Seventeen year old Sam Alexander has a mission: to finish his dead father's crusade to locate deep-space radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. He uses his powerful computer and radio equipment to search the electromagnetic spectrum for a message from deep space, and finds one. But when he shares his discovery with his father's friends at NASA, Sam's trust is betrayed and his equipment is stolen. With the next alien contact imminent, Sam makes a move that plunges him into desperate competition with powerful opponents all trying to get credit for this earth shaking discovery. Unless he can find a way to outwit them all, Sam's first contact might be earth's last.