IS IT THUNDER—
OR FOOTSTEPS?
Ships are disappearing—the ocean boils and churns—seismograph measurements are jumping off the scale. A mysterious wave of destruction is making its way, step by step, from a remote Pacific atoll to the tiny concrete island known as Manhattan!
As the towering terror methodically dismantles the Big Apple, skyscraper by skyscraper, nuclear scientist Nick Tatopolous is called in to do what the combined forces of the U.S. Army and Air Force can’t—
Stop GODZILLA!
The authorized GODZILLA novelization!
All the thrills of the NEW spectacular film from the creators of the smash hit Independence Day.
HarperPrism
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
Copyright © 1998 by TriStar Pictures, Inc.
All rights reserved.
GODZILLA, BABY GODZILLA, and the GODZILLA
character design TM & © 1998 Toho Co., Ltd.
ISBN 0-06-105915-3
First paperback edition: June 1998
Printed in the United States of America
Visit HarperCollins on the World Wide Web at
https://www.harpercollins.com
For Little Bit
“It may be doubted whether there are many other animals in the world which have played so important a part in the history of the world.”
—Charles Darwin
PROLOGUE
He was large.
He was huge, enormous, gigantic in a way that defied everything we thought we knew about the natural sciences. He was also the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen: a powerful and cunning predator who had grown to such a staggering size that even when I was directly between his feet, I could barely believe he existed. It’s like that old saying: “Truth is stranger than fiction” (to which I would add “and science is stranger than truth”). When he emerged, so suddenly and without any warning, to take center stage in the world’s imagination, it seemed as though one of humankind’s most enduring and horrible nightmares had come to life. Ever since the biblical serpent caused our expulsion from the Garden of Eden, we’ve held a special type of fear and hatred in our hearts for all things reptilian. Prior to his appearance, we in the scientific community were absolutely convinced that no animal could grow so large. It was an accepted fact that the dinosaurs had pushed the envelope in terms of size and body weight. Any land animal that grew larger, our theory said, would collapse under its own weight, breaking its own spine, and be unable to do anything except lie on the ground and pant for air. Obviously, our theory was wrong.
I’m not a writer, but a scientist. I’m writing this book because, as far as I know, no one spent more time being “up close and personal” with the creature than I did. During the hectic days when this story was taking place, circumstance thrust me into a front-row seat. Some people think I was crazy for getting as close as I did; others consider me lucky to have seen all that I saw. Since I’m not sure which opinion is closer to the truth, I’ll let you decide for yourself. If you’re like most people in the world, you’ve already learned a great deal about the story by looking at newspapers, magazines, and television. Images of the monster are everywhere. (The other day I even saw a set of fuzzy children’s slippers in the shape of the big lizard’s clawed feet.) But I will try to take you beyond the images and headlines to offer you new information and an insider’s perspective. Mainly I’ll try to communicate a sense of what it was like to be there.
There’s one other reason I’m writing this book before returning to my own research—and this one is more important. I want people to have a better understanding of the terrible danger we were in. Even though the situation looked spectacularly bad, it was actually much worse than it seemed. Humans found ourselves locked in a struggle for our very existence, the likes of which my hero, Charles Darwin, could never have imagined. Never before in the history of the earth has there been such a clear-cut case of two species fighting each other for their very lives. And what a battle it turned out to be.
And there’s a good chance it’s not over. If, as I believe, the creature was the result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation in and around the Tuamotu Island group, then his arrival in the world was not a freak accident. It was the logical consequence of our continued pollution of the earth’s environment. If we continue with our present behavior (eating away at the ozone layer, overpopulating the planet, conducting nuclear test explosions, and so on), there is not just a chance, but a statistical probability we will face similar—or even worse—dangers in the near future. An ever-growing body of evidence suggests that we humans are paving the way to our own extinction by altering the ecosphere around us.
But I promised my editors I wouldn’t turn this book into a pulpit from which to preach about environmentalism—something I’m prone to do at times. Instead I’m going to do my best to stick to the facts and tell you the story of what happened during that rain-drenched week in early summer when I went nose to nose with a five-hundred-ton lizard who stood taller than the Statue of Liberty.
This book is dedicated to all those poor souls who got even closer to Gojira than I did, and lost their lives in the process.
ONE
The precise origins of the creature are still a mystery and a source of heated debate among natural scientists. I recently drove down to Washington, D.C., and visited the National Historic Films Archive. The chief librarian there, Mr. Eric Johnson, led me to a series of short films that I believe give us important clues as to the creature’s genesis. These films, shot on 16mm color film back in 1963, were made by a group of French nuclear scientists who had invaded a remote corner of paradise. They were conducting nuclear test explosions in Polynesia and had set up shop on the thirty-kilometer-long Moruroa Atoll. Moruroa is part of the Tuamotu group, a twelve-hundred-kilometer-long chain of low-lying coral atolls that looks like a long, rocky necklace half submerged in sparkling turquoise waters. For hundreds of thousands of years this archipelago was the undisturbed home to abundant populations of green sea turtles, banded iguanas, and exotic species of birds such as the cagou. Its crystal-clear lagoons teemed with brightly colored pelagic fish. Many of these species are now endangered thanks to the reckless antics of our French friends.
