: An old experienced driver fades during a flight due to a lightning strike, his eyesight is restored, he is tried and sentenced to prison. His assistant invents a test with artificial lightning and saves the old man.

The narration is on behalf of the assistant to the driver Konstantin.

Alexander Vasilievich Maltsev is considered the best locomotive engineer in the Tolumbeyevsky depot. Nobody knows better than locomotives! It is not surprising that when the first powerful passenger steam locomotive of the IS series arrives at the depot, Maltsev is assigned to work on this machine. Maltsev’s assistant, an elderly depot locksmith Fedor Petrovich Drabanov, soon passes the exam for a driver and leaves for another car, and Konstantin is appointed in his place.

Konstantin is pleased with his appointment, Maltsev doesn’t care who is his assistant. Alexander Vasilyevich oversees the work of his assistant, but after that he always personally checks the serviceability of all mechanisms.

Later, Konstantin understood the reason for his constant indifference to his colleagues. Maltsev feels superior to them, because he understands the machine more precisely than they do.He does not believe that someone else can learn to feel the car, the path and everything around at the same time.

Konstantin has been working with Maltsev as an assistant for about a year, and now on July 5th comes the time of Maltsev’s last trip. On this flight, they take the composition late for four hours. The dispatcher asks Maltsev to narrow this gap as far as possible. Trying to fulfill this request, Maltsev with all his might drives the car forward. A thundercloud catches them along the way, and Maltsev, blinded by a flash of lightning, loses his sight, but continues to confidently lead the train to their destination. Konstantin notes that he controls the composition of the Maltsev significantly worse.

A different train appears on the way of the courier train. Maltsev transfers control into the hands of the narrator, and admits his blindness:

- Kostya ... Then you drive a car, I went blind.

Accidents are avoided thanks to Konstantin. Here Maltsev admits that he sees nothing. The next day, vision returns to him.

Alexander Vasilyevich is being brought to trial, the investigation begins. It is almost impossible to prove the innocence of the old driver. Maltsev is sent to prison, and his assistant continues to work.

In winter, in the regional city, Konstantin visits his brother, a student living in a university dormitory. The brother tells him that in the physical laboratory of the university there is a Tesla installation for receiving artificial lightning. Konstantin comes up with some consideration.

Returning home, he ponders his hunch about Tesla’s installation and writes a letter to the investigator, who had led the Maltsev case at the time, asking him to test prisoner Maltsev by creating artificial lightning.If the susceptibility of the psyche or of the visual organs of Maltsev to the action of sudden and close electrical discharges is proved, then his case must be reviewed. Konstantin explains to the investigator where the Tesla installation is located and how to experiment with a person. There is no answer for a long time, but then the investigator reports that the regional prosecutor agreed to conduct the proposed examination at the university physics laboratory.

The experiment is being conducted, Maltsev’s innocence is being proved, and he is being released. But as a result of the experience, the old engineer loses his sight, and this time it does not recover.

Konstantin is trying to encourage a blind old man, but he does not succeed. Then he tells Maltsev that he will take him on a flight.

During this trip, vision returns to the blind, and the narrator allows him to independently conduct a steam train to Tolumbeev:

- Drive the car to the end, Alexander Vasilievich: now you see the whole world!

After work, Konstantin, together with the old engineer, go to the apartment to Maltsev, where they sit all night.

Konstantin is afraid to leave him alone, as his own son, without protection against the action of the sudden and hostile forces of our beautiful and furious world.