The story begins with a series of individuals from different time periods encountering motionless, hovering spheres—and each other—in the region of the Northwest Frontier.

Also present at the fort are the factor Cecil de Morgan, and two journalist observers, the American Josh White and the Anglo-Indian "Ruddy"—a young and as-yet unknown Rudyard Kipling.

The helicopter crew comprises an American pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Casey Othic; a British Indian observer, Lieutenant Bisesa Dutt; and Chief Warrant Officer Abdikadir Omar, an Afghan Pashtun with blue eyes and strawberry blond hair, which he claims is inherited from soldiers in the army of Alexander the Great.

They manage to establish radio contact with the "moderns" in Jamrud, and through the cosmonauts' observations, the characters learn that the Earth has become a patchwork conglomerate of terrain, and people, from different time periods spanning two million years ago up to the 21st century.

After weeks of orbiting, the cosmonauts decide to bring the Soyuz down in central Asia, where their observations have noted signs of extensive, but still pre-industrial, habitation.

At the Khan's court, Kolya lays plans to use the Mongol army to enter China and rebuild the trading posts and towns that were lost in the Discontinuity.

She hopes to find the unexplained radio beacon, believing it connected to whatever inconceivable event caused the Discontinuity, and thus the centre of power in "Mir".

A sphere at least three times larger than those previously seen is discovered in the Temple of Marduk, and is found to be the source of the radio signals.

Sable catches Kolya in the act, but since the Mongols refuse to spill the "royal blood" of an emissary of Heaven, they blind and deafen him and throw him, alive, into a boarded-over pit.

Bisesa spends all of her time studying the Eye of Marduk, becoming convinced that ancient, intelligent beings are observing them through it, and that she has been able to not only sense their presence, but communicate with them.

However, their first destination is a blasted wasteland, possibly the result of nuclear devastation, and Bisesa concludes that they are in the far future, perhaps millions of years from their own time.

As the story concludes, there is a chapter from the point of view of the ancient beings, the "Firstborn", explaining that they arose in the early days of the universe, on a planet orbiting a powerful but short-lived star.

Her eight-year-old daughter Myra is there, and Bisesa promises to explain her sudden appearance and strange state, but then she sees an Eye floating over the city.