The grainy Kodak color films the scientists took have a home-movie feel to them. As the camera pans unevenly across the landscape one sees flocks of Acridotheres tristis perched in the pandanus trees. The birds look uneasy, on edge, as if they know what’s coming. Then we see a tranquil, empty beach bathed in bright sunlight. It could be a scene from a travelogue or some footage distributed by the local chamber of commerce to promote tourism, except for the sinister sound of a man counting down in French.
“Quinze … quatorze … treize … douze …” An abrupt new camera angle puts us twenty-five thousand feet above sea level, looking down on the chain of islands stretching out seemingly to infinity, brilliant white specks shimmering between the blue of the ocean and the blue of the sky. “Quatre … trois … deux … un … zéro!”
The film jumps once and then the center of the screen burns to white as the atomic bomb detonates and spreads a massive, ring-shaped concussion across the area known as the Centre d’Expérimentation du Pacifique. A mushroom cloud slowly boils skyward as the men behind the camera casually discuss what they are witnessing. Everything is in French, but of course they must be saying things like “Ooh-la-la, très bon” and “Sacrebleu” and “Quelle grande explosion!”
One particular incident serves as an example of the lax safety standards governing these tests. In September 1966 President Charles de Gaulle came to watch the explosion of an atomic bomb suspended in the air by a balloon. Weather
conditions caused the test to be postponed, and on the next day conditions were still unsuitable. The winds were blowing straight toward Tahiti. With typical French arrogance, de Gaulle complained that he was a very busy man and ordered the engineers to proceed with the test. Radioactive fallout from the blast spread across the entire area, hitting populated areas, a fact the French deny to this day. Over the years these ecobarbarians conducted more than 175 such tests with varying degrees of disregard for the consequences of their actions.
Of course, I had known about Moruroa and its sister islands long before watching these old films—something I did only recently. The area is one of the must-see research destinations for people in my line of work, an environmental madhouse where imported species are quickly decimating the fragile native populations and radiation is affecting all forms of life. I’d been writing grant proposals and wheedling my bosses at the commission for several years to send me there so I could investigate the effects of all this atomic mayhem. Given what we now know, they should have sent me. Who knows, I might even have been able to stop this story before it ever got started. (Then again, I might have been gobbled up and disappeared without a trace.)
By themselves the films prove nothing. I haven’t been able to find any direct evidence linking the creature to these radioactive islands. But ever since I watched those films I’ve been having this recurring vision, the same disturbing daydream. In it I find myself standing on a neighboring atoll in the moments before one of the explosions. I’m wearing a heavy, lead-lined suit to protect me from the fallout I know is coming. The suit is made of rubber and forces me to walk around clumsily, like the villain in some old-time horror movie. All around me life on the island innocently continues: graceful Phaëton rubricaudas return to shore with small fish in their beaks; marine iguanas splash out of the water and congregate on the sun-drenched rocks, staring out to sea with the patience of baking statues. Turtles crawl up the beach looking for snacks. I plod among them awkwardly, invisible in my heavy gray suit, watching the scene through the small rectangular frame of glass built into my helmet. When the explosion comes, all the animals dart into hiding places or take to the sky. When the blinding light is over and the delicate flakes of radioactive ash begin sifting down like a gray, desiccated snowstorm, I wander further inland until I find something hidden in the tall grass. It is a nest filled with lizard eggs. I bend down for a closer look and, as gingerly as possible, use the suit’s bulky glove to uncover a few of them, clearing away the moist impasto of ferns and regurgitated insects left by the parent. I imagine that one of the eggs moves slightly, as if struggling to flee from the skin-burning poison raining down on it.
In the daydream I wish that I could protect this defenseless little creature, a simple animal with no expectations for his life beyond scampering around in search of food and, eventually, leaving behind some offspring of his own. “Poor little lizard,” I say to myself, realizing the animal inside the egg will probably die or come out deformed.
Because I was conscripted by the U.S. Army to help in the hunt for the animal, I was given access to several hours of videotape footage that document his first, disastrous encounter with humans. These videotapes were recovered from the Kobayashi Maru by the U.S. Navy’s Deep-Sea Salvage Unit.
At shortly after 11 p.m. the Kobayashi Maru was in international waters in the Pacific Ocean, between the Tuamotu Archipelago and the Marquesas Islands. It was floating peacefully despite the fact that there was a giant typhoon raging outside. The ship’s instrumentation recorded ninety-mile-per-hour winds that were shredding the twelve-foot waves outside into so much spindrift. But the Kobayashi was large—one of those floating fish factories where the bounty of the sea is caught, cleaned, and “quick-frozen for freshness.” If you’ve never been aboard or at least seen one of these vessels, it’s hard to fathom just how very immense they are. Think of a three-story factory building that takes up an entire city block. These ships are ten times longer, ten times wider, and ten times as tall. Big and heavy enough, at any rate, that the four hundred crew members felt next to nothing of a tropical storm that was wreaking havoc on large parts of the hemisphere.
