Our Galaxy. Our planet. Our days. An artifact stored in the dusty storerooms of the Russian Academy of Sciences, found by builders in the 80s of the last century, was awakened thanks to the efforts of a young junior researcher at the Research Institute of Atmospheric Electricity. Having passed through the Portal, the young scientist discovered that the galaxy has long been populated and, moreover, divided between the powers that be, who are not at all eager to make the Earth happy with knowledge and technology. Rather, on the contrary - to use earthlings in their intrigues - this is the goal of the various forces that a group of researchers who step beyond the threshold will have to face. Exploration of alien worlds - both inhabited and turned into ruins, meetings with different races and minds, plus much more, including combat clashes in space and on the surface of various planets - all this in the first book of the series “Beyond the Canopy of Lightning.”