They found the restaurant mostly deserted but for a small group of men and women huddled around a lengthy table, playing cards. These were the geophysicists from Tokyo University, whom they’d met on arriving in Guam, and one of them now waved at them to come over.

‘Jason,’ remarked Fowler, approaching the table, ‘you’re up pretty late.’

‘Never too late for gambling,’ replied Jason, tapping a spread of cards lying face down on the table before him. ‘Care to join us?’

‘Thanks, but not this time.’ Fowler took a seat along with Amanda. ‘We won’t be sticking around for long. It’s been a long enough night as it is.’

Jason turned towards him, resting one elbow on the back of Fowler’s chair, the Minnesota University t-shirt stretched taut over his not inconsiderable belly. ‘Some show, huh? Tesla would have been proud of it.’

‘Tesla?’ asked Amanda.

‘He means Tesla’s earthquake machine,’ said an older Japanese man, his accent by way of Southern California. ‘Resonant frequency, that kind of thing. He reckons those growths are going to shake the world to bits, and that tonight’s lightning storm is the prelude.’

Some of the others around the table chuckled at this suggestion, then carried on with their own separate conversations.

‘Just because it sounds crazy doesn’t mean it can’t be true,’ Jason huffed.

‘I heard someone say the growths were disrupting the normal flow of magma deep beneath the crust,’ said Fowler, recalling one pet theory that had circulated amongst his own scientific staff. ‘Something like that would be more than enough to trigger the kind of seismic activity we’ve been seeing.’

A middle-aged man, with dark features, laid down his cards and sighed. ‘I will tell you exactly what is happening,’ he said. ‘The slate is being wiped clean.’

‘Then you’re a bigger nut than Jase is, Nick,’ someone else pointed out.

‘If anyone – or anything – really wanted to destroy our world,’ Nick continued, ‘tre are far, far easier ways to go about it. Like triggering a solar flare, or dropping a black hole into the Earth’s core.’ He gestured towards the north-west, in the same direction they were sailing. ‘It seems to me that whatever created those things out in the ocean, their intention was clearly not to destroy our world.’

‘Then what do they want?’ asked Amanda, clearly fascinated.

The man called Nick smiled, placing his cards face-down on the table. ‘I can only hazard a guess, I fear. Perhaps the growths are a means of sterilizing this world in preparation for implanting an entirely alien flora and fauna for the benefit of forthcoming invaders. Or perhaps the reason is something entirely alien and unimaginable to us. What is clear, however,’ he continued, fixing his gaze on Fowler, ‘is that they could only have found their way here through the Array.’