e latter half of the twenty-first century, a high-school student from Las Cruces New Mexico named Frances Thorne lands a summer job as a custodian at Spaceport USA near Truth or Consequences New Mexico. He is found to be a very bright young man and is given a progression of increasingly difficult jobs. Eventually he is recommended for a scholarship to MIT to study aeronautical engineering by one of his supervisors, Nathaniel Floatingfeather, from the Mescalero Apache nation. As a doctoral project, Frances designs a theoretical spacecraft that can both take off and land on a conventional runway while taking large amounts of cargo into orbit.Using these spacecrafts, he founds the Uplift Aeronautics Company, which becomes enormously profitable and makes him a multi-billionaire. His son Adam is raised at the company complex alongside his father. When a fluke raises Adam to the company chairmanship, he seeks to expand the company's interests to include research and development. How far this research may take him is an open question, but he is determined to take his dreams to the absolute limit. And his ideas about limits are much more expansive than anyone could ever expect.