Our contemporary Sergei Nikitin is interested in leaving his body and flying into his distant past, into his past reincarnations on Earth. Unexpectedly for him, during the next cast, he finds himself in his very distant past even before his incarnation on Earth in the body of an intelligent reptile - the pilot Zosan, who turns out to be an important participant in the events in the confrontation between the Empire and the cosmic Horde of the “Mohnachs” attacking it. The action of the first part of the novel takes place in two times at once, the hero lives in our time and solves his complex problems, while at the same time living the life of the pilot Zosan in a dream.