Rock. Lumps of it clustered together, the size and shape of pillows, just four or five feet under the surface. And a little further out he thought he could see more of these pillow rocks forming. It was some kind of lava. A sack-like skin would form over a lump of red-glowing, sticky rock. The skin would solidify, then burst, and the lava would squeeze out like toothpaste, and start to form another pillow.

Volcanic stuff, he supposed. The kind of thing that had knackered Edinburgh. It must be what had wrecked the rig, this crap bubbling up from the ocean bed.

But now, maybe, he could use it.

Cautiously, he rested his feet on a white pillow boulder. The rock was hot, but his heavy boots protected him. He was able to loosen his grip on the foam fragment, and his arms ached with release.

He reached out to the others. Here came Jackie Brown. One of the younger men had given Jackie his life jacket, but even so, Jackie was exhausted, ashen-faced, barely awake.

William stood on the new rock, clinging to Jackie, holding him up.

The steam cloud cleared.

On the rig, he could see men on the heli-deck. They were waving their arms amid the smoke and flame, pleading to be taken off, but there was nobody to respond. Even if choppers had been near, they couldn’t have approached through the heat and smoke.

He saw men and women climbing down the legs into the water. Badly burned, terribly burned — some had their faces burned off — but still moving. The rig was tipped through thirty degrees, and looked as if it would fall over any minute.

There were more explosions in the water behind him, as this weird volcanic stuff rebuilt the sea bed. But he was, incredibly, standing on stable ground here.

He might live through this. Stand here, literally stand in the sea, until the choppers came, get himself saved by the volcano stuff that had destroyed the rig, costing probably a hundred lives.

Incredible.

William was alive, where so many had died, and he knew he would take a long, long time to come to terms with that.

In the far distance, he saw the glint of helicopter blades, bright against the huge pillar of ash and steam that hung over Glasgow, and he thought of Jenny and the kids.

The walls of fire broke through the line of ruined buildings to the north.

People started to panic, to push to the south. Jenny struggled to her feet. But the heat from the south was also blistering.

And now the fire gushed like a fluid, from the north, and swept across the ground.