Professor Bhegad’s eyes grew sad and distant, his face red from the humidity in the submarine. He paused, wiping his fogged glasses, then put them on and looked at me. “Jack, when you came out of the operating room, you were in a coma for two days. We monitored you, round the clock. You talked quite a bit in your sleep. Something about an explosion and an earthquake. A red flying beast. A hoglike thing resembling a cheetah. You called it a vromaski, I believe.”