The story follows Alexander Privalov, a young computer programmer who, while driving home from a vacation in Karelia, gives a ride to two hitchhikers and ends up staying at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy (NIITChAVO) in the fictional town of Solovets. There he discovers a research institute where sorcerers, folkloric creatures, and Soviet bureaucracy coexist, and scientists approach magic with the same rigor and administrative red tape as any other branch of science.

The novel combines folklore, absurdist humor, and a parody of Soviet scientific institutions and academic life.

A spaceship, propelled by a prototype photon engine, sets off for Venus, which is then an enigmatic and unexplored planet that is covered by clouds. The tasks of the crew are to test the prototype engine in field conditions and to locate and set radio beacons on the so called "Uranium Golconda" (a place with incredibly large heavy metals deposits) that is presumably found somewhere on the second planet of the Solar System.

As the crew ventures into the depths of Venus, unknown dangers take them out one by one and so only four of six return home after they accomplished the mission, and all are badly damaged both physically and mentally. However, their feat was the first milestone in colonizing Venus and the first step into the 21st century.