David Lipton, and Sandra Green, suddenly find themselves caught in a vicious struggle between Colonel Adam Jacoby, Director of DARPA, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, and Carl Melanson, Director of The Guardians, dedicated rivals of weapon construction. They believe David's father Maxime Lipton, a renowned Physicist, left him with the plans for a weapon capable of immense power, and they want the weapon. .

David was horrified at seeing his Father and entire family suddenly incinerated in an unexplained car explosion on the Long Island Expressway, and a posthumous package from his Father, containing part of the details of the weapon not only confirms that murder had occurred, but that now the shadow of the weapon has changed his life.

He, and Sandra race to Shoreham, Long Island, where an eccentric scientist, the inventor of Alternating Current, Nicola Tesla, was reported to have hidden plans for a Death Beam.' Fear of being kidnapped by Jacoby, wondering whether to destroy the plans for the weapon if they find it, or to preserve it as a gift of free energy to civilization, strains their commitment to the search. The uncertainty of who is a friend, and who is to be mistrusted among the strangers offering help strengthens their need for each other, soon tested in the development of events they could never have anticipated.