Great pictures, of course. Gas, billowing out of the exposed magma body for twelve hours, jetted ash high into the sky and sent ash flows down the shattered north flank. Rivers of mud flowed down the miniature valleys that drained the mountain. A little town called Orting was overwhelmed with ash, but not before heroic feats of evacuation led by the guys from VDAP, lots of human interest stuff.

Volcanic ash even rained down on the Seattle-Tacoma area, in some places inches thick, covering cars and pedestrians and sidewalks, tyre marks like snow.

Well, it was a hell of a thing, and even given the coverage it had already, would make a great virtual feature.

And of course the most interesting aspect was how this was all connected to the Edinburgh explosion.

She tapped into the buzz about the volcano plague that was spreading around the world. But she couldn’t get any responsible geologist to comment on that.

Most of them said they weren’t too surprised by Rainier’s eruption. For hundreds of years Rainier had been subject to erosion from the weather outside, and from simmering magma inside. The magma had cooked the innards of the mountain to unstable clay. Rainier had, they told her, gone rotten, and the big bang had just been waiting to happen; it hadn’t taken much of a seismic jolt to kickstart the eruption.

But why now?

Of course the volcano plague was the world’s biggest story: a string of disasters, big and small, widespread and localized, following in the wake of Edinburgh. In addition to those directly affected — including the injured and the dead, already too many to count — everyone was feeling the knock-on effects.

Air flights and shipping had been disrupted. The ash in the air worsened what Venus had already done, and disrupted crops worldwide. In the US, prices in the stores were sky-high on some items. Elsewhere, people were already starving. Or rioting. Or going to war.

Right now things — the world — seemed to be holding together. National governments were handling their local emergencies — but the services were stretched. International co-operation was collapsing. Peacekeeping troops were being flown home. Trade was crumbling, and some nations were threatening protectionism.

There were already politicians calling for a “Fortress USA” mentality.

It was bad, and getting worse, steadily.

But what interested Joely was Rainier. Was its eruption part of the plague? If it was, could they expect more of the same?

Just coincidence, the geologists said. Probably.

Some of them admitted to her they didn’t know enough about the plague to be sure.

Of course there was always the nutty fringe, who held that the whole planet was doomed, like Venus.