Thousands of years in the future, when the nearly indestructible skulls of destroyed robots litter the forest floors of the American continent, which barely remembers the greatness of the old technological civilization. Tom Cushing sets out on a quest. He treks across the midwest to find the fabled Place of Going to the Stars, from which ancient technological man left earth to travel among the alien civilizations of the galaxy. There reside the strange artifacts of other worlds that humanity brought back and, it is rumored, some of the strange alien beings themselves. His mission is to recover lost knowledge and to regain humanity's lost heritage.