Oscar was first to react—looping a powerful tentacle around each of us, clutching the nuke in another as it dragged us behind Oceanus. The sphere rattled as it split the wave, shielding us for the moment.

The tide rushed inland another two hundred yards before beginning its retreat. Oscar timed the back flow, maneuvering us around to the front side of the sphere to avoid the powerful suction.

When the roar of water had finally passed, we made our way back east toward the cliff face, careful to avoid the gurgling crab holes, the surface of the slowly draining pools shimmering beneath the clearing afternoon skies.

Oscar cradled the explosive in one of his sucker pads, still oblivious to its destructive power. There was no time to inform him—the next wave was minutes away—so my thoughts turned inward, using ABE to analyze my conversation with the holographic colonists.

Query: Were the transmitted projections of real people or holograms made to appear human?

ANSWER TO QUERY: UNKNOWN.

A distant thunderclap abruptly ended my internal conversation. The three of us stopped jogging, turning in unison to face an advancing ocean still too far away to see. From the sound, I guessed the wave bearing down on us in the distance had been three to four hundred feet when it broke; from my gut I estimated the source of the rumbling beneath our feet would be upon us within a few short minutes, its advance gobbling up beach at eighty miles an hour.

We sprinted to the periphery of boulders that formed a rise along the base of the cliffs. Escaping into the cave system was not an option—to get to the Holy City we needed the Hunter-Transport, which meant we needed to remain accessible.

It was like a bad déjà vu—we needed to climb.

Oscar made short work of the boulder field, carrying the two of us and the nuclear device three hundred feet to the highest perch—seconds before an eighty foot wall of water smashed like a freight train into the rocks below, igniting a blast of foam that splattered us like a cold, heavy rainfall. Shivering, Dharma and I held on to one another until the late-afternoon sun warmed us.

I gazed up at the journey still to come—an expanse of rock that had taken all my willpower to conquer. Oscar had descended the face with me weeks earlier, but that was down and this was up, and there was two of us to carry, plus the nuke.

Oscar remained on his boulder, no doubt exhausted from having just scaled the boulder field.

“Dharma, have you ever done any climbing?”

She looked up, her almond eyes widening. “You will teach me, yes?”

“One day. Not today.” I reached out to Oscar. Dharma can’t handle the climb. Can you get her and the device up to the summit?

ABE translated the reply. OSCAR SAYS YES. HE IS CONCERNED ABOUT ROBERT EISENBRAUN.