The captain spun his big wheel again, and they ran with the waves directly behind them, northwest into the mouth of the Thames. Off to their left a brownish-green ridge emerged wetly out of greenish-brown water, buildings crowding its slope. “That’s Minster, or what’s left of it. It was the only high ground on the island. Sheerness is over there, you can see where the water is all shattered over it.”

Under the low ceiling of streaming mist Nirgal saw what looked like a reef of foaming white water, sloshing in every direction at once, black under the white foam. “That’s Sheerness?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they all move to Minster?”

“Or somewhere. Most of them. There’s some very stubborn people in Sheerness.”

Then the captain was absorbed in bringing the boat in through the drowned seafront of Minster. Where the line of rooftops emerged from the waves, a large building had had its roof and sea-facing wall removed, and now it functioned as a little marina, its three remaining walls sheltering a patch of water and the upper floors at the back serving as dock. Three other fishing boats were moored there, and as they coasted in, some men on them looked up and waved.

“Who’s this?” one of them said as Bly nosed his boat into the dock.

“One of the Martians. We’re trying to find the Asian lady who was helping in Sheerness the other week, have you seen her?”

“Not lately. Couple of months actually. I heard she crossed to Southend. They’ll know down in the sub.”

Bly nodded. “Do you want to see Minster?” he said to Nirgal.

Nirgal frowned. “I’d rather see the people who might know where she is.”

“Yeah.” Bly backed the boat out of the gap, turned it around; Nirgal looked in at boarded windows, stained plaster, the shelves of an office wall, some notes tacked to a beam. As they motored over the drowned portion of Minster, Bly picked up a radio microphone on a corkscrewed cord, and punched buttons. He had a number of short conversations very hard for Nirgal to follow—”ah jack!” and the like, with all the answers emerging from explosive static.

“We’ll try Sheerness then. Tide’s right.”

And so they motored right into the white water and foam sloshing over the submerged town, following streets very slowly. In the center of the foam the water was calmer. Chimneys and telephone poles stuck out of the gray liquid, and Nirgal caught occasional glimpses of the houses and buildings below, but the water was so foamy on top, and so murky below, that very little was visible— the slope of a roof, a glimpse down into a street, the blind window of a house.