Yael Dragwyla and Rich Ransdell First North American rights

email: polaris93@aol.com 5,500 words

http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

The Eris War

Volume II: The Dragon from the Isles

Book 1: Independence Day

Chapter 4: Fire and Rain

“The quake and even some of its aftershocks were felt as far away as Beijing in the People’s Republic
of China,” the commentator continued, “and citizens of St. Louis, Missouri have reported that objects fell
off shelves and some structures collapsed in their city at the time the shockwaves reached them. Enormous
tsunamis – tidal waves – are now streaking across the Pacific Basin at up to 400-600 miles per hour, and
are expected to impact on the coasts of Japan and Hawaii within a few hours, with incalculable damage to
property expected; these areas are now being efficiently evacuated, though, so loss of life in most of the
region should be minimal.”
Now the hellish panorama on the screen behind the commentator was replaced by a 3-D schematic
diagrams depicting Puget Sound and a nearby semi-dormant volcano, and the crust and mantle around and
below the volcano. As the commentator talked, the diagram continuously evolved in tandem to give a
graphic picture of what he was talking about. The volcano was not in eruption, but the diagram showed a
magma chamber below it in which magma was continuously boiling due to convection currents, and the
colors of the diagram indicated the extreme heat of the magma in the chamber. The volcano itself was
labeled “Mt. Rainier.”
“You see, the quake itself was apparently the result of a much greater catastrophe, which was triggered
by the detonation of a thermonuclear device in Puget Sound, close to Seattle, northwest of Mt. Rainier,
located right above the great magma chambers which provide magma to all the Cascade volcanoes,
including Rainier itself. At this time it is believed by military experts that the device had entered Puget
Sound in the hold of a Chinese supertanker which had supposedly docked there to offload cargo and take
on supplies, but that hasn’t as yet been confirmed.”
Now the diagram on the screen showed an object sitting in Puget Sound, represented by a circle
labeled “device,” and an arrow pointing straight down at the bottom of the sound, labeled “direction of
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force.” The circle suddenly erupted in an enormous starburst, giving off a great shower of rays, many of
which went straight down to the bottom of the sound and beyond, into Mt. Rainier’s enormous magma
chambers. “Because of that explosion, which injected a tremendous amount of energy into the magma
chambers below Mount Rainier, Rainier and Mt. Baker, another active and potentially very dangerous
volcano, exploded cataclysmically in simultaneous eruptions which made even bigger cracks in the floor of
Puget Sound than those made by the original thermonuclear burst. The ice-cold waters of Puget Sound,
rushing into those cracks, encountered the white-hot magma in the magma-chambers fueling those two
volcanoes, which extend far below the ground all the way from the Cascades to well beyond the eastern
shore of Puget Sound.” The diagram, which had expanded to show that the volcano was situated on a long
ridge of land or massif which also included a number of other volcanoes to the north and south of the first
one, now clearly showed all of Puget Sound. West of the massif, the huge body of water was respectively
flanked east and west by mainland and a peninsula. At the detonation of the thermonuclear device in the
Sound, the volcano erupted violently, apparently in reaction to sharp, extreme compression of the magma
in the western side of the massif by the horrendous shock-wave generated by the thermonuclear strike. A
gigantic crack was suddenly shown snaking out from somewhere near the western flank of Mount Rainier,
through the massif and out under the waters of Puget Sound. Now the diagram began to shrink until it
focused exclusively on that appalling crack, into which the waters of the Sound began to flow.
“When the waters of Puget Sound hit the magma below, they sublimated, that is, instantly flash-boiled,
turned into inconceivably hot vapor.“ On the screen, the animated diagram showed that at the moment the
waters of the Sound contacted the white-hot magma below, they suddenly turned into a great cloud which,
rising off the magma, began fountaining back up through the crack through which the water had come.
“The vapor, under enormous pressure due both to its temperature and the vast tonnage of water that entered
the magma-chambers all at once, exploded with a force that has been calculated to lie somewhere in the 10-
gigaton range or beyond, that is, to be equivalent to the force released by the explosion of several tens of
billion tons of thermonuclear bombs.” Now, in the diagram on the screen, the land overlying the mantle
peeled outward due to the force of the exploding steam, and all of Puget Sound and much of the land
around it disappeared in the blast. The land all around it began shaking and grinding as the mantle below
started to bounce, reacting to the blast. Again the diagram expanded, now showing the areas surrounding
the Cascades, finally including all the land from southwestern Canada and portions of Alaska to the north
to Northern California to the south, and from the Pacific Ocean on the west to western Montana on the east.
