Plot summary

Dagny Taggart pilots an airplane in pursuit of another plane. Dagny asks herself, "Who is John Galt?" before apparently crashing into a mountainside. Nine months earlier, Dagny is trying to understand the abandoned prototype of an advanced motor she and her lover Hank Rearden have found. Scientists across the country have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances, but Dagny is able to locate Quentin Daniels, who agrees to help from an abandoned laboratory in Utah. Dagny's brother James Taggart, president of the family railroad company, meets store clerk Cherryl Brooks and brings her to see a renowned pianist, who disappears during his performance, leaving a note asking, "Who is John Galt?" Later, at James and Cherryl's wedding, Dagny's friend Francisco d'Anconia argues with other guests about whether money is evil, and secretly informs Rearden about devastating explosions at his copper mine-the next day. Rearden spends the night with Dagny. Later, he is confronted about the affair by his wife Lillian, but when he offers a divorce she declines, in order to maintain her position in society.