A political conspiracy is brewing in an unnamed Latin American country. Everything is in play: blackmail, bribery, political assassinations, newspaper slander. The operation, code-named "Centaur", is conceived in Washington.
The heroines of the film are Soviet basketball players who take part in international competitions for the Hera Cup. Exciting basketball matches, the nobility of a Soviet athlete who saved the life of a Greek basketball player, the anxiety of first love-all these and other events make up the plot of the film.
A young biophysicist, dreaming of spiritual and physical immortality, makes an experiment on himself: by radioactive irradiation he violates the genetic code, as a result of which he passes into another biological substance and becomes immeasurably more perfect than his fellows on Earth.