Nearly an hour later, when parts of it were nearing the ocean surface, that energy had been distributed over much of the planet, but there were still local, focused, high-pressure regions. Now the background pressure was getting low enough to let the water molecules move noticeably with the front.

When it actually reached the next real interface, between ocean and atmosphere, the water—long since actually liquid—was able to rise, and a tsunami was born. Most of it was imperceptible to human senses, since it covered a large area and had no coast to overwhelm; but even in the last few kilometers there had been some local refraction. In several places smaller microtsunamis originated, and Mike Hoani was very aware of one of these.

Its bulge was three or four hundred meters across and perhaps twenty above the general sea level, but this was not itself an easily spotted reference. The Malolo’s upward acceleration was only barely noticeable to anyone on board, but her tilt was another matter.

Mike had been trying to get his sea legs for two days now, since his first and last real view of a local tsunami. That had been during launch, when either the arm supporting the dock had been swinging downward or Muamoku had been rising. Cities were massive enough to respond rather slowly to changes in ambient pressure. The ship was different.

Ocean swells, on the rare occasions that they were the only disturbances present, Mike could usually handle; if they were too long-waved to see, they were, under Kainui’s one-third Earth gravity, too slow to be a problem. The sometimes strangely shaped and always unpredictable microtsunamis, analogous to the streaks of light focused on the bottom of a washbasin when the water is stirred, were quite another matter; he didn’t merely lose his footing, he was often thrown from it.