The long tomorrow - Leigh Brackett

'No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.'
Thirtieth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Two generations after the nuclear holocaust, rumours persisted about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plotted to revive the cities.

Almost a continent away, Len Coulter heard whisperings that fired his imagination. Then one day he found a strange wooden box ...