And then the Thor shots rained down, perfectly parallel bars of light, lancing down from the zenith to the black ocean a couple of klicks offshore. They were impossible to count, they were there and gone so fast, an impression of unbelievable speed. Like a burst of tracer fire from God's own machine gun, but faster than any tracer bullet I'd ever seen ... and immensely larger. There was a flash of light where they hit, a single strobe pulse—like a secondary explosion, but without the fireball. I think that was the most chilling part of the whole demonstration. There'd been nothing under those descending bars of light, nothing but water. Still, the impact from the Thor projectiles had been enough to strike sparks off the ocean itself .