The Apocalypse occurs nine days prior to America's Tri-Centennial celebration - when relativistic bombs launched by an unknown alien civilization finally reach their destinations. One man sees them approaching - but by then, it is already too late. And in a brief, incomprehensible instant, every inhabited planetary surface in the solar system is wiped clean. Life has ceased to exist. Now all that is left of humanity is a handful of survivors hiding between the planets in mobile space research facilities and experimental habitats - a small, terrified remnant of civilization struggling to make some sense of the catastrophe that has obliterated their past and future...while searching desperately for a means of escape before the Intruders' doomsday technology can detect and destroy them. Astonishingly, on a dead and sterile Earth, two people remain alive - a Jesuit and a pilot aboard the deep-diving submersible, Alvin, protected from the devastation by the cold, enveloping waters. An historian and a scientist, it is they whom destiny has chosen to wander the surreal, empty wastes of a terrifying ghost planet - to battle fear, loneliness and encroaching madness...and to await the inevitable arrival of the annihilators from the stars.