By David R. Palmer

Candidia Maria Smith-Foster, an eleven-year-old woman, is unaware that she's a Homo put up hominem, mankind's subsequent evolutionary step. Hominems have better IQs, they're improved, speedier, extra proof against ailment and trauma, and feature speedier reflexes. Their eyesight, listening to, and experience of odor are better as well.
By the time the narrative opens, sweet has realized karate, having accomplished her 5th measure Black Belt, from her neighbor, 73-year-old Soo Kim McDivot, who she is resulted in think is only a retired schoolteacher. McDivot, whom she calls "Teacher", is admittedly the discoverer of the H. submit hominem species, and has pointed out and maintains to mentor and lead a gaggle of them, the AAs. As a part of her karate education, she has discovered to unencumber her hysterical power, which allows short bursts of approximately superhuman activity.
With diplomacy swiftly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist yet truly a closet govt biowarfare specialist, is termed to Washington. sweet is still at home.
The following day a global assault, that includes a bionuclear plague, wipes out nearly all of H. sapiens. With Terry, her lifelong "retarded, followed dual brother," a Hyacinthine macaw, who has a tendency to "parrot" Candy's phrases even ahead of she speaks, she rides out the assault within the guard underneath their apartment. rising 3 months later, she learns of her genetic history and units off to look for others of her kind.
First the quest turns up "Adam," a cheeky, irrepressibly punning, multitalented 13-year-old boy, who instantly units out to win Candy's middle; subsequent, Rollo Jones, a middle-aged health practitioner with a large historical past of survival-in-the-wilds adventure starting from a stint within the Peace Corps to hiking; and at last, Kim Mellon, an early-20s mother whose heritage is in laptop engineering with Lisa, her six-year-old daughter. Rollo finds himself as a sociopath, whom sweet is pressured to kill protecting Terry and herself. Adam, Kim, and Lisa sign up for Candy's quest for the AA neighborhood. As a part of the quest, Adam unearths that he's an ultralight plane pilot. Later he teaches sweet to fly.
Thereafter, an ultralight engine failure separates sweet from the others. upon getting it working back, she spots a contrail, which leads her to Vandenberg house go back and forth release complicated, the place instructor and the AAs are laboring to preflight a travel, renamed the Nathan Hale. They've pointed out those that burnt up mankind, the Bratstvo, translated because the "Brotherhood," a cabal of H. sapiens, operating from contained in the Russian army to break all H. put up hominems. As coverage, they've positioned a doomsday machine in geosynchronous orbit, a Strontium-90 bomb whose fallout will render Earth uninhabitable for 2 hundred years.
At this aspect, despite the fact that, the AAs' plans have come unstuck: They've changed the Hale to arrive geosynch orbit, notwithstanding it's a one-way, suicide voyage for the workforce; however the miniature robotic handler they've outfitted to penetrate the bomb-carrying rocket and disarm the doomsday machine isn't as much as the duty. sweet realizes, together with her small dimension and hysterical power education, she's the one one that can get contained in the warhead chamber and disarm the bomb. even though it's a suicide venture, she volunteers.
Meanwhile, as Adam, Kim, and Lisa look for sweet, Terry starts off relaying her suggestions, notwithstanding in the beginning they don't discover that's what they're hearing.
Arriving in orbit, Kyril Svetlanov, considered a Bratstvo defector, kills Harris Gilbert, the venture commander. Kyril seems to were a double agent, whose activity finally used to be to sabotage the challenge, yet he doesn't find out about Candy's karate abilities. She breaks his neck and assumes accountability for finishing the mission.
Navigating throughout to the bomb-carrying rocket in a spacesuit, she disables the warhead. Then she resets the navigational desktop to land at the dry lake at Edwards Air strength Base and attempts to safe herself opposed to a bulkhead in training for the stresses of reentry.
As the missile starts off to power-up for reentry, Adam eventually realizes Terry is actually relaying Candy's ideas; that someway she is in reality in area, approximately to aim reentry in a non-human-rated motor vehicle, and that she'll quickly be touchdown at Edwards. He, Kim, and Lisa arrive because the missile is touching down, simply in time to extract her, resuscitate her, and deal with her injuries.
The writer has left a few threads trailing on the end, a few of that are followed-up on 25 years later in a sequel monitoring, serialized in Analog technology and truth journal in the summertime and fall of 2008.