Comrade Pyotr Shapirov has a secret of vital importance to world science, but the only man with the skill to extract it from his comatose brain is American scientist Albert Jonas Morrison.

          Natalya Boranova, sent by the Russian high command to get Morrison’s help, will stop at nothing to ensure his co-operation. But there is one major problem – the necessity for human miniaturisation.

          Wrenched from a routine conference and transported to a vast underground Soviet city dedicated to scientific experiment, Morrison is shrunk to a microscopic fraction of normal size and placed in a specially designed "submarine".

          Injected into Shapirov’s veins to travel deep into the uncharted regions of the brain, with only twelve hours to accomplish his task, Morrison embarks on a desperate search for the origins of thought itself…..