" rather than performing other suggested feats including the construction of a Dyson Sphere or an ornamental garden.

Not all strong economies are part of the UEE however, these "Rogue states" include China who were expelled for their reckless experiments with forge vat technology leading to a grey goo outbreak.

A single Fountainhead is around 3 metres tall and resembles a flowing fountain with multiple layers of coloured limbs erupting from a central core, such as found on a willow tree.

Little is known about the Fountainhead history other than their realm used to contain many hundreds of thousands of extrasolar systems and at some point uncovered the relics of a long gone humanity.

The only dealing any inhabitant of Janus has with the Musk Dogs is when The Gristleship arrives in orbit and after hacking into the communications net broadcasts propaganda claiming that the Fountainheads are exploiting the humans and that trade with the Musk Dogs would be far more profitable as they are willing to give technologies far beyond what they currently possess (inertialess drives, femtotechnology, passkeys for the endcap doors in the Structure to name but a few).

The attempted construction of the passkey leads to an outbreak of replicating femtotech causing many deaths, at the same time it is revealed that the Musk Dogs are not tapping energy from Janus but priming the moon to explode so as to blow a hole in the wall of the Structure.