Ryan Cawdor awakes following a MAT-TRANS jump and finds himself in an environment with a decreased amount of oxygen, as well as apparently lower gravity.

B. Dix, Mildred Wyeth, Ryan's son Dean Cawdor, and former Trader associate Abe, the group cautiously explores the facility.

This last part attracts Doc Tanner's attention: "chron-jump" was the name given to the government department responsible for "trawling" him forward in time from 1896.

When they arrive they find it still functional, prepared to execute a trawling of three targets from just scant weeks before the beginning of the Great Dark.

The companions decide to make an attempt to bring the targets forward, reasoning that it may save people who would otherwise die in the nuclear holocaust.

The third trawling attempt is successful as well, bringing forward a 19-year-old man named Michael, a member of an isolated Christian monastic order who has been trained in the fictional martial art of Tao-Tain-Do.

The city turns out to be not just destroyed but nearly leveled, possibly from high incendiary warheads, leaving only a flat, charred, black wasteland.

Michael, who already has displayed remarkable speed and reflexes, singlehandedly kills a group of at least a dozen mutants while armed only with a pair of knives.

As they travel by foot Doc's mental state becomes increasingly unstable, with him often mistaking Michael for his long-dead wife Emily.

Though initially resistant to interrogation by Ryan, the captured woman reveals the necessary information when Mildred "persuades" her using her extensive medical knowledge and a scalpel.

Dean kills the arriving pair of guards, recovering his and Krysty's weapons in the process, and helps the severely weakened woman make her escape.

The companions make their way to the redoubt, and find Michael and Doc in the chron-jump facility, prepared for a jump whose countdown is fast approaching execution.