The story is about the history of an ill-fated multi-generational interstellar expedition of discovery. Some of the ships were broken and all passengers killed by some unknown force, only their broken shells arriving at the destination. In others the passengers survived, but by the time the spaceships arrived at the destination star system, it has long since been settled through the already developed FTL ships. The descendants were incapable of and uninterested in settling on the system's planets, showed themselves extremely hostile to any outsiders entering their ships, and were left alone – to continue living in the spaceships as an obscure backwater culture isolated from broader human history.