Lucen DiPietro, alias Luke, is travels East on a motorcycle and he meets another rider, Birdie, while camping in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. Luke watches the sky every night. In the clear desert air he can see the anomaly. Little by little, as Luke and Birdie ride across the country we discover that Luke was an astrophysicist who was refused tenure at UCSD because of his interpretation of the anomaly, and Birdie is a world-famous concert pianist suffering from burnout.
The anomaly is getting brighter as they ride through some of the most scenic parts of the country, and their affair is getting hotter.
They travel to Princeton together where they meet Luke's sole collaborator a Fellow at
the Princeton Institute of Technology . The anomaly is a phase change in the Higgs vacuum
state. It will consume the universe and cause hypernovas. There is no safe place. Fortunately, it's a hundred thousand light-years away.
At Princeton, Luke and Birdie find that the vacuum collapse is confirmed, and that "fire in the sky" may not be confined to light speed.
Likeanimalsescapingaforestfire,othersentientbeingsarecomingoutofthevoid. Aliensspace travelers arrive. Lucen and Birdie meet Pickle, a Pastillian, aboard a billionaire's yacht in Chesapeake Bay. Scully, their host, is also trying to escape the inevitable. Scully's
catamaran, Lightspeed, takes them to Ragged Island, off the coast of Maine. They are joined by a coven of witches, including a scryer who foresaw the anomaly.
Word from Princeton is that the fire in the sky is moving much faster than predicted Other arriving aliens confirm this.
Birdie discovers she is pregnant.
Allhellbreaksloosewhenthegovernmentsfailstohidethisnewinformation. Anihilistorganization with a method to implant memories tries to take over the US government.
The choice is try or die, and Luke has an unquenchable curiosity. Luke, Birdie, Loop DeLoop, a pair of conjoined teenaged twins who serve as a NASA computational facility, and Gwyneth,
the Princeton coven leader, board Pickle's refurbished space ship. A pair of other-dimensional entities help them through a wormhole to the vicinity of the anomaly, not without adventures en route, including the birth of Luke and Birdie's baby in space.
Luke, aided by Loop DeLoop has a rough idea. Will it work? And will any of them survive to get home?