Two friends, Jim Cash and Lou Erville, set out in search of work and a better life on a homemade flying machine—a longsfear—from their hometown of Tauros to the more, as rumors say, prosperous city of Kinto. Fleeing the mafia that has been tailing them, they make an emergency landing in a mysterious, deadly zone called the Bowl. The zone was named “Bowl” because it formed in the crater “Cup of Joy.” But from the very beginning, it brought people nothing good: those who went there did not return, and flying machines disappeared. Yet the navigation satellites recorded nothing unusual in the Bowl—outwardly, it looked like an lifeless desert.
So Jim and Lou get out from under the wreckage of the longsfear…