On a dying Earth, in a mountain fortress on the western slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains of California, a thriving city of some 10,000 survivors of a limited nuclear war fight to maintain their toehold on the present-and secure a future for the generations to come. Led by visionary, valorous, and charismatic leaders-Governor Steve Yeats of New California, the mysterious Admiral Resh of the former US Fleet, Los Angeles County CEO Monty Eisenstein and his wife, Hannah, the quiet genius Bill Jamieson and his beautiful and equally brilliant wife, Rachel, and hundreds of others like them-the people of Diablo Keep, refusing to succumb to the near-universal despair that has engulfed the world, reach for the stars-and damn the consequences While physicist Ian Turnbull and his stellar apprentice, Leroy Eisenstein, the Eisensteins' adopted son and Diablo Keep's most gifted paranormal Talent, struggle to find the bridge to the stars for all Earth's children, and the Eisensteins, the Jamiesons, and their allies struggle to keep this greatest of keeps alive long enough to accomplish that goal of goals, sinister forces conspire to defeat them all. Who will win: Life-or extinction?