The 50 billion people on the dusty dying Earth need the water from the ice rings of Saturn. The seven astronauts on the Aqua Libre spaceship are tasked to retrieve it: one million billion tons of ice.

They need to use the brand new, untried, revolutionary & monstrously powerful 'Strangelet' drive, in order to bring back the massive payload. But the drive has to be tested so is fired on Earth just before they set off - with cataclysmic results for all of humanity.

Trapped in space, one of them goes mad, driven by the most primal instinct of all: survival. He does unspeakable things to his fellow astronauts, except for the fellow astronaut he loves.