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The impossible planet is … Earth. A 350-year-old woman approaches Captain Andrews and his mate Norton with the request to buy a ticket to travel to Earth. Irma Vincent Gordon, who is deaf despite being “sustained ” artificially for many years, is assured that Earth is a myth—the fabled birthplace of humanity, not an actual place. The scientists of the society of the distant future all agree that Earth never existed. But the old woman has a great deal of money, and she is willing to spend it on a ticket. Captain Andrews cannot resist the temptation of an easy “thousand positives.” He consults the ship's information library and reviews competing reports of Earth. The dominant account of Earth describes it as a small planet with one moon, the third planet from the sun in a nine-planet system. There are 90 such systems according to the captain. The Emphor System is the closest, so Emphor III is their destination; if Earth is merely a legend, it doesn't really matter to which similar system they take the old woman. They arrive at the barren ruin of a planet. War, mining, and pollution have destroyed Emphor III. The old woman is upset. Earth should be green and alive. She had heard stories from her grandfather, who purported to come from Earth. The captain explains that the planet was “exhausted,” but the old woman continues to complain that Earth is not supposed to be this way. She makes the captain promise this barren ruin is really earth. He does so emphatically. Norton takes the woman to see the ocean. After looking upon the watery ruin, she collapses. Her robot servant goes to her aid. It picks her up, carries her into the filthy sea and vanishes. A shaken Norton puts in for a transfer and refuses his share of the old woman’s money, leaving Andrews to consider his culpability in what has happened. He refuses to admit any fault. The woman was old, and conditions were harsh on Emphor III. So she died. He sidesteps his lack of belief in the reality of Earth. He finds a coin back on the ship and cleans and examines it. It is covered with an ancient script, meaningless to Andrews. E PLURIBUS UNUM. He throws it in the trash and returns to his star charts

Ed and Ruth Fletcher have coffee before work, while outside their house an adjustment clerk tells a dog that he must “summon” at exactly 8:15 in order to make certain that Ed arrives at his office early, before the adjustment of sector T137 begins. The dog falls asleep, and by the time he is awakened to summon, it is 8:16, so the summons no longer calls the desired “A Friend with a Car,” but instead brings “A Life Insurance Salesman.” Ed is consequently late to work and shows up while the adjustment is in progress. He sees a de-energized sector, all grey ash, with everyone and everything crumbling to dust. He flees in terror with an adjustment team in pursuit, men in white with complex machinery. As Ed flees, thinking perhaps he has seen reality behind the veil of everyday appearances, he crosses into an adjustment, this sector still energized. The sun is out and everything is brightly colored again, with people bustling about as usual. He looks back, and his office building appears normal again. He finds his wife and tells her what has happened. She seems to think it was some kind of psychotic episode. She forces him to return to the building to put his mind at ease. At first things do look as if they are back to normal. Ruth leaves him there. He then starts to notice subtle changes in the physical environment and the people themselves. Most notably, his boss Douglas seems younger and thinner and no longer has wrinkles. Ed flees in terror again. He dodges into a phone booth to tell the police and to inform them that someone is altering reality. Then the phonebooth disconnects from the building and launches into the heavens, where Ed meets “The Old Man,” a god-like figure, including flowing robes and long white hair. He informs Ed that his own adjustment teams make vital changes. By making Douglas younger, they make it likely he will purchase and clear land in Canada, discovering certain important anthropological remains. This will bring world scientists together who will collaborate and turn their attention away from national war-related projects, altering the world as a whole. But Ed knows too much. He promises not to say anything, so The Old Man lets him return home. He must on no account say anything about this, especially to Ruth, who must continue to think that Ed’s experience was but a brief psychological aberration. The Old Man reminds him that he will return to Him again, as everyone does, and his fate hinges on this promise. Ed returns home when Ruth is distraught. Ed tells her all is well, that she is right, that he just went crazy for a minute. But she knows he did not stay at work and demands to know where he was all day and who he was with. He starts to panic. He needs to buy some time to make up a proper story. Then a dog barks outside. It is a summons. A vacuum cleaner salesman appears in the nick of time and distracts Ruth, while a relieved and thankful Ed sits back to collect his thoughts.