Although it’s not really part of the story, I’d like to add a quick note here. Of course I feel terrible about what happened to the Kobayashi that dark and stormy night. But I’m not sorry Japan is minus one of her supertrawlers. These monster-sized boats gobble up and deplete the globe’s fish populations at a frightening rate with their vast nets, often also killing whole colonies of dolphins, which swim along with the tuna schools. The endless container rooms of these vessels can hold up to ten million tons of fish—a good place to work, I suppose, if you enjoy sushi.
The Kobayashi’s skipper was on the bridge when the trouble started. He had his feet up on the million-dollar instrument console that was actually steering the ship and he was watching a snowy broadcast of Sumo Digest on the television. If you’ve never watched sumo yourself, you should. It’s more than just a couple of fat men in diapers battering each other with their stomachs. It’s actually a very graceful and exciting sport.
Like many of the sailors belowdecks, the skipper was glued to his television set. The most anticipated bout of the evening pitted crafty little Tanaka against the unbelievably huge, towering figure of Akebono. When the smaller, underdog wrestler tossed the blubbery giant out of the ring with an armlock throw, the skipper shot out of his seat, threw his arms in the air, and cheered. He was so excited he reached for the handset of the intercom and was about to make a general announcement to the rest of the ship when his eyes fell on the main sonar screen.
His smile changed to a concerned frown. What he saw on the electronic display was impossible. He quickly made a series of adjustments to the equipment but failed to make the problem go away. His eyes narrowed as something abnormally large blipped under the sweeping arm of the sonar. Something enormous was in the water, and it was headed straight for the Kobayashi Maru. Before the skipper could move, a loud automatic warning buzzer sounded, filling the bridge with a harsh honking noise. He punched one of the buttons on the console and spoke into the microphone.
“Sencho, hijojitai desu—Captain, there’s an emergency!”
Alarms erupted through the entire ship. Sailors poured into the narrow hallways and raced toward their stations. In the kitchen, the ship’s chief cook stepped through a bulkhead holding a butcher knife. He was an older, heavyset man with a long, scraggly mustache and fresh blood on the front of his apron.
“Nani goto da?” he demanded. But the members of the crew knew better than to stop and chat during an emergency call. The omnipresent video cameras were rolling, and the company was always ready to dock an undisciplined sailor’s pay. The videotapes, since recovered from the Kobayashi’s black box, show the cook shouting angrily at the men, waving his knife over their heads and threatening them with inedible food for the rest of the voyage if they wouldn’t stop and tell an old man what was happening. A second later his question was answered.
An enormous thud slammed through the ship, jolting the entire vessel. Everything—crew members, cook, every pot and pan in the kitchen—crashed to the floor at once. Then the sirens suddenly shut down, leaving the men in an eerie silence. The loudest sound was the breathing of the seamen. The overhead lights flickered, died, then came on again. Although it was impossible, it seemed as if they could hear the deep, dark water of the Pacific sloshing against the sides of the ship.
“Nan da are wa?” someone asked.
“Hoka no hune ni sesshoku shitanoka—maybe we rammed into another ship?” another one asked.
“Let’s hope that’s all it is,” the cook said. He had an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that the ship would not survive this strange encounter (at least this is what he would claim later). As the sailors hurried away, he retreated to the imaginary safety of his kitchen and began absentmindedly gathering whatever food was closest at hand. He was stuffing onions into the pockets of his apron
when there came another huge thud.
Once again the old man was knocked to the floor by the sudden, terrifying impact. It was no ship that was battering them, he knew. He stumbled out of the kitchen and was trotting down the passageway when the ship was hit for a third time. Instead of a dull thud, this time there was a quick explosionlike noise followed by an earsplitting squeal that was worse than fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. When he looked behind him he saw exactly how much worse.
Three curved spikes had penetrated the Kobayashi’s hull and were shredding the steel walls as though they were made of balsa wood. Each one was over six feet long, and there was no mistaking them for anything except what they were: the talons of an enormous, incredibly powerful animal. Water gushed in through the holes left by the claws, creating a flash flood in the hallway.
As the panic-crazed cook reached the stairway, the water was already surging up to his knees and rising at a foot per second. Though old and out of shape, the cook had enough adrenaline pumping through his system that he should have been able to reach the top of the stairs and close the hatch behind him—if only the ship hadn’t started rolling onto its side. He was near the top of the stairs when his feet slipped out from under him and he crashed against the iron side rails.
Hanging on for dear life, he looked back and saw the claws still moving toward him, sailing like three peaked ships through the gray metal. Before they reached him, the rising water level shorted out the lights.
By that time the Kobayashi’s captain had come upstairs to take command of the bridge. But there wasn’t much he could do. The sonar display showed him that an unidentified swimming object had struck them on their starboard flank. “Sensuikan ni chigainai,” he said to his skipper, who shook his head in disagreement. “Sensuikan ni chigainai—it must be a submarine,” he said again and again, trying to convince himself despite the evidence in front of his eyes. The object on the screen was as large as a skyscraper, but it seemed to be thrashing!
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