Into this already perilous situation came a new dire threat – some kind of mysterious force destroying the ships one by one. The book's main protagonist, the courageous woman Captain of the ship Beta-2, heard a desperate plea for help from another ship and went to help. There she discovered that the destruction was caused by a mysterious being living in deep space, and that its destructive acts were not deliberate malice but miscalculated efforts to communicate with humans, who were completely beyond all its experience. Shouting "Stop!", the Captain managed to establish communications with the deep space being, and make it stop, saving her own ship and most of the others.