Max Tyne: mathematician, physicist and philosopher, was the greatest scientist of his generation, and few would dispute, true father of the colonisation of space. He had made some of the great breakthroughs and driven all the rest, with a will and dynamism that were legendary. He had argued, wheedled and cajoled the money from a world, overpopulated and spent, and had changed space travel from what had seemed like wildly extravagant research, to what it became - a salvation. Although he would never admit it to himself, after nearly sixty years at the top of his game, he was getting old and tired. He still worked twelve hour days, and pushed himself, and all around him, to the limits. He was correcting the simulated 'fire ups' of his new engine designs, when a chance discovery from his past caused him to re-assess what he had achieved, and, at the age of eighty, set him off in a whole new direction.