The unmanned Pilgrim 7 space probe is returning from Mars to the International Space Station (ISS)

with a soil sample that might contain evidence of extraterrestrial life, when it enters an asteroid field
and is severely damaged.
The six-member ISS crew captures the spacecraft and exobiologist Hugh Derry revives a dormant
cell from the sample, and it quickly grows into a multi-celled organism that American school children
name "Calvin". After an atmospheric accident in the lab, Calvin becomes dormant. Hugh revives
Calvin with mild electric shocks, but Calvin immediately becomes hostile and attacks Hugh, crushing
his hand. While Hugh lies unconscious from Calvin's attack, Calvin uses the electric shock tool Hugh
wielded to escape his immediate enclosure. Now free in the lab room, Calvin devours a lab rat by
absorbing it and grows in size. Engineer Rory Adams uses the opportunity to enter the room and
rescue Hugh. However, Calvin latches onto Rory's leg and physician David Jordan locks Rory in the
room to keep Calvin contained. After Rory unsuccessfully attacks Calvin with a flame thrower, Calvin
enters his mouth, killing him by devouring his organs from the inside. Emerging from Rory's mouth
even larger, Calvin escapes through a fire-control vent. Hugh theorizes that lack of breathable air on
Mars is what kept the organism dormant.
Finding their communication with Earth cut off, due to overheating of the communication systems,
mission commander Ekaterina Golovkina performs a space walk to fix the overheating. Calvin,
having breached the cooling systems, attacks her outside the ISS and ruptures her spacesuit's
coolant system in the process, causing toxic liquid to fill her helmet. She struggles to get back into
ISS, but eventually realizes that Calvin will also be able to re-enter the space station. She refuses to
open the airlock to seek help, and stops David from doing so as well, keeping Calvin out of the
station, but also causing her to drown in her spacesuit and her body to drift away into space.
Calvin attempts to enter the station through the thrusters. The crew try to use the thrusters to
prevent Calvin from entering these openings, but their attempts fail and the station loses too much
fuel. The ISS enters a decaying orbit, which will eventually cause the station to burn up in Earth's
atmosphere. Pilot Sho Murakami informs the crew that they need to use the remaining fuel to get
back into a safe orbit, but the attempt would allow Calvin back into the station. The crew then plan to
make Calvin dormant by sealing themselves into one module and venting the atmosphere from the
rest of the station.
When Hugh enters cardiac arrest, the crew realize that Calvin was feeding off Hugh's leg. Having
grown into a larger tentacled creature, Calvin attacks the remainder of the crew. Sho seals himself in
a sleeping pod as Calvin attempts to crack the glass and consume him. David and the quarantine
officer Miranda North use Hugh's corpse as bait to lure Calvin away from Sho and trap it in a module
to deprive it of oxygen.
Having received a distress call prior to the damage to the ISS communication system, Earth sends
a Soyuz capsule as a fail-safe plan to push the station into deep space. The capsule docks with the
station and starts pushing it into deep space. Believing the situation to be a rescue mission, Sho
leaves his pod and rushes to board the arriving ship, forcing open the capsule's hatch; once he does
that, Calvin attacks him and the Soyuz crew. The encounter causes a docking breach that results in
the capsule detaching and crashing into the ISS, killing Sho and the Soyuz pilots. David and
Miranda, the only survivors, now realize that the incident has again caused them to enter a decaying
orbit. Aware that Calvin could survive re-entry, David recalls two escape pods, planning to lure
Calvin into one pod and pilot it into deep space, allowing Miranda to escape to Earth in the other
pod.
David leads Calvin into his pod and launches into space as Miranda launches hers. One of the pods
hits debris and is knocked off course. Calvin attacks David as he struggles to send his pod into deep
space. The pods then separate; the earthbound pod performs a controlled re-entry and lands in the
ocean near a boat with two Vietnamese fishermen. As they approach and look inside the pod, it is
revealed to be that of David, who is encased in a web-like substance. Meanwhile, due to damage
sustained from hitting the debris, Miranda's navigation system malfunctions and fails, and she can
only scream helplessly as her pod is sent hurtling into deep space, taking her to a lonely and
inevitable death. David, still alive, tries to warn the unwitting fishermen not to attempt a rescue. The
fishermen open the pod door as two other fishing boats arrive.