By the year 2032, the US federal debt has surpassed $50 trillion. The American empire is on the verge of collapse.

An entrepreneur named Kade Kapur has an idea for rescuing the debt-ridden United States: the government will issue stock in a company with exclusive mining rights to an asteroid whose orbit will soon bring it near Earth. The asteroid, which contains $10 trillion in valuable minerals, is officially called 2015 RK 16 Maimonides, but it soon comes to be known by another name: Mammon.

Fortunes are made and America seems to have avoided an economic collapse. But when the plan to capture the asteroid goes awry, the sky will fall . . .