Title: The Thirst Quenchers
Author: Raphael, Rick, 1919-1994
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Thirst Quenchers" ***


                         Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction September 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
this publication was renewed.


                         THE THIRST QUENCHERS


     Earth has more water surface than land surface--but that
     does not mean we have all the water we want to drink. And
     right now, America is already pressing the limits of fresh
     water supply....


                           BY RICK RAPHAEL


                   ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING

       *       *       *       *       *



"You know the one thing I really like about working for DivAg?" Troy
Braden muttered into his face-mask pickup.

Ten yards behind Troy, and following in his ski tracks, his partner
Alec Patterson paused to duck under a snow-laden spruce bough before
answering. It was snowing heavily, a cold, dry crystal snow, piling up
inch upon inch on the already deep snow pack of the Sawtooth Mountain
range. In another ten minutes they would be above the timberline and
the full force of the storm would hit them.

"Tell me, Mr. Bones," he asked as he poled easily in Troy's tracks,
"what is the one thing you really like about working for the Division
of Agriculture?"

Troy tracked around a trough of bitterbrush that bent and fought
against the deep snow. "It's so dependable," he said, "so reliable, so
unchanging. In nearly two centuries, the world has left behind the
steel age; has advanced to nucleonics, tissue regeneration,
autoservice bars and electronically driven yo-yos. Everyone in the
world except the United States Division of Agriculture. The tried and
true method is the rock up on which our integrity stands--even though
it was tried more than a hundred years ago."

He dropped out of sight over a small hummock and whipped down the side
of a slight depression in the slope, his skis whispering over the dry
snow and sending up a churning crest of white from their tips.

Alec chuckled and poled after him into the basin. The two young junior
hydrologists worked their way up the opposite slope and then again
took the long, slow traverse-and-turn, traverse-and-turn path through
the thinning trees and out into the open wind-driven snow field above
them.

Just below the ridgeline, a shelf of packed snow jutted out for a
dozen yards, flat and shielded from the wind by a brief rock face.
Troy halted in the small island in the storm and waited for Alec to
reach him.

He fumbled with mittened fist at the cover of the directional
radiation compass strapped to his left wrist. The outer dial rotated
as soon as the cover lock was released and came to a stop pointing to
magnetic north. The detector needle quartered across the northeast
quadrant of the dial like a hunting dog and then came to rest at
nineteen degrees, just slightly to the left of the direction of their
tracks. An inner dial needle quivered between the yellow and red face
of the intensity meter.

"We should be within a couple of hundred yards of the marker now,"
Troy announced as his short, chunky partner checked alongside. Alec
nodded and peered through the curtain of sky-darkened snow just beyond
the rock face. He could see powder spume whipping off the ridge crest
twenty feet above them but the contour of the sloping ridge was
quickly lost in the falling snow.

[Illustration]

The hydrologists leaned on their ski poles and rested for a few
minutes before tackling the final cold leg of their climb. Each
carried a light, cold-resistance plastic ruckpac slung over their
chemically-heated light-weight ski suits.

A mile and a half below in the dense timber, their two Sno cars were
parked in the shelter of a flattened and fallen spruce and they had
thrown up a quick lean-to of broken boughs to give the vehicles even
more protection from the storm. From there to the top, Troy was right
in his analysis of DivAg. When God made mountain slopes too steep and
timber too thick, it was a man and not a machine that had to do the
job on skis; just as snow surveyors had done a century before when the
old Soil Conservation Service pioneered the new science of snow
hydrology.

The science had come a long way in the century from the days when
teams of surveyors poked a hollow, calibrated aluminum tube into the
snow pack and then read depth and weighed both tube and contents to
determine moisture factors.

Those old-timers fought blizzards and avalanches from November through
March in the bleak, towering peaks of the Northwest to the weathered
crags of the Appalachians, measuring thousands of predesignated snow
courses the last week of each winter month. Upon those readings had
been based the crude, wide-margin streamflow forecasts for the coming
year.

Now, a score of refined instruments did the same job automatically at
hundreds of thousands of almost-inaccessible locations throughout the
northern hemisphere. Or at least, almost automatically. Twenty feet
above the two DivAg hydrologists and less than a hundred yards east,
on the very crest of an unnamed peak in the wilderness of Idaho's
Sawtooth Mountains, radiation snow gauge P11902-87 had quit sending
data three days ago.

The snow-profile flight over the area showed a gap in the graphed
line that flowed over the topographical map of the Sawtooths as the
survey plane flew its daily scan. The hydrotech monitoring the graph
reported the lapse to regional headquarters at Spokane and minutes
later, a communications operator punched up the alternate transmitter
for P11902-87. Nothing happened although the board showed the gauge's
cobalt-60 beta and gamma still hot. Something had gone wrong with the
tiny transducer transmitter. A man, or to be more precise, two men,
had to replace the faulty device.

