"How big's the first wave?"

"It's spreading out. Diminishing. But at the moment it's maybe ten meters." Almost as high as the tower.

"There's our baby." Kellie pointed. There was no sign of the chasm.

The tower rose out of the floodwaters, bleak and cold and desolate, but still standing. It seemed to Hutch almost biblical, last trace of a vanished civilization, a final defiant rocky digit raised against the unforgiving skies.

"Going down." She lowered the treads.

"We might be okay," said Kellie.

The lander's lights reflected off running water. Hutch went to reverse thrust, brought the vehicle almost to a standstill, and lowered it gently toward the ground.

To the north, she could make out a moving gray wall. "Here comes the wave," she said, activating her e-suit.

Hutch pushed the yoke forward and felt a mild jar as they touched down. Kellie opened the airlock and splashed out into the surge.

The current tried to drag her off her feet.

Hutch started out behind her, but she stopped in the airlock and watched the mountainous wave bearing down on them. Abruptly, to Kellie's dismay, she called her back. "Forget it," Hutch said. "There isn't time."

Marcel broke in. "Let it pass," he said. "Then try it."

"No!" Kellie fought to stay on her feet. The current was moving north in the direction of the oncoming wave.

Hutch sounded cold and calm in her receiver: "It won't do any good if we lose the lander."

"We won't be able to find them afterward," Kellie said. "Dead now or dead later: What's the difference?" She was only steps away from the entrance, and she kept going.

"Won't improve things if we can't find you either," Hutch said.

The wave was enormous, rising high and rising higher. A huge crest folded over and crashed down. Kellie stumbled into the tower. The capacitors lay on the worktable where they'd left them, covered by the tarp.

The water swirled around her ankles. The roar of the onrushing sea was deafening.

"Come on!" Hutch let her hear a cold flat tone. "Kellie, I have to pull out."

She actually touched one of the capacitors through the cloth. She couldn't leave without them. Couldn't possibly leave without them. Just pick the thing up and hustle back with it. But she needed Hutch. Couldn't get both of them alone.

"… get the lander clear."

Kellie and the wave. It had a nice ring.

"God."

She couldn't hope to carry it, though. Not in time-

She broke away finally and stumbled back through the muck. It was hard going, and she fell at the entrance, rolled, and came up running. Hutch stood in Tess's hatch looking back past her shoulder. Looking up. Kellie splashed across the few meters as Hutch ducked inside. She heard the engines turn over, felt the shadow of the wave. The lander began to lift. The hatch was still open, but she had to jump for the ladder. She caught the bottom rung, hung on, dangled while Tess went up, watched the wall of water engulf the tower. It crashed over it. Submerged it. They were rising too slowly and then the vertically positioned jets cut in and they soared. She clung desperately, suddenly as heavy as a load of iron. She screamed, and the wave thundered beneath her.

The jets died, and Hutch let the lander sink a few meters. Kellie scrambled for a better grip, dragged herself up a couple more rungs, and got a foot on the ladder.

The tower was gone. She could smell seawater.

She fell in through the hatch and looked for something to throw at Hutchins, seated at the controls, not even looking back.

"You were going to leave me," she said. "You were actually going to leave me down there."

"I'm responsible for two more people." Hutch's voice simmered with anger. "If you want to kill yourself, that's one thing. But I wasn't going to let you kill all of us."

"We could have done it, goddam you." She closed the hatch.

Hutch finally turned and looked at her. "You had your hands full getting back as it was. What makes you think you could have done it carrying one of the capacitors?"

"We were too slow getting out of the lander. If we'd gone in as soon as we got here. No hesitation. Just done it-"

"We'd both be dead."

Hutch circled around, and they flew over a sea of rampaging water. There was no sign of the tower. And a second wave was becoming visible.

They watched it in silence. It rolled in and swept past, higher than the first.

"We should have tried" said Kellie.

She saw the tower, rising out of the flood, water pouring from its windows. Incredibly, it was still intact, other than a couple of pieces missing from its roof.

"Next one's three minutes away," said Hutch.

The third wave was the giant. It kept building, and Hutch took them higher. A few trees had managed to keep their uppermost branches out of the water. But this one rolled over them and over the tower.

They waited, watching for the stone roof to reappear.

Marcel asked what had happened.

"Don't know yet," said Hutch.

MacAllister and Nightingale also called in. "We may have gotten here too late," Hutch told them.

Hutch thought there was still a chance.

She engaged the jets, moved into a wide arc around the place where the tower had been, and shut down the spike, conserving energy.

"It's over," said Kellie. Her voice shook.

"No. When the water subsides, we'll go down and look."

But the site was now located at the bottom of a turbulent lake. The water level rose and sank as they watched. More waves thundered in. Sometimes the newly formed sea exposed large swatches of ground. But Hutch was no longer sure where the tower had even been.

"Hutch." Marcel's voice. "It should start to recede in an hour or so."

"We've got an ocean at the moment," she said. "You say recede. Is the water going to go back out?"

"Well, not really. Some of it will. But a lot of it's going to stay right where it is. At least for the next few days."

"Good," said Kellie. "We don't have anything better to do. We'll just-"

"That's enough," said Hutch. She continued to circle.

MacAllister called again. "Listen, you did your best. Don't worry about it."

All these people depending on her.

Kellie gave Hutch a withering look, and Hutch was getting tired of that, too.

Over the next forty-five minutes, more waves, large and small, swept through the area. Morgan moved silently across the sky into the west, enormous and bright and lovely.

At last the water began to ebb, running back the other way. A wake appeared off their starboard side. It was the tower, broken and shattered.

Cautiously, Hutch set the lander down in the retreating current and began recharging the reactor. They sat in strained silence almost an hour, until the force of the runoff had subsided. Then they climbed out into the current. The water came to their waists.

The top of the tower and the upper chambers had been ripped off. The worktable was gone, as were the capacitors. They looked carefully at the ground floor. They even took lamps and swam down the staircase to the level below. But there was nothing.

They searched the surrounding area, marking off sections and walking and swimming through them as thoroughly as they could.

Jerry set, and the sun rose.