Military doctor General Klenski is arrested in Stalin's Russia in 1953 during an anti-Semitic political campaign accused of being a participant in so-called "doctors' plot".

Pasha, 19, studies in St. Petersburg and dreams of designing space rockets. He comes from the village of Shoyna, where his family remains - mother, father and younger brother. One day, Pasha receives a telegram about his father's death and returns home to take care of his family. Soon he learns that he has won an international grant, but a rocket launched from the cosmodrome falls on their house and injures his mother. To help her, Pasha decides to move the house to a higher ground where there is no sand and the sea is visible.