A children's book that won't be lost on adults. When an S.O.S. signal is intercepted from space, Science Officer Doris, a well-respected Harvard-educated elephant, and Commander Vito, a rat, are sent into the deep reaches of the solar system to find its source. Instead they discover that rats aren't very good with satellite guidance systems and the Martian Prison Systems are not long on creature comforts. So the pachyderm and rodent must think their way out of one galactic sticky situation after another while never losing sight of their ultimate goal: to track down the origin of the wayward S.O.S. signal from somewhere on Mars (and sneak in a few odd bits about science in the process).