A series of concentric circles, their epicenter on Western Washington, representing the first quake, began to
expand outward so that all the surrounding areas were touched by them; new sets of concentric circles,
their epicenters scattered all across that vast territory, began to expand as well, representing the numerous
subsidiary quakes set off by the first one.
Clearing his throat with difficulty and running a long, slender through his short, kinky hair, the
commentator continued, “According to the scientists at Cal Tech – the California Institute of Technology –
the force of the explosion was so great that it may have ruptured a portion of the westernmost boundary of
the North American plate, the tectonic plate that extends beneath that portion of the Pacific Northwest as
well as most of the rest of the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico.” Now the screen showed a
wedge-shaped cross-sectional diagram of the Earth’s interior from core to crust that included most of the
Pacific Northwest. On it, the great tectonic plate, labeled “North American Plate” in the diagram, upon
which most of the North American continent is sited, rafting on it across the incandescent material of the
mantle below, showed a deep crack running from the crust near the Pacific Coast of what had been
Washington State down almost to the upper mantle. From that crack spewed a continuous fountain of lava,
and force-rings expanded from it to represent the earthquake set off by its formation. “It is known that
tremendous, incandescent fountains of rapidly flowing lava – what magma is called once it has emerged
from beneath the earth – along with enormous outbursts of poisonous gases, ash, and huge chunks of red-
hot rock called ‘lava bombs’ are continuing to erupt from the . . . wounded lands into which Western
Washington and adjacent portions of Canada have been so suddenly transformed. At this time, those
eruptions show no signs of abating; indeed, in some areas they are increasing in violence, and new ones
have been continuously manifesting over the last half hour, according to US Air Force and Geophysical
Survey reports.
“As a result, nearly all of Western Washington State, like much of the southwestern portions of British
Columbia, has become one vast volcanic crater, a highly active one which is continuously spewing out
uncounted tons of lava, ash, toxic vapors, and lava-bombs from innumerable vents.” Now the screen began
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to show more satellite photos and films of the blasted lands that had been Washington State, from a
somewhat different perspective than the original series. These, according to the accompanying subtitles,
showed the land around Yakima, Washington, where the cloud-cover was thinner than that over Western
Washington. Great smoking fumaroles had opened in the earth in the area where Yakima had been;
nothing remained of that city, which had been turned into a jumbled holocaust reminiscent of scenes from
Threads, the BBC production on nuclear war and its aftermath. “The earthquake generated by the
simultaneous eruptions of Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier and, perhaps, smaller vents between them, together
with numerous ‘daughter’ quakes, has left much of Oregon, Idaho, Eastern Washington, Southern Canada,
Montana, and even Northern California devastated wastelands.” Now the view on the screen changed
again, showing both satellite and aerial flyover shots of those states. From great old-growth trees in the
forest of Oregon brought low by the quakes to flattened, burning, or flooded cities in Oregon, Idaho, and
California, the screen showed unrelieved destruction. “In those areas, where countless people have died and
a tremendous number of homes and business have been destroyed, huge regions have suffered catastrophic
flooding due to the breaking-down of dams and dikes, and enormous forest-fires have already begun to
sweep through those areas which were not initially badly harmed by the quake. Other volcanoes in the
Cascade volcanic chain are now showing imminent signs of eruption, including Mt. Shasta in Northern
California, and Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens in Oregon.
“Tens of thousands of now-homeless refugees, enormous numbers of them badly injured, are now
trying to evacuate to safer areas, but because so many roads have been destroyed by the quakes and, closer
to Western Washington, covered by debris due to the torrential outpouring of material from the huge
tectonic event there, it may be impossible for a great many of them to reach relatively safe shelter any time
soon. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps air transports and Coast Guard surface craft are on their
way to the stricken areas to try to air-lift the survivors out, or bring them away by ship; at this time we
have no idea how successful they will be in this operation.
