In the future world of the year 2087, freedom of thought is illegal and the thoughts of the world's populations are controlled by the government. A small band of "free thinkers" send a cyborg back in time to the year 1966 to prevent a scientist from making the breakthrough that will eventually lead to the mass thought control of the future. Our time traveler soon discovers he is not alone when government agents from the future try to prevent him from carrying out his mission.
Reformed parolee Steve Lacey is caught in the middle when a wounded former cellmate seeks him out for shelter. The other two former cellmates then attempt to force him into doing a bank job.
When a large forest fire breaks out in the mountains of Montana, a squad of 'Smoke Jumpers', the paratroop-corps of fire-fighters in the U. S. Forest Service, is flown to the scene from their regional headquarters in Missoula, Montana. The Forest Rangers, under Cliff Mason, put out the blaze, but several of the fire-fighters are killed. Ed Miller, son of one of the dead rangers, thinks he died because Mason was a coward, and sets out to prove it.