At Samurai Industries, Paul Carpenter studies his computer monitors to predict the movement of toxic clouds drifting across the Pacific Northwest. If he's wrong, a sudden shift of wind can kill thousands. Nick Rhodes, a research scientist for the controversial Santachiara Technologies' Survival/Modification Program, seeks better ways for humans to adapt to Earth's hostile environment. His girlfriend, Isabelle Martine, is a kinetic therapist and political activist, violently opposed to the threatening new technology. They are among those who have opted to stay behind, scratching out a perilous existence on a poisoned planet where no one dares leave home without a face-lung and a daily injection of Screen.But there are others who have traveled from Earth to the shining satellite cities in the sky. Among these is Victor Farkas who has come to Valparaiso Nuevo in search of a mad and brilliant scientist. Here in a world of fugitives ruled by the tyrannical El Supremo and his secret police, Farkas and his "guide" Juanito Holt will seek the man whose experimentation blinded him in the womb and yet endowed him with incredible extrasensory vision.Meanwhile, disturbing rumors have arisen about the ultimate fate of humanity: that a powerful Japanese megacorporation is promoting a top-secret project to send humans permanently to the stars. That a group of conspirators from ravaged Southern California is planning a bloody coup d'etat on Valparaiso Nuevo. That a rival corporation is funding biological research that will alter human genes and create a race of supercreatures to inhabit the dying planet. Read Less