Excerpts

Prologue

     The container ship Moro Prince, bound from Manila to Los

Angeles, had enjoyed three days of smooth sailing. The last piece

of rough weather had been a heavy tropical storm between Guam

and Wake Island, kicking up twenty- to thirty-foot seas. Now the

ocean was calm, with a three-foot swell and a gentle trailing

breeze. The temperature was comfortable, the sky cloudless, the

humidity low.

     Able Seaman Fidelio Magsaysay had been standing bow watch

for the past hour. With the weather clear and the sea empty, he

found it hard to concentrate. He scanned his quadrant out to the

horizon as slowly and carefully as he could manage, then fixed on

something close by to rest his eyes before starting the process

again.

     After one of his sweeps, Fidelio thought he saw something

out there. Dead ahead. Just coming up over the horizon. He raised

his binoculars, studied a moment, then lowered them to his chest.

He pressed the talk button on his handset and waited till a voice

replied, “Bridge.”

     “Funny-looking cloud bank dead ahead. Low lying.”

Fidelio’s report came through on the speaker. The captain

and the chief mate raised their binoculars almost in unison. “What

do you make of it?” asked the captain.

     “I don’t know,” the mate said. “Nothing like that’s been reported

in this area. Strange cloud. Little bit dirty looking. Probably a local

weather system.”

     “Yeah, probably, but then, you know…” The captain paused.

“I saw something like this once before. Java Sea, October of 2012.

A week later a whole fucking island disappeared.”

     “What was it, like a volcano? You think this…?”

     “Looks like we can skirt it, whatever the hell it is.” He turned

to the helmsman. “Change course to zero five zero. We’ll run

north of it, then correct our heading as we go around the damn

thing.”

     The captain wondered whether this was something that should

be reported. To play it safe, he said, “Mr. Mate, fix our position.”

The mate pressed a key on the GPS panel. He announced the

longitude and latitude and pointed to the spot on the chart. “That

puts us here. One thousand three hundred eleven nautical miles

west southwest of San Pedro.”

     “Okay,” said the captain. “Make a log entry that we’ve come

across a strange cloud formation. Then make a radio report to

NOAA in San Francisco.”

     Able Seaman Magsaysay first felt the course change in his

feet, and realized the bow was swinging slowly to port. Two hours

later the Moro Prince had the cloud on its starboard beam. The

color of the water had changed from blue to milky green. The air

was warmer. He took off his denim work shirt, then his T-shirt.

He was naked to the waist but couldn’t stop sweating. The

humidity almost smothered him. Once in a while the breeze

shifted and an odd smell came wafting in from the direction of

the cloud. A smell that was not of the sea. A smell of molten heat

that came from some other part of the earth.