THE DISASTER IN SPACE DIDN'T KILL HER, IT JUST STOLE HER LIFE. Lunzie Mespil is a victim of cryogenic sleep and future shock. On three separate occasions following a deep-space disaster, she is placed in suspended animation totaling almost 90 years while awaiting rescue. She has lost not just her friends and loved ones, but everything familiar to her, being reborn to a world she never made, a world that has grown strangely dark and dangerous during her long sleep. She struggles against adversity as she tries to put her life back together.

Because her medical knowledge is obsolete, Lunzie returns to school and becomes the medical officer, a combination of doctor and psychiatrist, on an exploratory vessel for the Federation of Sentient Planets. While routinely surveying the prehistoric life of the planet Ireta, she is caught in the middle of a violent racial mutiny. Like every other citizen of the Federation of Sentient Planets, Lunzie Mespil believed that no harm would come to her, but when the planet pirates attack the space liner on which she is a passenger, she might have to suffer more than just inconvenience.