Barndon Cummings, a successful management consultant from New York, becomes a victim of the touch of two universes. He is torn from his existence on Earth and appears in another universe on the planet Tanros, where people have been used to dealing with so-called world jumpers for thousands of years. On Tanros, after centuries of oppression by radical priests, people live the great permissiveness and love between partners is alien to the native Tanros. Brandon integrates himself into the peculiar society, lives a fulfilled life at the side of Ushe, whose ancestors came from Thailand and who is capable of feeling love. The 280-hour man becomes a well-balanced, content and successful financial broker, and during his stay on Tanros the society undergoes repeated significant changes in which he participates. He is happy there, enjoying the freedom of movement, but the universe has its own ideas about Brandon's existence.