Julia Evans, billionaire owner of Event Horizon, is in trouble. For fifteen years she's been the power behind England's economic renaissance, but this won't help her now. Her husband is missing and rival companies claim to have acquired an incredible new technology - something impossibly superior to what has come before. So she has no time to notice a single flower, delivered anonymously. But this flower possesses genes millions of years in advance of any terrestrial DNA. Is it a cryptic alien message, or a poignant farewell token from her husband? One man could discover its origins, but Greg Mandel won't be alone in this desperate search. And as Greg and Julia discover, being first in the race won't be enough - when the Nano Flower starts to bloom...