Twelve extraterrestrial spacecraft silently hover over disparate locations around the Earth. Affected nations send military and scientific experts to monitor and study them; in the United States, US Army Colonel G.T. Weber recruits Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to study the craft above Montana. On board, Banks and Donnelly make contact with two seven-limbed aliens, whom they call heptapods; Donnelly nicknames them�Abbott and Costello.