“In addition to other factors complicating search-and-rescue efforts and attempts to determine the exact
details of the current situation in the Pacific Northwest and surrounding areas, one of the disastrous side-
effects of the catastrophic explosion in the Puget Sound area has added an almost insupportable burden to
those attempting such operations. That is the EMP – Electro-Magnetic Pulse – generated by the explosion
itself, which was several orders of magnitude greater than even the largest single thermonuclear weapons
available today in the world’s nuclear stockpiles. The disturbances generated by the subsequent eruptions
of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker and the collapse of the Cascade volcanic massif generated their own EMPs,
as well. The initial, enormous electromagnetic pulse knocked out all electronic media for hundreds of
miles around Western Washington State, effectively frying the circuits of all electronic equipment in those
areas not protected by several layers of non-conducting insulating material. The eruptions that followed
almost immediately added to this effect, as well as filling the upper layers of the atmosphere with countless
tons of highly ionized debris. That debris is still interfering heavily with radio and television transmission
in areas as far from Washington State as Newfoundland, Canada, Mexico City, and even the Hawaiian
Islands, and will probably continue to do so for quite a while. Those of you who use cable television and
radio services should have no problem with reception of programs from areas widely removed from the
blast and eruption site, as long as their stations transmit via cable. But for at least the next several weeks
those who are trying to access the media via broadcast signals may find that at best reception will be
chancy and poor. The combination of these two effects – the EMP generated by the initial thermonuclear
strike in Puget Sound, which was almost instantly followed by the far greater eruption in that area which it
triggered; and interference with broadcast reception due to highly ionized material injected into the upper
layers of the Earth’s atmosphere by the eruptions of several Cascade volcanoes early this morning – has
seriously crippled this country’s communications industry, and is making it extremely hard, if not
impossible, to gather and communicate data about what has happened today in Washington State.
“Even telephone services, many of which depend heavily upon satellite relays for long-distance calls
of all kinds, especially those involving the Internet, have been seriously disrupted. Though the satellites
themselves orbit our world far above the atmosphere, and so do not come anywhere near the debris from
the volcanoes, transmissions between them and the surface that come through such debris are garbled and
static-filled – or completely blocked, not getting through at all. Thus even telephone services are suffering
from the effects of this morning’s disaster. This is especially true of areas relatively close to Western
Washington, where most telephone circuits have been partially or completely knocked out by the EMPs
generated by the disaster.
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“So for those trying to call or email relatives, friends, or colleagues in or near the Seattle area, please,
please, please desist from doing so until informed that it is all right to do so by authorities. Those
telephone circuits that are still functioning are so overloaded by attempts of people around the world to
contact loved ones in or near the Pacific Northwest that even in areas as far away as Mexico City, New
York City, London, and Tel Aviv, switchboards, routers, and relays are hopelessly jammed, and normal
communications of any kind are virtually impossible. Ham radio operators are having marginally better
luck, but the atmosphere above most of the Pacific Northwest is now so hopelessly fouled with radioactive,
highly ionized debris that radio communication to and from anywhere near that area is essentially
impossible. For more detailed reports on that situation, we will have to wait until observers from the
various armed services and other government agencies are able to report back and we receive word of what
they have learned.
“In the meantime, do not try to drive into or near the stricken areas if you live outside them! Do not
try to call into the area, or even to send emails to people there. All you will succeed in doing in the first
case is put yourself in danger, and risk arrest by armed services personnel now being airlifted to the areas
surrounding the devastated regions in order to control entrance to them. And as far as trying to
communicate directly with any survivors in the area, all you can do is make the already terminally
overloaded telephone networks even more so, with no hope of learning anything useful as a result.
“And . . .” Suddenly the sheen of tears shone in his eyes. Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a
deep breath, bowed his head for a moment as if in prayer, gathered himself together with great effort, and
went on: “As for the rest of the country, in addition to understandable panic and distress over what has
occurred here on our coast, an as-yet unknown number of cities have been the targets of attacks by enemies
whose identity is, as yet, uncertain, though informed sources believe it may be Mainland China and her
allies.
“Yet during the last five hours or so, China herself seems to have been the target of an unknown
number of nuclear and thermonuclear strikes, as well as biowarfare and chemical attacks, and attacks with
conventional weapons. It is not yet known which countries initiated these attacks.
“The same is true of the Soviet Union, the European Union, and a number of Middle Eastern countries.
Understandably all of this has added greatly to the confusion as well as to communication problems
everywhere. More on that later.
“Closer to home,” he said, taking a deep breath, “large areas of Oregon, California, Utah, Idaho,
Nevada, and even Arizona and New Mexico have sustained tremendous damage as a result of the quake
attending the eruptions of the various Cascade-range volcanoes. A tsunami alert has been issued for the
entire western coastline of North America and Mexico. Southern California may or may not be protected
from the expected tsunamis by the Channel Islands lying just off the Southern California coast, but the rest
of the coastline is definitely vulnerable to them, and strong efforts are now being made to evacuate those
areas.” Now the screen presented a diagram of a large-scale meteorological system whose progressive
evolutions illuminated the commentator’s next remarks.
