Thousands of years in the future, when the nearly indestructible skulls of destroyed robots litter the forest floors of the American continent, which barely remembers the greatness of the old technological civilization, Tom Cushing sets out on a quest. He treks across the midwest to find the fabled Place of Going to the Stars, from which ancient technological man left earth to travel among the alien civilizations of the galaxy. There reside the strange artifacts of other worlds that humanity brought back and, it is rumored, some of the strange alien beings themselves. His mission is to recover lost knowledge and to regain humanity's lost heritage.

With him on his travels, gathered about him as he goes, are: a cranky and eccentric old woman who may be a witch or may have supernormal powers; a friendly robot, an actual survivor of the old civilization who has overcome his conditioning and lost most of his memory; a middle-aged man who claims that he can communicate with plants; and his young daughter, a girl who does not speak but communicates telepathically. The cast of characters also includes intelligent rocks and trees, a shimmering, ghostlike snake, several aliens, a tribe of primitive plains-dwellers, and the City itself, the Place of Going To The Stars, built on a huge Mesa in the northwest.