The Atomic Slumber of Vega

In 1953, a Navy rocket lands on a forbidden, map-marked world: Vega IV. Beneath its iron sands an "cosmic reactor"—an atom-machine built by an extinct intelligence—stirs after millennia. As engineers peel away alien stone, the reactor's hum awakens vivid hallucinations, old fears, and seductive power promising boundless energy. Commanders wrestle with Cold War ambition and the ship's battered psyche; love, betrayal and sacrificial courage decide whether humanity claims a miracle or unleashes a radioactive god upon the cosmos.