“Understandably, the weather-patterns of this continent are going to be strongly affected by . . . by all
this,” he said, carefully wiping off the sweat beading his forehead with a large handkerchief, which he then
neatly folded and put back in his shirt-pocket, as if the manual exercise helped keep his mind on an even
keel. “Torrential rains are already pouring onto the ruined slopes of the Olympic Mountains, which
shielded the coastal areas of Washington State to some extent from the gargantuan blast, and are inundating
northern Oregon as well. This gives an extreme likelihood of tremendous flooding of those areas in the
very near future, with subsequent loss of life among the few survivors of the earthquakes that have ripped
through that region, and destruction of whatever property was not previously destroyed by those quakes.
The clouds, which are rapidly expanding and moving, are expected to cover all of Oregon state, Northern
California, and much of the rest of the Pacific Northwest within two to three hours.
“According to current scientific understanding, volcanic eruptions liberate enormous amounts of water
in the form of water-vapor, and between that water-vapor and the tremendous tonnage of ash, dust, and
gases that have been blown into the atmosphere by the eruption, rain-clouds extending hundreds of miles in
all directions will soon be drenching much of the western United States, and will continue to do so into the
indefinite future. In fact, many scientists predict that this could be the beginning of a new Ice Age, due to
the formation of massive amounts of ice crystals high in the atmosphere as a byproduct of the eruption –
‘volcano winter’ or, perhaps we should say, ‘nuclear winter,’ the term coined by scientist Carl Sagan and
his colleagues for the likely results of a thermonuclear war.
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“In the meantime, Alaska, which was also rocked by the quake and its aftershocks, may be the next
area to feel the hammerblow of catastrophic volcanic eruptions. Its own volcanoes, already active, are now
threatening to erupt at any time, a phenomenon apparently triggered by the earthquakes which struck that
state earlier this morning. Local, state, and federal officials are now preparing to evacuate as many citizens
as possible from Alaska, but, again, that effort may be foredoomed to failure as a result of the tremendous
disruptions of transportation and communications throughout the West, and the tsunamis and storms now
turning the Pacific Ocean off the Alaskan coast into a maelstrom.
“However, ladies and gentlemen, as bad as this all has been so far, it . . . pales into insignificance
compared to the catastrophe which has befallen our East Coast.
“We don’t as yet have all the details of what has happened there, but so far this is the information we
have:
“At 2 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time this morning (or 11 p.m. Pacific Time last night on our coast), a
nickel-iron asteroid somewhere between a quarter and a half kilometer in diameter fell into the ocean just
off the coast of Maine, slightly south of the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, just east of the edge of the
continental shelf. Apparently it ultimately impacted the join of the abyssal plain, the deep-sea area two
miles below sea-level that begins where the continental shelf ends, and the continental shelf itself,
burrowing deep into the material of the continental shelf. The impactor generated an initial wave at least
700 meters high, and triggered a tsunami with a fetch – which translates into height once the wave hits
shallow water and starts backing up – of as much as 28 kilometers which effectively destroyed coastal
Maine, Nova Scotia, and southern New Brunswick. The impactor itself didn’t do nearly as much damage
to the coast of Europe, because the resulting tsunamis were lensed mostly to the south, southwest, and
southeast by the topography of the seafloor in the immediate impact zone. But marine travel throughout
the Northern Atlantic has been completely disrupted, and there has been tremendous damage everywhere
where the tsunamis generated by the impact have touched land. Even Northern Atlantic coastal areas
shielded to some extent from the tsunamis by the fortuitous impact of the asteroid at the foot of America’s
eastern continental shelf have suffered great damage, while those not so shielded have been completely
devastated. It is not known for sure at this time whether the impact was an entirely natural event or the
result of deliberate human sabotage; the Department of Defense and the Federal Emergency Management
Authority haven’t yet released any information as to the nature of its cause.
“The President of the United States is . . . missing and presumed dead. He has been in the Seattle area
for the last three days, and it is not known for sure what has happened to him,” the announcer said, looking
haggard. “The whereabouts of the Vice-President, who is currently on tour in Africa, are not known,
either.
“Due to the current emergency, beginning early this morning, many members of the Supreme Court,
Congress, and the President’s cabinet have been evacuated to various safe shelters, but the fate of many
more are unknown, especially after the thermonuclear attack on Washington, DC around 3:30 a.m. this
morning. More details on the whereabouts of our top officials as soon as we have them.
