An Interstellar Federation starship in a joint science and exploration mission with numerous other Federations, Collectives, and Empires, comes across a derelict craft drifting in deep space. A team boards the craft and rescues two gravely ill aliens who are from a heretofore unknown species.

Agnes Breckinridge, a 23-year-old proper New England lady, mysteriously time travels from a field outside Boston in 1755 to Tara and Marty Steele's Gathering Room couch in New Boston in 2559. She stays with them, Tara's mother and their four children, building a new life. She eventually meets Alkhor, Tara's Cardistanian brother, and journeys into space with him as she learns even more about her new century.

Azhem, an alien descended from dragons and Aredhiel, an alien descended from a race of elves long considered extinct or the stuff of legends, meet and travel the Universe in defense of the Saurian Empire in the 27th century.