...People living in the future have comfortable cars, obedient robots, beautiful houses. There are only books missing in these houses. Books are declared enemies, subject to extermination...

Air Force Colonel and former astronaut Greg Darwin is visited by his old friend, Johnny. After talking, Greg reveals to Johnny a secret from his past. While serving in space intelligence, Darwin, along with another astronaut, Dick, was sent on a secret mission to a planet that had suffered a devastating nuclear war. On orders from the command, Greg and Dick were to find the remaining weapons on a depopulated planet, the analogues of which did not yet exist on Earth...