“The impact on the East Coast of that asteroid and the catastrophic damage it has caused to countries
bordering both sides of the Atlantic is in addition to the more conventional military strikes against our cities
on the eastern seaboard and further inland, which have been many and grievous. As soon as we have more
information on the events that have taken place on the East Coast since late last night, we will present it to
you here. In the meantime, please do not try to telephone loved ones in those areas! FEMA and local
emergency services are having tremendous communication problems due to attempts by people everywhere
to make calls to that area. For similar reasons, all commercial travel by air and railway has been suspended
for the duration of the emergency, and it is strongly advised by both local, state, and federal government
agencies that travel in any form be avoided at all costs except in cases of all-out emergency. This includes
travel by automobile and local mass-transit, as well. So unless you absolutely have to go somewhere,
please stay where you are at the present time and do not attempt to travel elsewhere, or make telephone
calls other than locally and only then in case of emergency!
“In the meantime, according to volcanologists who have been studying Mt. Rainier and other Cascade
volcanoes over the past decade or so, before the horrifying events of this morning, both Mt. Rainier and Mt.
Baker, which is located near Bellingham, Washington, had already been in the process of heating up,
becoming active and potentially very dangerous. These two volcanoes were connected with each other and
the other volcanoes of the Cascade chain by one enormous massif which, extending from the Canadian
border to Mt. Shasta in Northern California, contains the great chambers of magma or incandescent rock
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fueling these volcanoes. Thus the dynamics of Rainier and Baker were interlinked with and affected by
those of all their sister volcanoes in the chain. According to geophysicist Dr. Evans Lichter of the
California Institute of Technology, at least potentially, every mountain in the long Cascade mountain range
is a volcano, though most have either been dormant for millennia or have never before erupted, as far as is
known. So it isn’t surprising that the massive eruption of Mt. Rainier this morning triggered the
simultaneous eruptions of Mt. Baker and, it appears now, several of the mountains in between Baker and
Rainier. –” Now the screen showed a general schematic of the whole Cascade mountain range, with its
several distinctive volcanoes, the great magma-chambers shown below ground-level, all interlinked in one
enormous underground system.
“As previously mentioned, the detonation of the thermonuclear bomb in Puget Sound this morning
caused a huge rupture in the layers of earth and rock underneath the Sound, the frigid waters of which
immediately rushed in to fall upon the white-hot magma below in Rainier’s magma chambers, which
extend all the way from the Cascades clear out to and beneath the Sound. Upon hitting the magma, the
superheated water at once flash-boiled, causing a far greater explosion. That explosion left virtually all of
Western Washington and the southwesternmost portions of Canada a vast, fiery ruin of jumbled, ash-
covered rock, boiling lava, and smoking vents emitting gases so poisonous that scientific observers dare not
approach within ten miles of even those they could manage to get to overland or observe from aircraft.
Tsunamis generated by that enormous explosion are now sweeping the Pacific, threatening communities
from the Bering Straits in the north to Japan and Siberia in the west and the various islands of Polynesia in
the south. As a result of the explosion, enormous quantities of extremely dangerous chemicals such as
hydrofluoric acid may have been released into Puget Sound, which would render it a lifeless death-trap for
anyone foolish or unlucky enough to enter it, should there be anyone left alive in that area to do so. Lake
Washington and many of the other beautiful lakes of Washington State almost certainly no longer exist in
any form, as is true of many of the waterways of northern Oregon. The Columbia River cannot be seen on
any of our satellite photos, though of course that area is now covered by clouds and it may be that the river
is only hidden, not gone. And the beautiful wild coastlands of Washington State, and the lovely beaches of
northern Oregon, are now half- or wholly destroyed by the disaster, nothing but desolate jumbles of rock
and sand, the debris of homes and businesses, smashed boats, corpses of all descriptions.
“Alaska’s indigenous volcanoes are also now threatening to erupt, probably as a result of the
tremendous quakes that have rocked the Pacific Northwest and western Canada as a result of the
Rainier/Baker disaster. Southern California and many other portions of the American Southwest have
likewise been hit by strong quakes, causing tremendous damage and much loss of life, though not nearly as
much as the devastation of Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, and western Montana due to the explosion
of Washington’s volcanoes. The whole world is reeling from the shock of this disaster together with the
one that struck the East Coast late last night. The destruction of Western Washington is expected to
permanently damage or destroy Pacific-Rim trade and industries of all kinds, while the legacy of the
disaster on our east coast will very likely be the devastation of both our economy and that of Europe. In
response, the stock market is expected to show a tremendous drop as of this coming Monday evening, the
18th of July, though it is still too soon to tell, especially because communication with Wall Street has not
been possible since late last night.”
