Total Mass 17 million tons

Derived Impact Energy 29.7 Exajoules

Explosive Equivalent 7.4 gigatons

8° northern latitude, 12° east longitude.

"It came down in the sea!" Stinar's sigh of relief held a triumphant note.

Ramoth saw this, too,Golanth told his rider in a muted tone. That's when F'lessan recalled that Erragon had said that the Benden Weyrleaders and Wansor had been watching this on the conference room screen.

They weren't all that lucky, after all, that the comet had missed the volcanic islands. A huge mass like that hitting open sea would cause a great deal of trouble. There'd be a shock wave, wouldn't there? In how many more minutes? How much damage would that cause? Was Landing far enough away? Monaco Bay was at sea level. It'd be flooded to the hills and they were a long way up the sloping beachfront.

He tried to calm these thoughts, to resurrect the necessary information from lessons long past. He started to recall sentences, paragraphs, and irrelevant details.

A cold fear in his guts increasing with every second, F'lessan peered at the screen as the cloud boiled, red-brown, to occlude what was actually happening. They ought to knowwhat was happening at sea level, the bronze rider thought; there was something-. Everyone in the office had now recovered their wits and their tongues. If everyone around him would only stop babbling excitedly about this spectacular event, he could think. Where was Tai? She might know. She should be here. So should T'gellan. The coast of the southern continent was not going to escape the effects of something so big dropping at that speed!

Suddenly the view on the screen altered, not only dropping the infrared screen but also presenting a new perspective, well back from the impact site. A discernible wave, a darkness of water, was moving outward, just faster than the flat-topped clouds boiling up and out. More data was being presented in margins. F'lessan blinked, unable to decipher the critical messages given.

F'lessan kept his eyes on the screen. The Yokoadjusted its viewpoint by pulling back at speed, back beyond the hump of one of the big rainforest islands just north of the impact point. It was burning! Burning? Oh, yes, memory informed F'lessan, the thermal flare of the comet would cause flash fires with the heat of its passing.

"We're very, very lucky," someone muttered. "It didn't hit any landmass."

"No, we're not lucky," F'lessan said savagely, watching the dark watery circle expand. "That island's on fire!" Then he pointed to the map in the right-hand corner. "The one due south will be burning, too. And look at that gap between them! There'll be sea pouring through that gap, circling out, spreading, and coming straight down to the southern coastline in a wall of water…" He paused, uncertainly, trying to recall the specific term.

"Tsunami!"

Tai's soft shocked voice behind him in the silence of the Interface office gave F'lessan the word he had been trying to remember. She stood with T'gellan and Mirrim against the wall. He hadn't even seen them arrive. She stared with awed fear and fascination at what the monitor depicted.

The distant cloud expanded sideways and skyward, and the surface of sea was reacting in its depths and sending ominous black undulations out in all directions. And something swirled up and over the rainforest island. Then the view retreated to show a new aspect; the island had been subsumed! And a thick line of debris: the lush huge trees, some thirty meters tall, were now just sea wrack, bobbing until finally they would be tossed upon beaches as jetsam. The dark circle continued to spread outward, westward. East, too, F'lessan now realized, though the cloud obscured that fact. He checked with the radar screen and yes, the rings were heading east and south, right at unprotected lowlands, possibly as far as the Hook Islands, and certainly speeding right toward the lovely little bays that dotted the Monaco coast, and Monaco Bay itself, the Harbor, the busy boatyard with sheds, pier, and cotholds. And Cove Hold? Would the Kahrain Cape protect it?

"That's what a tsunami does to what's in its way," F'lessan said, pointing to the wreckage, the shocking disappearance of two substantial islands. A shaft of cold, deep fear engulfed his bones. He urgently signaled Tai to join him.

"Tsunami?" Mirrim echoed in a surprise tinged with denial, fear, and resentment. She lifted her hand to stop Tai but F'lessan scowled at her as he waved the green rider to his side.

"I thought tsunami occurred with sea or earthquakes," T'gellan said, stunned.

"Tsunami can also occur when something very hot and heavy falls out of the sky," Erragon said in the tone of someone who wishes he did not have to announce such news. "And a comet just did!" He pointed to the grim Impactor Summary figures.

F'lessan shook his head, unable to deal with such incredible quantities as a mass of 17 million tons and a derived impact energy of 29.7 exajoules. Now thatwas a typically esoteric Aivas word. He was almost relieved to see Erragon and Stinar were also struggling to put such terms into Pernese contexts.

"What does all that mean?" Mirrim asked, her tanned skin pale. In all the Turns he had known her, F'lessan had never seen this confident woman so scared.

Erragon swiveled on his heel, giving her such a piercing look that she recoiled slightly against T'gellan. He gave his head a final shake, took a deep breath, and regarded the Monaco Weyrleader.

"I don't know how big the tsunami will be. That depends on the shoreline and what might deflect or diffract it, but Monaco-" He pointed to the map still up in the right-hand corner of the big screen. "-will be inundated, flooded." He gestured with his fingers, west, north, and east. "The force of the impact will send the tsunami in every direction." He shook his head again as much in denial as emphasis. Then he took F'lessan by the sleeve with one hand as he reached out for T'gellan with the other, giving the Weyrleader's shoulder a resolute shake, his expression filled with compassion. "You must evacuate the coastal holds to the hills, to high ground. The harbor, too!" He put a hand to his forehead, obviously marshalling his thoughts. "Stinar, are there maps of the coastlines we can access?"

"There are," said a gruff new voice, rising above the stutter of printers and the low anxious murmuring of frightened people in the office, "and I have them." Master Idarolan stood in the doorway.

Mirrim wasn't the only one to stare blankly at him. F'lessan felt a sense of relief. They'd need the retired Master-fishman more right now than at any time in his resourceful life. Fleetingly he realized that the captain had probably been taking his usual morning weather scan: the deck of his hold in Nerat was above the sea, facing east, and he might well have seen the comet. If it had been visible at Benden Weyr, it had probably been visible to anyone looking in the right direction. Master Idarolan could have seen it from Nerat's Ankle.

"But how…" F'lessan stammered.

"The Weyrleaders required my presence," and Idarolan winked at F'lessan before turning to T'gellan. "You've a lot to do, Weyrleader, and we won't stand in your way. You, bronze riders-." He paused significantly. "You will need to make good time"and he stressed that word, "to get all accomplished or so the Benden Weyrleaders inform me and you!" He made a sweeping gesture for the dragonriders to make their exits. As they started to move, he added, "Warn Portmaster Zewe to ring the Dolphin Bell and get any ships in harbor out to sea. It won't be as dangerous offshore."

They were out the floor by then, hearing his gruff voice saying, "And 1 need your best mathematician and the use of a computer that isn't talking to the Yokohama!"