Lester Herrick is a cold, cruel technocrat who makes poisons for the military. He believes in a “realistic orientation.” He is condescending toward his wife Jill and loathes children, anxious for the day when his nephew Gus is turned over to the government. Gus comes to visit, against Lester’s wishes. Then Lester receives word that he is to visit the crumbling ancient world of Rexor IV. Jill wishes to see the ruins and finally have a vacation—all Lester ever does is work. He rebuffs her rudely but at least allows her to keep Gus until he returns. She tells her brother Frank that she is thinking of leaving Lester, since he is such a cold, almost inhuman man. Frank half-heartedly defends Lester. When Lester returns, though, he is transformed. He is now a charming, well-dressed, romantic gourmet, who showers affection on his astonished wife and shows his love of children. He seems to enjoy life immensely. Under questioning by Frank, Jill highlights the many ways Lester has changed. Frank grows concerned and takes Lester with him to meet his fellow Clearance agents. They want to vibro-tube him on the spot but are not legally entitled to do so. He is an ancient Rexorian who has taken over Lester’s body. Other Rexorians were destroyed in deep space. This one made it to Terra, a living world with food and youth and beauty. He escaped the death and decay of Rexor. But, he must be destroyed according to the law. Jill must testify as to the change Lester has undergone. She is assured she will get the real Lester back again, the same as he used to be. The Clearance agents hand Jill a vidtape recorder for her testimony, but she denies noticing any change whatsoever. “Can we go now, dear?” she asks “Lester” and they walk toward home on a beautiful spring day.

Lori is disturbed from her reading by a tapping at the windowpane. When she opens the window, a leaf blows in. She puts the leaf in her pocket and it starts to cut into her skin in a description that is somehow at once erotic and weirdly pantheistic. The experience calls her away to a place she has been before. She asks permission to leave from her husband and her father-in-law––cranky patriarchs who agree to let her go, provided she is home in time to make them dinner. She goes to a remote farm where just one apple tree remains living. It tries to draw her to it, but she resists (with mixed feelings) saying she cannot come back again. There has clearly been some sort of erotic relationship between them. She runs away, and an apple from the tree tumbles after her. She nibbles on it on the way home. Later she is awakened by severe abdominal pain. She is taken to the hospital but dies there. The doctor believes it was appendicitis, but he does not conduct an autopsy. Months later, Lori’s husband and her father-in-law go to place flowers on her grave. There is now an apple tree growing there, and the fruit is already red though it is only October.

An angry mob assaults an old man wearing a “hood.” The hood is a metal alloy band that is worm across the forehead and prevents one’s thoughts from being scanned by telepathic mutants. The old man, Dr. Franklin, is a high-ranking government director who had really never done anything wrong, but when he was young, he had “found some old books and musical records” (240) … uh oh. The teeps (telepaths) support Senator Waldo and his Anti-Immunity bill, which will make merely wearing any sort of probe screen a felony. Why should people have anything to hide from the government? But even some government workers seem wary of the teeps. An anonymous hood maker is sending probe screens in the mail to carefully selected people. Doctor Franklin had received one of these hoods and is rescued by the Hood Maker’s people just as government agents are about to capture him and have him tried for disloyalty. He is taken to the secret facility where the hoods are made and meets Cutter, the Hood Maker himself. Franklin considers Senator Waldo a friend and doesn’t believe he would support the Anti-Immunity bill if he knew it was just a tool to help the teeps grab power. Franklin and Cutter don hoods and go to find Waldo and discuss the matter with him. They are surprised by a young teep who kills Franklin with a Slem-gun. It turns out Waldo is a teep. The young teep demands that Cutter remove his hood and be scanned. Cutter does so and the teep reacts with horror as he scans Cutter’s mind. He has learned that the teeps are not genetic mutations but freaks––sterile freaks. They will not be able to perpetuate their own kind. This information will spread quickly amongst all the teeps, and it is suggested they will kill themselves in despair and their plans of domination will be foiled. It turns out they had something to hide.

