The elderly Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Korolev works on the Russian-American Kosmograd space station network. Korolev has an illustrious past: He was the first human on Mars. Now, however, he is retired from service and essentially redundant, crippled with an “arthritic hand” with a wrist “bird-bone thin from calcium loss” (84).

Korolev serves to link the military and research aspects of the space station network. However, the United States has been subsumed by the Soviet superpower, rendering the military arm of the network unnecessary. There are plans to close the station entirely on account of trumped-up charges of illegal “trafficking in jazz and pornography” and American broadcasts (92). Korolev protests these charges as ridiculous and threatens to pull his honorary rank and speak with officials to save the station.

Korolev is punished for speaking out. After spending many years in low-gravity orbit in space, Korolev’s body has changed so much that he is unable to return to Earth. Upset, he hatches a plan to help other crew members rebelling against the plan to close the station to escape and get to Japan. Their escape capsule is attacked, but the defectors in turn use it to attack the space station, eradicating the military crew in the process.