British reporters suspect an international cover-up of a global disaster in progress... and they're right. Hysterical panic has engulfed the world after the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously detonate nuclear devices and have caused the orbit of the Earth to alter, sending it hurtling towards the sun.

The first manned spacecraft, fired from an English launchpad, is first lost from radar, then roars back to Earth and crashes in a farmer's field, and is found to contain only one of the three men who took off in it; and he is unable to talk but appears to be undergoing a torturous physical and mental metamorphosis.