Over six hundred airline passengers and soldiers are entrapped by a wormhole and taken to a dangerous, deep-time world. Colonel Eisenstein must control the basic fears and prejudices which threaten their survival: The psychological stress that comes with the realization of what has happened; the specter of disease; the question of civilian versus military authority; the requirement for controlled sex in a male-dominated society; the genetic importance of women for the survival of the species; the realization that they are not alone, that there are other sentient beings who choose to remain unseen; and the ever-present reality of violent death in a hostile environment. In the present, Zeph Foster, science team leader investigating the wormhole, believes the missing aircraft have crashed somewhere in the snow-covered Rocky Mountains. But the race to find survivors is confounded by the appearance of an advanced-technology device in Utah and by catastrophic events in Texas, New Mexico, and near space. To save mankind from fratricide, Zeph must find the connection between all of these events and the possible tampering of Earth by extraterrestrials in deep time and perhaps in the present. What Zeph discovers will however change the history of his present and future world.