During the years that Enoch's home has served as a Galactic Way Station, he has managed to live in obscurity, troubled by no one. The locals believe there is something very strange about him, but they don't talk to outsiders about it. Until a rumour reaches the CIA, and they start to watch him.

Enoch has spent time with hundreds of types of aliens, entertaining them for shorter or longer periods during their stop overs at his home. He has learned many things about their science and their home planets. For years he has worked on a statistical chart. Using a branch of mathematics that deals with societies, he has tried to find a way for the Earth to avoid the war that he knows is coming, but he can see no way.

War no longer happens in the Galactic Society, due to the presence of the Talisman. A machine made thousands of years earlier, it needs to be touched by a sensitive to activate it. Sensitives are extremely rare, but when the bearer is found, they travel throughout the galaxy, imbuing the planets with the sense of oneness with each other and peacefulness. But now the Talisman is missing, and the Galactic Society is starting to feud with itself.

Trapped by his own sense of responsibility and honour, he has never written articles for the journals of Earth, never taken any chance that the great secret would come out. Ever since he was recruited by the alien he calls Ulysses he has kept the secret, and endured being cut off from most of humanity as a result. The only people who come close to knowing him are the friendly mailman who delivers his supplies from the town, and the deaf mute girl Lucy Fisher. It is said that Lucy can cure warts, and Enoch saw her heal a butterfly with a broken wing, but she cannot speak. Their friendship is based on a mutual love for the peaceful countryside, encountering each other on occasional rambles.

Simak's descriptions of the gentle wonder at the world displayed by both Lucy and Enoch help evoke a quiet peacefulness. The hills and the flowers, the trees and the squirrels, all show the author's love for the countryside and the rural life. Despite consorting with aliens and studying strange sciences, Enoch is still able to appreciate nature on his daily walks.

His peaceful and enjoyable existence begins to fall apart from several directions at once. The watchers have taken something. When a Vegan had died while at the Way Station, he had received instructions to deal with the remains in the local custom, and so had buried them and created a gravestone, written in the Vegan's language. The watchers have taken it away, stolen the body, and somehow the vegans know, even though they are on the other side of the galaxy.

This event is being used as a political tool by factions in the Galactic Society to push for Earth Station to be closed, to stop the expansion into that area of the galaxy and instead expand to another galaxy altogether. Enoch knows who must have taken it.

Meanwhile Lucy Fisher arrives on his doorstep covered in blood, her father having whipped her. Enoch runs the father off the property, but knows there will be more trouble. When he takes her back to her home, warning the father to never beat her again, he also finds the CIA spy there, and insists that the body be returned.

While waiting in his home for the body to come back, and trying to decide what to take with him if the Station is closed, someone arrives on the official transport without warning. A strange rat-like creature, which tries to shoot Enoch and runs out the door.

Enoch follows, hunting it, and sees Lucy nearby, he tries to wave her awya but she does not listen. Suddenly Ulysses is right beside him, and he whispers that the rat creature has the missing Talisman. While Lucy attacks the creature and struggles with it, Enoch shoots.

When Lucy touches the Talisman, it activates, showing the she is the correct bearer. Over the coming days she attends the peace conference and ensures that the Earth will not destroy itself, and then leaves to travel through the rest of the galaxy. Ulysses announces that since the bearer of the Talisman cannot come from an outside world, it is time for Earth to be accepted into the Galactic Society.