An attempt to colonize parallel spaces ended in a catastrophe that shook the Great Ring of Worlds, to which Earth belonged. The wondrous planet Paradise turned into a hell filled with blood and violence; the population of two more planets almost completely died out from epidemics or was exterminated in internecine wars.
The New World that arose on the ruins of civilizations resembles a chessboard, where the places of black and white squares are taken by the Old territories of Earth and the gloomy expanses of the planet Dodhar.
It takes only one step across the Borders of Contact to pass from a birch grove or an abandoned earthly city into endless lava fields or the half-living forests of Dodhar inhabited by monsters. In this strange world, an unceasing struggle for survival is underway, and those who have set themselves the goal of finding the Chariot of the Overseers must travel through itโa ship of a long-vanished civilization on which one can fly to the center of the Universe, to the Abode of God.