A deadly mysterious ZONA has appeared in the Astrakhan steppes, swallowing a military town and a military spaceport. It destroys and returns lives, overthrows world politics and science, and turns a young contract soldier of the Soviet Army into a tracker-poacher, a traveler between the Moon and the Mesozoic, a hunter of dinosaurs and of competitors from Pallasovka, an assassin of people and a savior of humankind… a savior whom his former young contract soldier’s new people—the “bedovans”—now regard with less and less acceptance… and treat badly.