Desperate times call for desperate action!

While searching for scrap metal, Stacy Baxter finds a damaged Machani translator, a small ball shaped computer that translates the Machani's alien language to English. She wants to sell it for cash in the colony's capital city, Columbia, because it is broken.

Instead the translator leads Stacy in a daring plan to get help to stop the war between the Machani and humans on New Columbia, before the Machani turn their attention to Earth.