The desert above Los Angeles is a harsh, unforgiving place. The heat does something to people's brains - or so thinks Lieutenant Ron Pinkerton, who is investigating a series of shockingly violent crimes perpetrated by the most unlikely suspects. Meanwhile, just a few miles away, astrophysicists at the Mount Wilson Observatory are grappling with another kind of threat, one that threatens to extinguish humanity in the time it takes for your eye to twitch.