Unbelievably, the view of the savannah continued. The moon had made contact with the ground at some point perhaps a thousand miles farther over the horizon from whoever was wielding the camera, and they now directed its gaze towards a great dark dome, tinted deep blue with distance, and sinking slowly downwards. A line of fire burned along the horizon, growing wider and taller. Great dust clouds at its base spread and darkened as they rushed towards the lens.

For whose benefit, I wondered, had they been recording all this? Or was it that witnessing the vehicle of their passing, from the other side of a camera lens, somehow made it seem less real?

Suddenly, all across the savannah, birds rose in great dark clouds, even as streaks of cirrus high in the atmosphere suddenly evaporated. The ground tilted, and fire shot upwards from distant black hills as magma was released from deep beneath the Earth’s crust.

Dust rose in great clouds, obscuring the view, but not so much that I couldn’t see the vast wall of superheated rock and lava sweeping over the hills and towards the camera . . .

The picture cut off. I drew a shuddering breath, realizing I’d been holding it in all this time. I had to force my hands, now damp with sweat, to unclench. I wiped them on my shirt, and tried to retrieve my scattered nerves.

Despite this I steeled myself, and continued to watch. If the rest of them could do it, so could I. As Nadia had said: I might well see far worse things than this.

All of the views of the merged Earth and moon were now from orbit. The planet’s crust rippled like water, white-hot where the moon had collided with it, the colour fading to a deep burned orange farther around the globe. There were no longer any recognizable continents or oceans, only an endless ocean of fire as magma swallowed up the great landmasses.

And through it all Casey kept talking, narrating the whole damn thing, glancing occasionally at a piece of much-folded paper in one hand to remind himself of what he wanted to say.

I turned away, finally unable to bear any more. Casey’s voice boomed in my ears like a particularly raucous, drunken angel sounding the final trumpet. And then I heard angry shouting, and turned back to see Selwyn, red-faced with fury, staring up at Casey with his hands balled into fists.

‘Damn you, Vishnevsky! You have no respect for human life. You can’t treat this as an entertainment!’

Casey said something I didn’t catch. Selwyn responded by noisily pushing past the people nearest him, almost tripping over Oskar’s enormous hound in the process.