On the small space station Azura, Maxion Belmont is constantly torn between his two passions--engineering and music. Both are hobbies handed down from his father, bittersweet since his death two years ago. While his hydrodriver is great for repairing starship parts, his father's old string instrument tugs at the latent grief Max hides from his mom and classmates with each chord Max strums. When a foreign starship appears on the horizon, Azura welcomes their first tourist in years. Enter, Mr. Hames, starship captain and space-brained traveler. But there's something weird about the stranger-turned-substitute teacher. He has no idea how to teach and thinks enlisting a group of twelve-year-olds to become his starship "crew" is totally normal. Or maybe it's the fact he keeps raving about the existence of alien whales in the vacuum of space: star whales. As Max and the rest of Mr. Hames's class/crew uncover the mysteries of the star whales, they discover they aren't the only ones looking for the elusive creatures--and not every whaler has good intentions. Confronted with questions about his own father's history with the star whales, Max must decide how far he'll go to understand not only his father, but also the boy he's become since his death . . . even at the expense of the star whales themselves.