New money, old tribes, and international megacorps race to build the first space elevator. With a little Dabare magic, it just might work! The Sadous, an oil-rich West African family, are handed a plum contract as repayment for a decades-old favor that could tie them into an industry of the future—if the family doesn’t tear itself apart first. Two engineer daughters of the Sadou family, Pascaline and Maurie, upon whom the burden of success rests, have troubles of their own. One wants nothing more than to leave and make her own name as an engineering prodigy, while the other is troubled by fever dreams and snakes. Ethan Schmidt-Li is an ambitious megacorp executive with eyes on a big promotion—only to get more than he bargained for when put in charge of the company’s make-or-break project. Endeley Adamou is the powerful nephew of a Bakweri chieftain walking the fine line between modernization and tribal tradition. These are some of the people that Tchami “Chummy” Fabrice has brought together to an ambitious end: constructing the world’s first space elevator in Africa and ensuring the space industry that it catapults will enrich the continent and all involved. They have the carbon nanofiber, prime land around Kilimanjaro, and a captured rock in orbit for the tether. The hard part will be getting all these different people working together long enough to see it built.

Udgivet af Baen 

Joelle Presby