Distant future. The United Nations—UN—has turned into the Organization of Uniting Planets—OUP, a gigantic bureaucratic machine whose employees are concerned exclusively with their careers and are mired in corruption. A super-secret service has been created for covert control over the OUP and its staff. The main hero of the novel—an agent of this secret service—under the guise of a sanitary inspector is sent on a special assignment to the planet Demetra, where, as it turns out, most of the population is intentionally turned into powerless drug addicts and where the agent awaits countless dangerous adventures.