It was one of those days when Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov should have stayed in bed. After braving a ferocious storm, Rostnikov arrives inside the Petrovka headquarters only to find three very peculiar investigations waiting for him. First there's cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka, whose last words on the space station Mir were instructions to contact Rostnikov if something went wrong with the mission. Now, Vladovka is missing and his fellow cosmonauts are turning up dead. Then there's filmmaker Yuri Kriskov, who is fearing for his life after being threatened by a chess-crazed lunatic who stole his documentary on Tolstoy. And finally, there's the scientist who was murdered while researching psychic phenomena during dream states. Inspector Rostnikov must find a connection between these very strange cases...before another murder can take place.