Earth has been rendered unlivable outside the Arks by the passage of a peanut-sized black hole through the Earth/Moon system. Aboard the Ark Zeppelin Flying Dutchman, Tony Niccolo, a descendant of Amerigo Vespucci, explorer of the Americas back in the day, begins a voyage of discovery unlike any other with a crew of six plus a collection of companion animals ranging from his two cougars to Melinda Walking Horse's ermine. Besides exploring an Earth sterilized by the gamma radiation of the black hole, to say nothing of turned into a spinning top laid over on its side to create Really Bad Weather, Tony and his crew lay a network of tethered aerostats to reconnect the seven Arks so they can communicate more easily than by shortwave radio. Not only must he help the other Arks solve a multitude of physical problems, he and Melinda must work together with his companion animals and Mother Earth herself to save the other Arks from utter despair over the magnitude of the effort needed just to survive, to say nothing of beginning the process of rebuilding their ruined planet.