A brilliant young biologist Dr Seth Forest travels to South America with his wife and son, determined to solve the greatest mystery of the natural world, the secret of communicating with animals. He cracks the code, but triumph is short-lived when his wife is kidnapped. Ever since, the Dr and his son Adam (now fluent in many animal languages) have sailed the world searching for her, collecting many weird and wonderful animals along the way. For a long time they hear nothing, then at one of the ports they receive news that a woman matching Adam's mother's description left a letter with authorities in a city on the other side of the world. But the situation is not as straightforward as they hoped. In return for the letter, the all powerful mayor of the city wants a promise of the ingenous doctor's help. Someone has designed a fiendish method of depriving his citizens of sleep, threatening to turn them all slowly mad. The dastardly villain behind it is Professor Silas Scabelax. Like all good villains his long-term plan is world domination, beginning with his small-scale experiment in mind-control. But he wants more than your average villain.Unknown to Adam and the Doctor, Scabelax has deliberately lured them to the city.
He is ready to dominate the world by controlling the people, but he also wants to control the animals ("And then I go after the plants!") and only the Doctor's communication powers will allow him to fulfill his evil desires. As the different elements of the plot converge, a spectacular finale awaits