An old woman comes to Mars because a fraudulent travel agent offers a "trip to heaven". She and other members of her traveling group find an extremely battered and derelict rocket which was supposed to be used for the last part of the trip. And it is used for that trip, in a pretty literal sense.
Allan Stern and his secretary Beatrice Kendricks awake in New York City, one thousand years after an asteroid destroys most life on earth. Now they find a bi-plane, that Allan can make run on alcohol and begin the search for other survivors. They encounter a great rent in the earth which they are unable to fly across. They end up in the Abyss and meet up with a tribe of white haired albinos who still speak a type of English.
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
