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“The fissure is two miles long,” she reminded them. “At the rate it’s sealing, we’ll never make it through in time.”
40
January 24, 11:55A.M.WITA
Bali Sea, two miles off the coast of West Nusa Tenggara
Gray climbed from below into the patrol boat’s wheelhouse. Yeung manned the helm and guided the interceptor through seas still choked with ash. Upon Gray’s orders, they were trying to get upwind of Mount Tambora, to clear its heaviest pall.
Though the volcano remained quiet, it still steamed and smoked. Bright lava showed through cracks in its cooling crust. It was a reminder that danger still lurked close at hand.
Not that the damage wrought hadn’t been devastating enough.
Gray frowned as the boat swept past the ruins of a fishing camp on a tiny atoll. It was smothered by ash. Boats had been washed by tsunamis deep into the ramshackle town. A pair of goats stood on a rooftop and bleated at their passage, the noise sad and forsaken. Nothing else appeared to be living on the tiny island.
Gray felt defeated.
The level of human suffering and loss was already incalculable. Still, he knew they were only in the eye of this tectonic storm. If left unchecked, the eruptions would not only resume, but grow a hundredfold worse.
We’ve only bought ourselves a brief window of time.
He crossed through the wheelhouse to the stern. Out on the deck, Xue and Heng had rolled the bodies to the side and covered themwith tarps. While they had worked above, Gray had helped Seichan get Guan-yin settled below in a cabin. Seichan remained at her mother’s bedside. Kadir was resting in a neighboring cabin in case she needed any help.
Though Guan-yin’s fever had broken, the woman hovered at the edge of a weary delirium. Her body sweated heavily, as if trying to force the last vestiges of poison out of her skin. Seichan had bathed her mother’s brow and arms with a cool, wet cloth. It had seemed to help. A moment ago, Guan-yin had stirred, her eyes opening. She muttered under her breath and stared around in a daze, as if looking for someone.
Both Gray and Seichan had known who that was.
Even that effort took too much out of the woman. Her eyes had slipped closed, and she had sunk away again. Gray suspected a part of Guan-yin found it too painful to wake, preferring oblivion to facing the loss she had suffered.
Out on the deck, Gray stared past the bow of the boat. Though it was midday, the heavy smoke layer still masked the sun. But in the distance, the clouds looked more gray than black. He hoped they had enough time to reach there.
Xue noted where he was looking. “What is your plan, Commander Pierce? You’ve not been clear about it.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to get the boat moving.”
“Why?” Heng asked. “Do you hope to move to a new location and broadcast the bullroarer’s call again?”
Gray pictured them sailing throughout this region, trying to hammer those tectonic plates into submission in a massive game of Whac-A-Mole.
“No,” he answered. “We’d never be successful. According to Stamford’s account, the waters around Mount Tambora were one of the Aboriginalthinspots of the earth. Only at those specific locations could a bullroarer work. And while there are supposedly many, we don’t know where they are.”
“But we do know ofoneother,” Xue said.
Gray agreed. “The most important one. The thin spot that marks thehomeof the Rainbow Serpents. According to Crawfurd, it was in the waters around the island that he had sketched.”
Xue nodded, grasping his plan. “If we could repeat what we did at that site, it might stop what’s been started.”
“But where’s that island?” Heng asked. “How do we get there?”
Gray lifted up the e-tablet that he had retrieved from below. “Crawfurd’s description of the place was vague, sayingit lies well beyond all islands,in seas rarely seen. But considering all that has happened, I have a fair idea of where it might be found. Or at least a general idea.”
He woke the tablet and showed them Crawfurd’s sketches—the coastal views of the island and its general shape.
Gray explained, “Crawfurd left enough clues for me to start a search.”
“Where?” Heng asked.
Xue answered, already moving a step ahead. “The island must be somewhere along the Tonga Trench. Where the clustering of quakes first started. And where we first picked up the ELF transmission during the Chang’e-5 mission.”
