Storyline

Unjustly sentenced for mutiny, you are condemned to spend the remainder of you natural days drifting in interstellar space in a recycling spacesuit, from which the maneuvering thrusters have been removed. You stand at the open door of the Federal Galactic Naval starship Rheingold's airlock. Before you are the beautiful but cold and distant stars. You hesitate to make the final leap, and a guard gives you a kick in the seat of the pants that sends you spinning out of the airlock and into space. Your spinning presents some difficulties in getting a good last look at the Rheingold as its engines turn on and it speeds away. In desperation you begin to wave your arms and legs in a vain attempt to stop your spinning. Your left arm brushes against your utility pouch and you feel a bulge. You reach in and there - a thruster pack! A friend in the crew must have slipped it in the utility pouch when the guards were not looking. You snap the pack into place on the spacesuit and using the ion impulse jets... the spinning stops. For days you drift, when, in the distance, you see a sudden flash of light. There seems to be a faint ion trail heading in the general direction of the flash. Your instincts tell you there is danger ahead...