This time, the tremor had changed the complex and long inactive interconnections between then island's chain of volcanoes. Deep within the earth the tectonic plates had been jolted from quiescence into an inchoate system capable of awesome devastation. The intestines of Haleakala, Mauna Loa, and Mauna Kea, after thousands, or millions, of years, had become united and now coalesced as one. Engorged with billions of tons of white-hot magma from the...