Auge des Kröten, Zeh des Frosches... Kalifornien in den 1990er Jahren war ziemlich so, wie es immer gewesen war. Natürlich machten die wiederkehrenden Benzinengpässe das Reisen schwieriger, und eine gegen Medikamente resistente Superkeim-Infektion hatte die Beliebtheit von Hebammen und Hausgeburten wiederbelebt. Aber die Bewohner behielten weiterhin ihre skurrile Sicht auf das Leben. Zum Beispiel das seltsame neue Heilmittel gegen Krebs...
The DNA disaster, it has begun. In top-secret silence, the deadly Soviet-American gene-manipulation race has started. As far as Major Stanley Johnson is concerned, his gene-splicing experiments are tactically brilliant and remarkably effective. Of course there are a few problems to work out, but that's to be expected in dealing with unknowns. Charlie and Ann Cotten know nothing about Major Johnson and his experiments. They are waiting the birth of their first child, and Charlie's professorship. Never giving a second thought to the acid they had tripped a month before the baby was conceived. Inexorably the worlds of Major Johnson and the Cotten's are drawn closer and closer as horrifying realities are revealed. Those with their fingers on the pulse of life have twisted DNA into a weapon of death and given one young couple less than nine months to stop an experiment that could destroy their world.