Eric returns from a business trip to Ganymede. His wife Pat expects a present. Eric has purchased a god––an actual deity––and he got a very good price on it. The little figure is called Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo, and its description is right out of H.P. Lovecarft––scales, clawlike hands, mandibles, tentacles instead of legs, an angry, cynical, lustful expression, and an awful stench. Pat is not especially pleased with her present, but Eric encourages her to communicate with it. In short order, the god turns Eric’s colleague Matson into a toad and Pat into a stone statue. The god explains that he arranged to be sold and transported to Terra, where he hopes to pursue and punish a criminal from his realm called Nar Dolk. Eric is called into work by his cranky boss Bradshaw, who is less than pleased that Eric is somehow responsible for Matson’s transformation into a toad. He fires and blacklists Eric. After Eric returns home, he pleads with the god to restore his wife, which he does. But Bradshaw has sent the authorities to arrest Eric for bringing a non-Terran lifeform to Earth. Eric tries to make a deal, which they claim to agree to, and the god is brought close enough to Bradshaw and the others for his powers to be effective. He turns Matson back into a man, but then recognizes that Bradshaw is in fact … Nar Dolk, flotsam of space. Bradshaw transforms himself into another Lovecraftian monster, with Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo hot in pursuit. He destroys Nar Dolk, then disappears back into his own dimension. With the evidence gone, the charges against Eric Blake are dropped. Pat’s present is gone, but she admits, she doesn’t mind that at all.

Tim McLean and his family sit around the breakfast table on what seems to be a typical morning. When Earl returns from his attempt to go to school, though, he tells the family soldiers prevented him. It turns out the foggy weather was actually radioactive dust. The city has been destroyed. Soldiers come to the house and are shocked to find a woman, children, and food. A political commission comes to question them. It’s 1980. Some type of bomb pulled the McLean’s house several years into the future, when the so-called Cold War has heated up. Actually, it was always going on somewhere, starting with Korea, until finally bombs were falling in the US. The family has to decide whether to be separated––the husband to the army, the wife to a labor camp, the children to re-education centers––and remain in a paranoid society where books are burned and war is constant, or stay in the house and hope another blast sends them back to their own time. They decide to stay. The bombs fall again and gradually they come to under rubble in their basement, back in the old city before the war. Police and neighbors cannot understand what could have happened. One neighbor suggests it was the water heater. After considering that war will come regardless in several years, and there is no way he can explain or alter this, Tim McLean says it was the water heater. In the context of the future war and the prevalent fear of war with the Soviets at the time, his final words, ostensibly about the water heater, are rather poignant: “I should have had it looked at. Before it was too late.”

Nat Hull goes to pick up his friend Julia at a party where a contest is taking place. People construct their own Worldcraft bubbles, worlds they create and arrange like gods. After middle-aged Lora Becker wins, she shows off her carefully crafted little world, then smashes it in a frenzy, as do most of the others with their little bubble worlds. Nat, Julia, and Bart discuss why it happened and what people’s motives are in building these worlds in the first place. People are bored because of too much leisure time, and they are disappointed that no other inhabited planets have been found. They create these substitute worlds and destroy them, perhaps out of cruelty, or just boredom. Nat proposes a law to ban Worldcraft and its bubbles, but it is easily defeated. Then Bart reveals life has been found in another system. Worldcraft immediately becomes irrelevant, and Nat happily ponders a world where bored, frustrated gods no longer punish and destroy the worlds they created. Then an unexpected earthquake hits, killing tens of thousands. It seems it was an act of God.

In what turns out to be a spin on the Judeo-Christian creation myth, an old man is compiling a massive log called Project B: Earth. Some children in the building spy on him, and their friend Tommy is intrigued, not showing the fear the others do. He sneaks into Mr. Billings’ room to see what he is up to. The book is a compilation of everything about the earth and its inhabitants. But there is also a wooden frame containing little pink creatures. Mr. Billings returns to the room and allows Tommy to examine the creatures, sort of insect men, with antennae sprouting from their foreheads. Mr. Billings says they constitute Project C and explains that Project A consisted of winged creatures but that they rebelled. Tommy and his people are the result of Project B, another failure. His hope and the hopes of his superiors are in Project C. Tommy gets an idea and steals the creatures, playing with them and keeping them in a cage. He shows his friend. Joan is upset that they are naked, so she makes clothing for them. Mr. Billings finds Tommy and demands the creatures back. They will play marbles, with the winner taking the creatures. Tommy is winning at first, getting almost half the marbles. But during Mr. Billings’ turn, there is a blinding flash, which not only puts the remaining marbles out of the circle, but also turns them into molten fragments. Mr. Billings has won. He returns to his apartment with the creatures. Projects A and B failed because it was hard to maintain the proper control over them. But Project C will fail, too. The creatures from Project A influenced those from Project B to rebel. And now the Project B creatures (the humans) have caused the Project C ones to rebel. They flee from Mr. Billings when he opens the box. And they are wearing clothing now, just as the humans did after they rebelled.

