|
Mid-22nd-century Earth has largely abandoned deep-space exploration, disbanding the Academy of Science and Technology. The nonprofit Prometheus Foundation is pursuing deep-space exploration when it tragically loses one of its two starships while investigating an Omega cloud, the deadly alien nanotechnology being generated by an unknown source in the Cauldron region near the center of the galaxy.
The Foundation is directed by Rudy Golombeck, with fund-raising help from retired starship captain Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, whose father was the first to detect an alien SETI signal from the faraway star system Sigma 2711. Former starship pilot Matt Darwin is languishing in a boring but lucrative job selling real estate.
After a fund-raising appearance, scientist Jon Silvestri, who claims to have developed a new starship drive that would make deep-space travel faster, approaches Hutch. Hutch and Rudy, desperate to see a return to deep-space exploration, decide after much deliberation to give Foundation support to testing the new drive. After initial failures, Matt becomes involved, and in further trials the drive succeeds, and Matt and Jon take the short human flight using the drive. They decide to put the drive in the Foundation's remaining starship, the Phyllis Preston, and Rudy, Jon, Hutch, Matt and journalist Antonio Giamotti embark on a successful one-day 81-light-year flight.
Corporations are now seeking to license the new drive to build a new generation of commercial starships that would reinvigorate space commerce, but the Foundation decides to fit a second Foundation starship with the drive and investigate the source of the deadly Omega clouds, with stops along the way to investigate several other unexplored deep-space mysteries, including Makai 4417, the eventual destination of the Chindi starship, Sigma 2711, the source of the first SETI signals, and Tanareif, an unusual black hole near the galactic core. If they survive, they hope to bring back new information that could help mankind stop the formation of the deadly Omega clouds.
|
