Not long after landing on Eden, un-inhabited planet, every human made artifact disappears. When the colony goes silent and fails to answer any communications Earth’s government goes into a panic and turns to the Extrapolators, a group of people who have been trained to question every belief. A probationary Extrapolator is sent to Eden in the expectation that he will graduate into the ranks of the Extrapolators if he solves whatever problems he finds there. Even with his special training he is not prepared for the nature of the disaster that struck the colony, but eventually by an entirely new way of thinking he finds the key to what has happened.