Harl finds out that his father Ed Boynton is planning on going to the surface to get some “saps,” creatures who live above where they have reclaimed some areas of land from post-apocalyptic devastation. Harl wishes to go with his father, partly for immature and romantic reasons having to do with boyish adventure––these attitudes are discouraged in the underground society, were thought, in fact, to have disappeared hundreds of years before. The saps, short for homo sapiens, are thought to be another species. The saps call the underground people (their ancestors) technos and think of them as a different class, but not a different species. After WWII, the technos went underground and made advanced weapons that the saps used to kill each other and destroy the world. The remnants of the saps have formed a primitive oral culture, making simple handicrafts, hunting, and growing crops. So, the technos had grown out of the saps, forming a more intelligent, evolved culture, and they want to bring some saps underground to work in factories. They go to the surface with suits and shields that render them invisible and goggles to protect their eyes from the sun. They split up, and Harl explores the village, observing these strange, well-muscled, dark-skinned creatures engaged in all manner of activities. Eventually he sees a beautiful girl painting pottery that a boy has thrown. Each design is basically the same, yet subtly different. Harl is intrigued and wishes to communicate with her in some fashion. He turns off his shield so she can see him, but she screams and flees in terror. The saps start to search for Harl and the others, so they make their escape back underground. Meanwhile, the girl Julie is still shaken by having seen the terrifying white creature. She asks an elder what the metallic-looking man-like thing with the pasty white face could have been. Mr. Stebbins thinks he knows. He characterizes them as not men, though they look somewhat like men. They live underground in tunnels, seldom surfacing, for they cannot look at the sun. They dig and hoard metals. They are goblins.

Larry Brewster is happily inebriated at a table littered with bottles and butts at his regular, the Wind-Up. An attractive blond named Allison Holmes appears and tells him the time has come for them to meet. Gradually, she reveals a solipsistic fantasy whereby this world (one among many) is hers alone, and everything and everyone in it is only partly real and there for her use and amusement, including Larry, who she announces will marry her. Everywhere they go, evidence accumulates to support what she is saying. But their relationship is not going well. She shows Larry their new house, which Larry views as a modernist architectural nightmare. They go to a fancy French restaurant that Larry does not like. The last straw is the Wind-Up. Larry’s beloved Dixieland dive bar has been transformed into a posh cocktail bar in Allison’s world. He finally threatens to leave her, but she warns him he cannot. He is, after all, only partly real in her world. Larry decides it is his world and makes Allison disappear. Everything turns out for the best.

A tired commuter named Ernest Critchet attempts to buy a commute book at the ticket counter in the train station. He wants to go home to Macon Heights. The problem is Macon Heights doesn’t exist. When Critchet sees no Macon Heights on the map, he disappears. The next day, he wants to buy the same commute book, so the ticket taker shows him into Vice President Paine’s office. Paine finds out that Macon Heights is a modern suburb of 5,000 people. He shows Critchet a map with no Macon Heights, and Critchet disappears again. But the name Macon Heights is vaguely familiar to Paine. He goes to his girlfriend Laura in her nicely furnished apartment and asks her to research it. The next day, he takes the train out to investigate. He asks the old conductor. No Macon Heights. He transfers to a train back to the city, which stops where Macon Heights should be. Paine asks the young conductor (reading a pulp magazine—a nice touch). This is the Macon Heights stop and always has been. Confused, Paine goes to Laura’s. It seems the city voted on three new suburban developments, but only two passed. Macon Heights lost by one vote. But now it seems to be coming into existence anyway, suggesting that the past, at least in part, must be mutable. Paine returns to Macon Heights and it is real. He sees the people who live there and has coffee in a diner. All the sudden he becomes terrified, reasoning that changes in the suburbs could be altering the city; his own life, even, could be affected. He returns to the city and sees strange businesses he does not recall. He returns to Laura and is relieved. Same old apartment. But not really. Her handsome green couch is now the blue one with cigarette burns he remembers. He and Laura are married with a boy. Macon Heights has changed everything.

