The ship itself occasioned some excitement, but back there at the tattered end of the century, what was one visiting spaceship more or less? Others had appeared before, and gone away discouraged – or just not bothering.

The first knowledge of the escape came when the region of Seattle suffered an eclipse of the sun, which was not an eclipse but a near shadow, which was not a shadow but a thing. The darkness drifted out of the northern Pacific. It generated thunder without lightning and without rain. When it had moved eastward and the hot sun reappeared, wind followed, a moderate gale. The coast was battered by sudden high waves, then hushed in a bewilderment of fog.

And then she began to drift, slowly, into the east… . Things happened in the east. Terrible, terrible things.