Now the commentator, looking as if his tie were close to strangling him, loosened it and then, pulling it
from his neck with one impatient jerk of his hand, laid it down on the desk in front of him. There were now
huge dark sweat-rings under his arms, staining his initially pristine, well-starched, light-blue, short-sleeved
shirt. Behind and above him, comsat views of the Pacific Northwest played across the giant screen there, a
study in the Day After Armageddon. For a moment he paused, bowing his head with his steepled hands
raised almost to his chin, looking as if he were praying. Then, looking up at the camera again, he
continued:
“We are still trying to get more information on the catastrophe that has taken place off our New
England coast, and on the various strikes on our cities and those of many other nations in the last six to
eight hours or so. We will share with our audience all the information we have on these and other relevant
matters as soon as we have it. In the meantime, let us not give way to panic, which would make an already
explosively dangerous situation much worse than it now is. Please, please, please do not try to call into,
travel to, or send email to the Pacific Northwest, including western Canada! This station, like all others,
will keep you informed with whatever news we have from that area as soon as it is possible we get it.
There is nothing to be gained by trying to obtain it on your own. If authorities require your aid in
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evacuating any of the affected areas, or to help with survivors and cleaning up after the aftermath of the
disaster that has befallen us, please do all you can to cooperate with them! For now, our government is
doing all it can to deal with the present emergency, and we will keep you appraised of any developments as
they occur.”
“Cathy, did the lights just flicker?”
“Well, the television picture did something odd for a moment there,” she told me.
“It wasn’t my imagination, then. The UPS must’ve kicked in for a minute there, though it should have
been smoother – we shouldn’t have noticed anything.”
“You don’t have the TV hooked to it.”
“That’s true. Maybe what I saw was extra light from the TV due to a power-spike. The Grid’s
beginning to go down.”
“The national power-grid?”
“Yeah. You can bet, between that ferocious EMP from whatever happened in Seattle, the one from the
asteroid strike on the East Coast, and however many nukes that have hit us so far, the Grid should be
starting to fail big-time about now. Betcha most of the stations we can pick up are running on power from
generators or batteries within an hour or so – and they’ll all be getting their feeds from their people in the
field via that new ‘blip-squirter’ gadget, the one that packs whatever information it has to send into one big,
fat, coherent pulse and beams it straight up to a communication satellite, which relays it back down to
whatever place the source directs it at. That way the signal won’t have to punch through most of the
radioactive and other crud that must be floating around in the atmosphere by now.”
“Are there EMPs from asteroid strikes?”
“Yeah. The nickel-iron jobs create strong electromagnetic fields anyway, not to mention how that
spikes on impact. And both kinds, the nickel-iron meteorites as well as the carbonaceous chondrite types,
come down so fast and hit so hard that they create an enormous number of highly ionized particles in the
air and from the ground or water they hit. That’s what really does it – those huge amounts of plasma.
Same thing is true of incoming comets, which generally explode high in the atmosphere. (They also create
large amounts of NOX – nitrogen oxides – just like the Bomb. But that’s neither here nor there.)”
“Oh. But – there it goes again!” This time the flicker in the light from the TV was obvious.
“Damn. I’d better go get another one of those UPS units we picked up and hook the TV set up to it,” I
said, grunting as I got to my feet. Though I wasn’t by any means an old man, or even in late middle age –
I’d turned 44 last December – I’d never see the near side of 40 again, and my joints were beginning to
remind me of that every opportunity they got. It didn’t help, either, that, thanks to my wife’s superb
cooking, I had somewhat more weight around the middle than our G.P. was really happy about.
Soon I was back with the unit. It took very little time to plug it into the wall and then plug the set into
it, and within a minute we were looking at our commentator again, who, after briefly glancing over at
someone or something off-screen, turned back to the camera, saying: “I am now going to turn you over to
one of our field representatives, Elaine Robinson, now in Corvallis, Oregon, part of a large team of
correspondents from many different television and radio stations, newspapers, and other media organs.
Elaine is now conducting interviews with survivors of the terrifying earthquake, aftershocks, forest-fires,
and other disasters that have hit that state in the last hour or so as a result of this morning’s Washington
State disaster. Elaine? —” he asked, looking off again to the side, where, apparently, a monitor was
located.