Set in World War 2 as the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia, teenage Emilka's father is murdered by the Nazis, but she is selected for special treatment by virtue of being blonde. She is billeted with the commandant of a concentration camp near the Baltic coast, where his kindness towards her provokes his wife's jealousy, but is compromised when Emilka witnesses his brutality towards the prisoners.

A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.