He groaned, not wanting to be here any more, and envied the professor. Matt Kearns had left, and he was here to try and clarify his geological findings, no matter how inexplicable they were.

Andy looked around the room: it was stuffed with military types. Tania had invited him to this meeting just twenty-four hours after losing his friend. He felt like shit, but he guessed that if there were answers to be had, he couldn’t possibly say no. Besides, he liked Tania…liked her a lot.

After he was introduced around the room, he had shaken plenty of hands, sat down, and took the offered coffee. No one sat with him, no one talked to him, and he was pretty much ignored. That suited him fine.

Andy studied the crowd as he sipped his coffee. Henry Decker, the general, was top dog. He was large, square and, though the years had turned slabs of muscle to padding, he still looked formidable and sharp.

Just along from him was Major Joshua Abrams in animated conversation with Captain Tania Kovitz. The tall man turned to stare back for a moment, before nodding and then continuing his briefing or argument with his officer.

He watched Tania for a while – she was like a magnificent jewel among granite cliffs. Looking at her calmed him. Her brow furrowed as she spoke; she was obviously not happy with something the tall officer was saying.

General Decker clapped his hands once. “Major.”

Abrams crossed to an open computer on the long table. Andy dragged his chair over to it and began to tap at the keyboard. The far wall lit up behind them, and the room quieted. There was a map of North America, covered in red spots – continental measles, Andy thought. He quickly recognized that many of the dots corresponded to sinkholes he was familiar with. The first thing that struck him was the number – hundreds – and a lot of hundreds at that. The second thing that struck him was that the sizes of the red dots varied.

“Too damned many,” Decker said his jaw jutting. He turned to Abrams. “Do you have a time plot?”

Abrams tapped at the keys again. The screen went blank, and then a clean map of the USA was displayed. Another tap and dozens of small red dots appeared.

“One month ago,” he said, and then pressed another key. The map became more crowded with dots that were twice as big.

“This is two weeks ago.” Once more Abrams changed the graphic. This time they came back to the final screen; the dots were twice as big again. “And now we see where we are today.”

“Exponential growth,” Tania said. “As time progresses, the sinkholes increase in size and in depth.” She stepped a little closer to the screen. “And as Mr Bennet has informed us, the ground, the subsurface, the entire geology of the areas varies little between most of these sites.”

“You know, when we test drill a new geology, we use a small-bore drill – call it a string,” Andy said. “Once we’re happy with it, we use bigger drill kits. Thing is, we start small until we know what we’re dealing with or we get better at it. That’s what this thing looks like to me – the first ones were trials.” Everyone turned to him. “And whatever is doing them is getting better at it.”