During one of his trips to Brazil, in the 1960s, the protagonist, receives via radio a communication in Morse in which a mysterious Russian, embarked on a Yugoslav motor ship moored in Rio Grande do Sul, asks him for a meeting, on his arrival in that port, expected after a few days. During the interview, which the young man had accepted out of curiosity, the Russian offers him a vague collaboration with a transnational organization with not very clear contours. He refuses but the Russian to convince him announces that the next destination of the Bayhorse, the ship on which the young officer was embarked, would be Jacksonville, Fl, USA. Since no one could know at that time, at the moment he does not believe him and thinks of a joke even if for inexplicable reasons. When a week later the captain of the Bayhorse communicates the next destination and it was the one indicated by the Russian, the young man changes his mind and wants to see his mysterious interlocutor to deepen what he had been told previously. During the second interview the Russian is not much more detailed in the explanation but he specifies that in the on-board pharmacy was placed an object that the young man should deliver on his arrival to a person in charge, who would also provide him with full details of future cooperation. Driven by his innate curiosity he accepts and, once in navigation, with difficulty he manages to find the mysterious object hidden in the on-board pharmacy. After the delivery on arrival, the person in charge of the withdrawal does not have time to dwell on explanations but informs him of another similar object to be delivered to the next port, Bombay in India, where every aspect would have been clarified.

During the meeting in India, he was asked to collaborate with this organization, the Phoenix, which operates worldwide and has unlimited financial resources and technologies unthinkable in those years. He was chosen because he was deemed fit for the task they would assign him, based on some mental analysis to which he had been subjected without his knowledge. It accepts as it fully agrees with the objectives that the Phoenix showed it wanted to achieve in the long term. After some trips, he is asked to leave the Bayhorse and reach the underground base of the Phoenix, in a desert of the USA. In the base he discovers a world unknown to him and wonderful. The technologies at their disposal were so advanced that in the 1960s no one would have even guessed. What amazes him most is the system of transferring information from a computer archive directly into the human mind. Gradually its position grows in importance in the organization, until it reaches the highest levels of management. At that point it is clear to him many political, economic and social events that have occurred in the last fifty years that had been communicated to the masses adapted for political, economic or military purposes. The ultimate aim was to achieve, for all the inhabitants of the planet, a coexistence and a shared well-being and to guarantee to all an individual freedom which, however, was prevented from becoming a prevarication for others. At that time it was still a utopia but, in the course of the next hundred years, the goal that the Phoenix had set itself would be fully achieved. The protagonist at the age of seventy retires with his wife to a ranch in Arizona and his place will be taken by his son. But only his grandchildren will see the results of his work. The Phoenix finally achieves its goals and, more than a hundred years after its mysterious birth, reunites the entire planet under a single government. At this point, one of its leaders asks himself the question of how the Phoenix was born and by whom it was created. The discovery will be disconcerting but also fascinating and will lead the descendant of the young Marconist officer to discover, in the depths of space, many secrets of the universe.