While air accident expert Tim Kendall is being wrongly arrested in London for stealing his own car, in the scorching heat of the Pilbara, in the Australian outback, a prototype airship on a test flight, Zepp 1, is found parked in a remote region, intact, doors sealed, engines running and with no-one aboard. It is truly a Marie Celeste of the skies. Kendall is called from London to lead the investigation.
Within days of his arrival in Western Australia, a second airship, Zepp 2, piloted by Kendall and the airline CEO Rachel Mendelson, disappears overnight from the far-flung, primitive outpost of Kangalone River Junction and is found hundreds of miles away, parked next to Zepp 1, intact, engines running, and empty.
Kendall, Mendelson and the sole resident of Kangalone, Melissa Marconi, are stranded at River Junction. Without radio contact to the outside world, Kendall's investigation looks impossible. But the actions that he takes during their enforced stay will still be reverberating more than twenty years later.