Ted Barnes enters his home shaken. Another cloud of Martians has arrived. When his son Jimmy comes home, Ted decides it’s time to have the Martian talk—the canned ham can wait. Jimmy is excited and frightened by the talk of the Martian “buggies.” If Jimmy sees a buggie, he is to run away and find an adult in order to report it. The next day, Jimmy and his friends survey the Johnson house, where a buggie was taken care of the night before. They engage in boyish banter about what they would do if they found a buggie, mingling fear and excitement as they do so. On the way home, Jimmy sees one. It manages to communicate something of its experience through images that lap at Jimmy’s mind. It suggests that the buggies from dry, cracked Mars just want to live on the surface of the ocean, where they might absorb nutrients peacefully. The buggie seems to politely request permission to do this before releasing Jimmy from its spell. Jimmy runs to an adult (as taught) and informs him about the buggie. The authorities return. The buggie is too high up in the tree for them to use a pole on it. They use gasoline to burn it out of the tree. It tries to crawl upward but catches fire and falls to the ground, where the gathered people viciously stomp it. The description of the assembled crowd combines the spirit of anti-communist hysteria as well as the meanness of cross-burning Klansmen. The buggie is dead and Jimmy returns home. The next day his father Ted tells his co-workers the story in the employee cafeteria. He is very proud of the role his fearless son played in the destruction of the hateful buggie.

The Terrans have built a highly advanced culture. The problem is that all the advances seem to require special materials from other worlds. The natives of these worlds often put up a fight, so there is constant war and universal conscription of men. Bob Clarke is getting called up more and more frequently. Mars. Then he does not come back. They call his son Tommy. They can no longer wait for boys to turn 18. They need the gleco from Callisto. Tommy survives but then perishes in the trektone-war on Europa, like his father died for rexeroid on Mars. So they have to start calling women. They have to fight for nymphite on Saturn. The story ends as aliens from Orion land on Earth. They are admiring the highly advanced Terran culture. But where have all the humans gone?

Ed Doyle gets back from Proxima Centauri just in time to see the new baby boy to whom his wife has just given birth. Doyle does not seem at home in LA and seems to have forgotten how different it is from Prox. There are very many robots, including the doctor who delivered his son. Doctor 2g-Y Bish and Doyle’s wife Janet are shocked when Ed wishes to hold the baby. It is not done. Children have no contact with parents, thus neuroses and other psychological problems are thought to be eliminated. When children reach the age of nine, the field in which they will excel is chosen for them. Doyle returns to see his son Peter on his ninth birthday, just as he has started his specialized study in biochemistry. It is a cold world of hyper-specialization in which the supreme rationality of the governing robots leaves no room for human emotion or desire. Doyle hates this and wants his son Peter to have a chance to escape it. Doyle discusses this with his son, but Peter will have none of it. Doyle leaves and Peter discusses the meeting with Dr. Bish. Peter found his father too emotional and noticed a distinct odor about him, like the animals in the biology lab. The robot doctor has noticed this as well. Peter seems to have more in common with the robots than with the humans of the previous generations.

Captain Shure and navigator Nelson are in the Sirius system, which the Terrans have closed to others. An armed Adharan freighter appears to the consternation of the Terrans. The ship lands on a barren planet, and the Adharan human-sized insect-creatures scurry off in cars that appear as black dots to the Terran observers. Shure is nonplussed by their presence and activities since the Terrans have already carefully searched the planets in the system and found nothing. The Adharans methodically continue to the other planets repeating their investigations. What might they be taking away? Shure and Nelson wait for the ship on the fourth planet. They examine the ship’s cargo. It consists of many orbs glowing with milky fire and they assume they are some type of jewels they themselves had not managed to find. They take the jewels and send away the Adharans who did not die in the brief firefight with the Terrans. They send the jewels back to Terra, assuming every woman will want to wear one around her neck. The story ends from the Adharan perspective. They are disappointed they lost half the cargo before they could place the rest on the other warm planets in the Sirius system. No matter, the eggs will hatch on Terra just as well.