And then Mukenko rumbled, and the earth shook so hard that they were all knocked to the ground.
4: ERTS Houston
AT 1 A.M. HOUSTON TIME, R. B. TRAVIS FROWNED at the computer monitor in his office. He had just received the latest photosphere imagery from Kitt Peak Observatory, via GSFC telemetry. GSFC had kept him waiting all day fur the data, which was only one of several reasons why Travis was in a bad humor.
The photospheric imagery was negative - the sphere of the sun appeared black on the screen, with a glowing white chain of sunspots. There were at least fifteen major sunspots across the sphere, one of which originated the massive solar flare that was making his life hell.
For two days now, Travis had been sleeping at ERTS. The entire operation had gone to hell. ERTS had a team in northern Pakistan, not far from the troubled Afghan border, another in central Malaysia, in an area of Communist insurrection; and the Congo team, which was facing rebelling natives and some unknown group of gorilla-like creatures.
Communications with all teams around the world had been cut off by the solar flare for more than twenty-four hours. Travis had been running computer simulations on all of them with six-hour updates. The results did not please him. The Pakistan team was probably all right, but would run six days over schedule and cost them an additional two hundred thousand dollars; the Malaysia team was in serious jeopardy; and the Congo team was classified CANNY - ERTS computer slang fur "can not estimate." Travis had had two CANNY teams in the past - in the Amazon in 1976, and in Sri Lanka in 1978 - and he had lost people from both groups.
Things were going badly. Yet this latest GSFC was much better than the previous report. They had - it seemed - managed a brief transmission contact with the Congo several hours earlier, although there was no verification response from Ross. He wondered whether the team had received the warning or not. He stared at the black sphere with frustration.
Richards, one of the main data programmers, stuck his head in the door. "I have something relevant to the CFS."
"Fire away," Travis said. Any news relevant to the Congo Field Survey was of interest.
"The South African seismological Station at the University of Jo'burg reports tremors initiating at twelve oh four P.M. local time. Estimated epicenter coordinates are consistent with Mount Mukenko in the Virunga chain. The tremors are multiple, running Richter five to eight."
"Any confirmation?" Travis asked.
"Nairobi is the nearest station, and they're computing a Richter six to nine, or a Morelli Nine, with heavy downfall of ejecta from the cone. They are also predicting that the LAC, the local atmospheric conditions, are conducive to severe electrical discharges."
Travis glanced at his watch. "Twelve oh four local time is nearly an hour ago," he said. "Why wasn't I informed?"
Richards said, "It didn't come in from the African stations until now. I guess they figure it's no big deal, another volcano."
Travis sighed. That was the trouble - volcanic activity
was now recognized as a common phenomenon on the earth's surface. Since 1965, the first year that global records were kept, there had been twenty-two major eruptions each year, roughly one eruption every two weeks.
Outlying stations were in no hurry to report such "ordinary" occurrences - to delay was proof of fashionable boredom.
"But they have problems," Richards said. "With the satellites disrupted by the sunspots, everybody has to transmit surface cable. And I guess as far as they're concerned, the northeast Congo is uninhabited."
Travis said, "How bad is a Morelli Nine?"
Richards paused. "It's pretty bad, Mr. Travis."
5."Everything Was Moving"
IN THE CONGO, EARTH MOVEMENT WAS RICHTER scale 8, a Moreili scale IX. At this severity, the earth shakes so badly a man has difficulty standing. There are lateral shifts in the earth and rifts open up; trees and even steel-frame buildings topple.
For Elliot, Ross, and Munro, the five minutes following the onset of the eruption were a bizarre nightmare. Elliot recalled that "everything was moving. We were all literally knocked off our feet; we had to crawl on our hands and knees, like babies. Even after we got away from mine-shaft tunnels, the city swayed like a wobbling toy. It was quite a while - maybe half a minute - before the buildings began to collapse. Then everything came down at once: walls caving in, ceilings collapsing, big blocks of stone crashing down into the jungle. The trees were swaying too, and pretty soon they began falling over."
The noise of this collapse was incredible, and added to that was the sound from Mukenko. The volcano wasn't rumbling anymore; they heard staccato explosions of lava blasting from the cone. These explosions produced shock waves; even when the earth was solid under their feet, they were knocked over without warning by blasts of hot air. "It was," Elliot recalled, "just like being in the middle of a war."
Amy was panic-stricken. Grunting in terror, she leapt into Elliot's arms - and promptly urinated on his clothes - as they began to run back toward the camp.
A sharp tremor brought Ross to the ground. She picked herself up, and stumbled onward, acutely aware of the humidity and the dense ash and dust ejected by the volcano. Within minutes, the sky above them was dark as night, and the first flashes of lightning cracked through the boiling clouds. It had rained the night before; the jungle surrounding them was wet, the air supersaturated with moisture. In short, they had all the requisites for a lightning storm. Ross felt herself torn between the perverse desire to watch this unique theoretical phenomenon and the desire to run for her life.