All life was erased from the continents. Not a single tree stood, not a blade of grass grew, not even a scorched twig smoldered. The only bacteria on the planet seemed to be those vented from Alvin’s crew compartment whenever Hollis went topside to release the doves. She imagined that in a half billion years or so, if the bacteria survived, organisms descended from her own bad breath might build bacterial reefs and set evolution in motion again.

But to what end? she asked herself. Another total destruction?

In the safety of Earth’s womb, more than a half kilometer down in the everblack, the sea lulled Hollis into bad dreams, bad expectations, and even worse remembrances. She had always sought peace and solitude in the depths, but these days there was too much of it down here, causing her to dream too much and too long about the people she had known and loved. And in the aftermath of the dreams came a numbing guilt; for it seemed the height of hubris for her to be grieving for a father or a friend when all of her mother’s people—four hundred million Chinese living in the richest country and last surviving democracy on Earth—had also vanished.Four thousand years of civilization—the Forbidden City, Emperor Ch’in’s terra cotta army, the Tsien Space Center—gone in an instant. Her heart beat faster for the shore that lay only a couple of hundred kilometers ahead, beat faster for landfall and for the dim hope that by actually planting her hands and feet in the ashes of her world she might find in some mote of dust the answer to how under a just God this senseless evil had been allowed to prevail—why under a just God it was brought into the universe in the first place, and how under a just God her suffering might be ended.

She knew that she could end it herself; half a kilometer beneath the Atlantic, no one need die slowly. But she did not have to hurry it. The end would come soon enough of its own accord; and while she still had a breath of air in her, she would rail against dying, until she had that answer.

Something leapt up from the bridge, up to where the cold stars burned, and then the stars were gone—extinguished in a concussion of light and shadow. Hundreds of upturned faces flashed out pallid white, and when his eyes adjusted to the blaze, Jonathan, who had half forgotten where he really was, realized with horror that he had lived through this night before.

The black Atlantic, as calm as a pool of quarry water, sparkled for miles around. Lifeboats could be seen on it. The huge smokestacks and tapering masts were illuminated in a shower of white stars that sank slowly down the sky. In that cave of manmade light, minds, too, were illuminated. Everyone understood the message of the rocket without being told: the ship was calling for help from any steamer, any fishing boat—anyone who was near enough to see.