Michael Schäffer is among the Westerners whose families are killed in the great tsunami while on holiday at Thailand's Phuket beach. So is Billi Cramer, who is less introvert and hence accepts a Greek international relief force therapist's advice to seek contact with a compatriot in the same position. They got on so well there may be a real relationship in the making, but the grief still weighs heavily.
British Army radiation drills at a remote Scottish base attract a subterranean, radioactive entity of unknown nature that vanishes, leaving two severely radiation-burned soldiers... and a bottomless crack in the earth. Others who meet the thing in the night suffer likewise, and with increasing severity; it seems to be able to absorb radiation from any source, growing bigger and bigger. What is it How do you destroy a thing that feeds on energy
