During a quantum-computing experiment, Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. He is almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist. He is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended -- by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence and boundless enthusiasm for the world's strangeness, as well as by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport.

Meanwhile, Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around, and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter?