“The lateral pressure from the Japan Sea coast is getting awfully strong,” muttered Nakata, peering at the three-dimensional light image of the Japan Archipelago suspended within the block screen and surrounded by a vast variety of colored dots and lines. “It’s more than we bargained for.”
“And on the sea floor the elevation of the Yamato Rise, together with the intensity of its earth heat waves, has increased three times in the past week,” said a young man from the Weather Service in a low voice. “There’ll be eruptions, perhaps.”
“There’s quite a lot of energy stored up in the Noto Peninsula,” said Mashita, a university professor from the Earthquake Research Bureau, as he scanned the block screen with a polarized-light scope. “The portion to the north of the Hakui-Manao line is moving eastward. There might soon be an earthquake.”
“More so than that, how about this energy that’s gathered along the Itoigawa-Shizuoka structural line?” said a man from the National Geological Institute, his voice somewhat hoarse as he pointed to the block screen. “According to our calculations, even though the limit of earth-crust flexibility has already been passed, the build-up of energy is continuing, going well beyond the theoretical limit.”
“What do you think, Mr. Nakata?” asked Mashita. “It seems to me that, whatever else, we have to conclude that some phenomenon previously unknown to us is at work beneath the Japan Archipelago. In effect it’s as though a portion of the downward current of the mantle is passing beneath the Archipelago and is beginning to jut out on the Japan Sea side.”
“Yes, so it seems. Tonight we’ll run a thoroughgoing simulation and see what we can come up with.”
Five men, including Yukinaga, were constantly at work in the Display Room. The Defense Agency computer, which handled the complex calculations, was not available to them during the day, and so yet another sleepless night was in prospect.
The evening was spent in preparation. In the room were seven cathode-ray-tube devices connected to the computer. Yukinaga, besides working one of the CRTs, had the task of running the videotape recorder cameras which photographed the block screen from different views. Finally, some time after two in the morning, Nakata stood in front of the huge plastic block and gave the signal to begin.
No more than two minutes had passed, however, before he gave a startled cry: “Stop! Come here and take a look at this.”
Yukinaga, after manipulating the buttons on the control board to stop the action, came running up to the screen, joined by the others. They all peered into the plastic block. Yukinaga caught his breath. The three-dimensional pattern of the Japan Archipelago, drawn in pale glowing phosphorescent lines, had broken in two at its center and tipped to one side. The sheet of light that indicated energy distribution, varying from orange to red, surrounded the tipped mass of the Archipelago, pulsating in sinister fashion, now weakly, now strongly.
“Has Japan already sunk?” asked Yukinaga, his voice shaking.
“Completely sunk,” muttered Nakata grimly. “Furthermore, before it sinks, it will break in two.”
“Isn’t that a bit fast?” said Mashita, looking at his watch, his face white. “Couldn’t there have been some error in the time scale?”
“No chance of that,” said the young man from the Weather Service, glancing back at his CRT. “The scale was the usual: 3.6 × 104 . . . 36,000 seconds. One second being equivalent to about one hundred hours.”
“Give me a reading on the time up to this point.”
“120.32 seconds,” said the young man. “Therefore, 11,232 hours.”
“11,200 hours,” Yukinaga muttered. “Why, that’s . . .”
“A year and three months, I believe,” said Nakata, rapping the display block with his fingers. “Let’s take a closer look at it, from the very beginning. This time let’s drop the time scale to a quarter of what it was. 0.9 × 104—one second equals twenty-five hours.”
Everyone hurried back to his post. The phosphorescent image in the block faded from sight, and they were back at the beginning.
The needle on the illuminated clock began to revolve, the ping of each second sending a chill through the silent room. Then came the tapping of CRT keys and the noise of electronic printers. Finally, much more deliberately than before, the three-dimensional image began to move. As though in slow motion, unfolding leisurely as scattered red lights, orange lights, yellow lights flashed on and off like will-o’-the-wisps. In the midst of these bright points a pulsating sheet of multicolored light took form. Waving as it came, it fastened itself to the long, arc-shaped light image and began to contract upon it. Its ill-omened beauty was like that of a huge, luminescent devilfish attacking the pale, glowing form of the Japan Archipelago.
The first movements of the light image were almost undiscernible. As the intervals between flashes decreased., the points of lights began to form lines. The yellows and oranges began to decrease, and the reds gradually increased, growing ever more intense.
“Stop!” cried Nakata once more.
“How much time up to here?”
“302 seconds, exactly.”
“Yukinaga, from here on, besides the VTR, take photos of each quadrant. . . every two seconds. And let’s halve the time scale.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to drop it to a quarter?” somebody asked.
“If you lower it any more, I don’t think the detail would be clear enough. All right, start it.”
Yukinaga threw the switches, and the second hand of the illuminated clock began to turn again. The tension in the room grew still more acute. The lights blinked slowly, and the waving of the light curtain took on a torpid, dreamlike quality. Only the busy whir of the six camera shutters intruded. The gleam of the red lights grew still stronger, the points growing together. They were like strings of red jewels laid against the coast of the Japan Sea and along both sides of the Izu and the Ogasawara Islands. Along the Pacific coast, following the line of the Japan Trench, a two-layered mass of glowing light took form, the upper green, the lower a vivid scarlet, steadily growing brighter.
“What’s that?” asked the geologist in a whisper. “I didn’t notice it before.”
“The green indicates the deficiency of the mass, an integral calculus with the gravitational irregularity,” said Yukinaga.
“Keep watching,” Nakata said in a low voice.
“Look! Beneath the Archipelago there.”
Two hundred kilometers beneath the surface, the layer of red light under the green seemed to be passing beneath the Archipelago in the form of flowing pink stripes. When these reached the Japan Sea coastline, their brightness grew more intense and they formed specks of light.
“What about those stripes?” asked Mashita in a whisper. “What can they mean? Could energy move that quickly at such a depth—all the way past the Japan Sea coastline?”
“I don’t know for certain how it could,” said Nakata, shaking his head. “But that’s the pattern as indicated by the computer data.”
“It’s begun,” said the Weather Service man, a taut edge to his voice. “The Archipelago is breaking apart.”
In the Central Region of the Japan Archipelago, beginning at a point east of Toyama Bay, a brilliant line of red light ran north and south. At the same time, innumberable thin red lines appeared all over the luminescent form of the Archipelago, distorting it. The waving green light mass on the Pacific side spread out to the east and, at the same time, began to sink, while the lateral movement of the stripes below grew frenzied. The pink light mass on the Japan Sea side grew still more immense and began to pulsate like a living thing. The eastern portion of the luminescent image of the Archipelago shifted slowly eastward, and the western portion southward, the whole mass now beginning to tip slightly. As the echoing ping of the seconds and the agitated buzz of the camera shutters continued, the pale image of the Japan Archipelago, still slightly tilted, slid down within the plastic block, a motion like the heaving of a sigh, and finally came to rest.
The pink on the Japan Sea side, the green on the Pacific side both faded. The points of red light forming the red lines began to decrease rapidly, and those that persisted changed from red to orange and then to yellow, flickering as their colors grew dimmer. .
“What’s the time?”
“Sixty-two seconds from the second start.”
“Putting that into days, it amounts to about thirty-two.”
“A change of this order taking place within one month?” Mashita gave an irritated sigh.
“How about the movement of the Archipelago?” asked Yukinaga.