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.

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.