The situation in Rome is gradually returning to normal, but news spreads throughout the known world, and the shadow of an impending war hangs over the barely recovered Republic. In the vicinity of Vesuvius, people begin to disappear, and a group of boys discover a strange, anachronistic building in the forest, setting off a chain of events, the end of which they cannot predict. Former passengers and crew of a spaceship lost in realities find themselves in a difficult situation, and their departed colleagues are faced with forces that they cannot explain, while Foundation scientists, making sure that the destruction of reality has not been stopped, they are trying to develop a new plan of action.