Professor Rochester, an ornithologist, is called to a ranch in South Texas to investigate a man-sized owl, alleged to have snatched human babies and pets. While searching for the owl, he and his team become trapped in a misty geographic zone that exhibits strange phenomena: prehistoric fish, birds migrating out of season, jungle-like trees, and spotty communication with civilization. Cryptozoologist Dr. Dallas researches such zones all over the world. Roc has stumbled into a pocket of trans-dimensional atmosphere left over from Earth's earliest days. A living energy spawned by the universe's creation built the Primitive Navigational Vault as a safe haven from which to create life on Earth. Once in a blue moon, the doorway to the vault opens. As Dallas works to get the men out of the PNV enclave and the owl back in, everything we think we know about astrophysics, geology, evolution and theology is turned on its head.