Red-hot stones were hurled yards into the air. They came down hissing on the grass. Ash was hosing out, black outside, red-lit within; a cinder cone was already building up around the aperture.

The ground shuddered. There were more deep-throated cracks and explosions: Mike was hearing the voice of the ground coming apart, new fissures and vents opening up.

Mike repeated one of Bran’s favourite mantras. “Christmas Eve, 1968. In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth…”

He heard people join in. “And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” He was not alone, then. “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters—”

The ground shuddered, and he was thrown flat again, his face pressed into the grass. The first stones had become a fount of boulders, incandescent bombs hurled so far into the air they passed out of his sight, into the ash cloud that was gathering above him.

Lightning sparked in the cloud. The sunlight was blocked out. He was enveloped in heat.

Mike was sure there was nothing like this in the literature, this sudden and spectacular opening up. But then, there was nothing in fifty thousand years of human history, nothing in five billion years of Earth, like the Moonseed.

The noise had merged into a roar now, continuous, the shuddering unending. But still he could hear his own voice.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”

The ground split again, gas and steam rushing all around him. He heard a scream, unearthly; he was scorched by the heat, but still, it seemed, uninjured. He could scarcely breathe, the air was so hot and thick with the ash.

The ground subsided under him.

In the darkness, he seemed to be falling. Perhaps he would fall all the way to the centre of the Earth, hollowed out by Moonseed.

But now the ground returned, slamming up under him, and he fell on his back, the soil and grass and rock and heather and moss rubbing against his flesh.

He was rising into the roiling ash cloud. It rose up above him, lightning sparking. Remarkably, he still felt no pain, no real discomfort.

There could be only seconds left, though.

Far above, a glint of metal against a square inch of blue sky. A helicopter?

He tried to shout, but he had no voice.

And God saw the light… That it was good…

But now the ash descended on him — oh, Jesus, it was hot, it was burning — and there was no more light.

The cloud of dust and steam billowed upwards, thrusting like a fist towards the Chinook.

“Get us out of here,” Henry said. “Now.”

The pilot didn’t need telling twice. He opened up his throttle and the Chinook dipped, its big rotors biting into the turbulent air.

Henry looked back. The cloud, a black wall, hundreds of feet high, seemed to be catching them up.