On his small, hand-held TV there were the images of destruction, brought to him in a fraction of a second, bounced around the world by the satellites: the boiling ocean, the glowing, cracked sea floor, the new island-mountains thrusting into the air from the depths of the Pacific. It was the Moonseed, the scientists said. It hadn’t taken long to chew through the five-mile-thick crust under the oceans, to open up new vents to release the swarming fire of Earth’s interior. Some of the scientists seemed pleased with themselves. Right on schedule, they said.

These electronic images came to him on the first wave, at the speed of light.

Next would come the sound, the great shouts of the quakes and eruptions, carried through the perturbed and increasingly murky air of Earth at some six hundred miles an hour, directly to his ears. The second wave. He would need no technology for that, and that was pleasing.

…And at last, one more wave, of more uncertain velocity, that would come rearing out of the perturbed ocean. And that, he thought with relief, would finish it all.

There was a tsunami watch which sought to monitor and predict the great waves, like seismic weather stations, scattered across the Pacific, run by many countries. So the coming event was not unanticipated. On his TV the experts pronounced solemn warnings to prepare, exhortations to stay calm.

Japan had been struck by at least fifteen great waves in the last three centuries. In 1896, a tsunami was reported to have killed twenty-seven thousand people. More than a thousand died in 1933. And so on.

Tsunami.

It was a word which meant “tidal wave’, but the waves were nothing to do with the tides, the pull of the Moon.

Right now, in the open ocean, the wave caused by the ocean floor crack would not be so spectacular to look at. Perhaps three hundred miles long, but no more than a few feet high, with a hundred miles or more between crests, travelling at somewhere between three and six hundred miles per hour. Unimpressive — except in terms of the energy stored by such a vast formation, crossing the world ocean at such giant speeds.

As it entered the shallower waters along the edge of a continent, the wave would reduce in speed and gather in height, to perhaps two hundred feet, three. And then when it reached the land, friction with the shallow bottom would reduce the speed to less than a hundred miles an hour — but the wave height would be magnified tremendously.

No structure could withstand its force. As it uprooted trees and smashed buildings, it would become laden with debris, and its ability to scour the land bare would be magnified. Sizable ships might be carried miles inland.

Then would come a rapid retreat back to the ocean, and then, every ten to twenty minutes, a fresh surge, until the energy was dissipated.