Footfall

“The shock wave through the ocean distorts the cloud cover,” Koothfektil-rusp said. “Like bulges moving beneath a fallen tent. Our experts will be able to pick out the contours of the continents and ocean floor by the way they retard the wave.”

It was mysterious and horrible. It only suggested the millions of prey who would drown beneath the clouds and the seawater.

“Thus we achieve equality with the Predecessors,” said Fistarteh-thuktun.

The Herdmaster was jolted. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t know. What horror lies beneath that fortunate shroud of water droplets? How many of the prey will we drown? How much terrain do we bar to the use of any living thing? What was our own world like when the Predecessors were dying and our fithp were brainless beasts?”

The layer of cloud was now flowing backward, into the fireball. Another layer formed above, high in the stratosphere, begi

One may hope that we have not invented a new art form. Awe and horror: the Herdmaster trampled them deep into the bottom of his mind. “We came to take Winterhome. Do the thuktunthp hold knowledge to help us understand this?”

“Perhaps. We accept, do we not, that the Predecessors altered the natural state of a world? Their world, our world. Now Winterhome is our world. Look how we distort its natural state. What did their meddling cost the Predecessors? Have we done better?”

Have we done better? We must speak again, you and I. But this path was chosen long ago, and we must follow it. “Attackmaster. You may assume command of the digit ships. Begin your landings.”

Commander Anton Villars stared through the periscope and tried to look calm. It wasn’t easy. An hour before the message had come to USS Ethan Allen. The long-wave transmitters were reliable but slow. The message came in dots and dashes, code tapped out and taken down to be put through the code machines. It couldn’t be orders to attack the Soviet Union. There was no Soviet Union. Villars had been prepared to launch his Poseidon missiles against an unseen enemy in space. Instead: 

LARGE OBJECT RPT LARGE OBJECT WILL IMPACT 22.5 S LATITUDE 64.2 E LONGITUDE 1455 HOURS ZULU OBSERVE IF SAFE STOP IMPACT ENERGIES ESTIMATED AT 4000 MEGATONS RPT 4000 MEGATONS STOP ANY INFORMATION VALUABLE STOP GODSPEED STOP CARRELL

Safe? From four thousand megatons? There wasn’t any safety. Villars’ urge was to submerge and flee at flank speed.

Off to starboard, the island of Rodriguez blazed with the colors of life. Jungle had long since given way to croplands. In the center bare rock reared sharply, a peak a third of a mile high. Waves broke over a surrounding coral reef. That reef would provide more cover when the tsunami came, but it was a danger too.

Fishing boats were straggling in through the reef. Probably doomed. There was nothing Villars could do for them.

It was just dusk. Clouds covered the sky. It would be difficult to see anything coming. Four thousand megatons. Bigger than any bomb we ever dreamed of, much less built.

The crew waited tensely. John Antony, the Exec, stood close by.

“About time,” Antony said.

“If their estimate was on.”

“If their time was off, so were their coordinates.”

I know that. I had the same instructor at A

Somebody laughed and choked it off. The news had filtered through the ship, as news like that always did.

The cameras were working. Villars wondered how many would survive. He peered through the darkest filter available. Four thousand megatons…

Suddenly the clouds were blazing like the sun. “First flash at 1854 hours 20 seconds,” he called. “Log that.” Where? Where would it fall?

All in an instant, a hole formed in the clouds to the northeast, the glare became God’s own flashbulb, and the cameras were gone. “Get those other cameras up,” Villars bellowed at men who were already doing that. His right eye saw nothing but afterimage. He put his left to the periscope.

He saw light. He squinted and saw light glaring out of a hole in the ocean. A widening hole in the ocean, with smoothly curved edges; wisps of mist streaming outward, and a conical floodlight beam pointing straight up. The beam grew wider: the pit was expanding. Clouds formed and vanished around a smoothly curved wall of water sweeping smoothly toward the sub.

The rim of a sun peeped over the edge.

“I make it about forty miles east northeast of present position. Okay, that’s it.” Villars straightened. “Bring in the cameras. Down periscope. Take us to ninety feet.” How deep? The further down, the less likely we’ll get munched by su,face phenomena, but if those tsunamis are really big they might pile enough water on top of Ethan Allen to crush us. “Flank speed. Your course is 135 degrees.” That leaves us in deep water and puts Rodriguez between us and that thing, for whatever good it’ll do.

So we’ve seen it. A sight nobody ever saw — well, nobody who wrote it down, anyway. Now all I have to do is save the ship.

Ethan Allen was about to fight the biggest tsunami in human history — and just now he was broad on to it. He glanced at his watch. Tsunamis traveled at speeds from two hundred to four hundred miles an hour. Call this one four. Six minutes…

“Left standard rudder. Bring her to 85 degrees.”

“Bring her to 85, aye, aye,” the quartermaster answered.

“Warn ’em,” Villars said.

“Now hear this. Now hear this. Damage control stations. Stand by for depth charges.”

Might as well be depth charges…

The ship turned.

It surged backward. Villars felt the blood rushing into his face. Somewhere aft, a shrill scream was instantly cut off, and the Captain heard a thud.

Minutes later: “There’s a current. Captain, we’re being pulled northeast.”

“Steady as she goes.” Goddam. We lived through it!

The news came on at nine A.M. when you could get it. Marty always listened. Fox didn’t always bother.

No matter how early he got up, Marty always found Fox was awake with a pot of coffee. It was no use persuading Fox to go easy on the coffee.

“When we run out, we do without. Until then, we have coffee,” was his only answer to Marty’s pleas to conserve.

“You know your trouble, Marty?”

Marty looked up from the radio he was trying to tune. “Eh?”

“You’re still co

“Yeah, sure.” Marty tuned the set carefully. “You think you’ve quit, huh?” He’d thrown a wire for an ante

Four hours after dawn Shoshone would normally have been a furnace. This morning some strange clouds, wispy and very high, had begun to form quite early. They weren’t thick enough to block off the sun, but they must have had some effect. It was still hot enough to bring sweat.

Fox said, “I’m just taking a break. I’ll save the world when it wants saving again.”

“Okay, so nobody’s worried about the snail darter when the sky is full of bug-eyed monsters. But I’ve listened to you, John and you’d still like to make Washington—”

“Not Washington anymore.”

“Yeah. Atom bombs in Kansas don’t ruffle your feathers?… I think I got it tuned.”

“Ruffled feathers be damned.” Fox had his self-inflating mattress stretched out on a flat rock. He didn’t seem to notice the heat. Sprawled out with his coffee mug sitting on a flat stone, he looked indecently comfortable. “The question is, who’s going to listen?”