A football player and his friends travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyrant, Ming the Merciless, to save Earth.

Mickey Gordon is a basketball referee who travels to France to bury his father. Ellen Andrews is an American living in Paris who works for the airline he flies on. They meet and fall in love, but their relationship goes through many difficult patches. The story is told in flashback by their friends at a restaurant waiting for them to arrive.