At the start of his junior year in high school, Timothy becomes an orphan when his dad dies. He wanted to believe his dad was an extraterrestrial rather than the drunk that people called him. His dad didn't start drinking until his wife, Timothy's mom, died two years before. Like his mom, there was no funeral for his dad. Just strange relatives arriving to take him away. The relatives did not come back.
Timothy was left alone with his inheritance — an unusual rocket formula and a different type of rocket engine. He also had an address to a place on the other side of the rural county.
Timothy arrives at a farmhouse where the high school janitor Eddie greets him with suspicion. Retired from NASA, Eddie has a Redstone rocket and Mercury capsule in the farm's silo. Someone Eddie knew at NASA put the rocket and capsule there. Eddie called him ET.