When Greg and Tom Hunter learn of their father's accidental death during his exploration of the asteroid belt, they are certain that it was no accident.
In abandoned cisterns and old wells, in moldy heaps of straw forgotten in the corners of deserted barns, in reedy pools deep in the woods, in fungied hollows of dead trees, in all such secret places apart from man, strange life engenders, drifts in and takes root and form.