"Yes, sir. But ... the others seem more ... urgent, sir."
Hardwick shrugged.
There was a shout from a nearby boat. Men were pointing ashore. Hardwick jerked his eyes to the shoreline.
A section of seemingly solid ground moved slowly toward the water. Its forefront seemed to disintegrate, and a singularly slow-moving swell moved out over the rippleless border of the sea, where mudbanks like thick cream reached the surface.
The moving mass was a good half-mile in width. Its outer edge dissolved in the sea, and the top tilted, and green vegetation leaned downwind and very deliberately subsided into the water. It was remarkably like the way an ingot of non-ferrous metal slides into the pool made by its own melting.
But the aftermath was somehow horrifying. When the tumbled soil was all dissolved—and the grass undulated like a floating meadow on the water—there remained a jagged shallow gap in the land-bank. There were irregularities: vertical striations and unevennesses in the exposed, broken soil.
Hardwick snatched up glasses and put them to his eyes. The shore seemed to leap toward him. He saw the harsh outlines of the temporary cliff go soft. The bottom ceased to look like soil. It glistened. It moved outward in masses which grew rounder as they swelled. They flowed after the now-vanished fallen stuff, into the water. The topsoil was suddenly undercut. The wetter material under it flowed away, leaving a ledge which bore carefully tended flowering shrubs—Hardwick could see specks of color which were their blossoms—and a brightly-colored, small trim house in which some family had lived.