The two men and the replacement gauge, trudged out again into the face
of the rising storm.

Troy and Alec pushed diagonally up the snow slope, pausing every few
minutes to take new directional readings. The needles were now at
right angles to them and reading well into the "hot" red division of
the intensity meter. They still were ten feet below the crest and a
cornice of snow hung out in a slight roof ahead of them. Both men had
closed the face hatches of their insulated helmets and tiny
circulators automatically went to work drawing off moisture and
condensation from the treated plastic.

"Wonder if that chunk is going to stay put while we go past," Alec
called, eyeing the heavy overhang. Troy paused and the two carefully
looked over the snow roof and the slope that fell away sharply to
their right.

"Looks like it avalanched once before," Troy commented. "Shall we
operate, Dr. Patterson?"

"Better extravagant with the taxpayers' money than sorry for
ourselves," Alec replied, pulling the avalanche gun from his holster.
It looked like an early-day Very pistol, with its big, straight-bore
muzzle. "Let's get back a couple of feet."

They kick-turned and skied back from the sides of the cornice. Alec
raised the gun and aimed at the center of the deepest segment over the
overhang. The gun discharged with a muffled "pop" and the concentrated
ball of plastic explosive arced through the air, visible to the naked
eye. It vanished into the snow roof and the men waited. Ten seconds
later there was a geyser of flame and the smoke and snow as the charge
detonated deep under the overhang. The wind whipped the cloud away and
the roof still held, despite the gaping hole.

"What do you think?" Troy asked.

"One more for good measure," Alec said as he fired again, this time to
the right of the first shot. The plastic detonated in another geyser
of smoke and snow, but the small cloud was instantly lost as the
entire overhang broke and fell the ten to twelve feet from the crest
to the face of the slope and then boiled and rolled, gathering more
snow and greater mass and impetus as it thundered down the slope and
was lost in the storm. The dense clouds of loose powder snow raised by
the avalanche whipped away in the clutches of the wind.

"Well done, Dr. Patterson," Troy called as he leaned into his poles
and moved out across the newly-crushed snow on the slope.

"Thank you, Dr. Braden," Alec called in his wake, "you may proceed to
the patient."

       *       *       *       *       *

They worked past the buried radiation gauge to the crest and then
turned and came slowly back along the wind ridge, following directly
behind the detection needle. Troy glanced at his intensity gauge. The
needle was on the "danger" line in the red. He stopped. Behind him,
Alec checked his drop slowly down the windward side of the slope,
reading his own meter. When his intensity needle hit the same mark,
he, too, halted about thirty feet to Troy's right.

"I'm dead on," Troy said, indicating with a ski pole an imaginary line
straight ahead.

"I've got it about forty-five degrees left," Alec called, marking his
position and a direction line in the crust with a pole. Each moved
towards the other and from the mid-point of their two markings
extended with their eyes the imaginary lines to an intersecting point
some thirty feet from Troy's original sighting.

"Hand me the heat tank, doctor," Troy said, turning his back to Alec,
"so that we can excavate the patient." Alec unclamped a hand tank and
nozzle device from his pack.

With the tank slung under his arm and with nozzle in hand, Troy moved
forward another ten feet, gauging the wind velocity. He aimed to the
windward of the intersecting lines and triggered the nozzle. A stream
of liquid chemical melting agent shot out into the wind and then
curved back and cut a hole into the snow. Troy moved the nozzle in a
slow arc, making a wide circle in the snow. Then he cut a trough on
the downhill side for more than twenty feet. He adjusted the nozzle
head and a wider stream sprayed out to fall within the already-melting
circle. The concentrated solution was diluted with melting water and
spread its action. As the hydrologists watched, the snow melted into a
deep hole and the chemically-warmed water torrented down the drain cut
to gush out on to the snow slope and quickly refreeze as it emerged
into the sub-zero air.

Troy shut off the liquid and the two men waited and watched. "The
gauge was recording ninety-seven inches of pack when it quit," Alec
said. "Better give 'er another squirt."

Troy fired another spray burst of chemical into the now-deep hole and
then widened the drain trough once more.

Then he began spraying a three-foot wide patch from the edge of the
hole back towards himself. Immediately a new trough began to form in
the snow pack and the water poured off into the hole surrounding the
buried gauge.

While the snow was melting, Alec had removed his skis and stuck them
upright in the snow. He dropped his pack and unfastened a pair of
mountain-climber's ice crampons and lashed them to his ski boots. In
five minutes Troy had "burned" a sloping, ice-glazed ramp deep into
the snow field, sloping down into a ten-foot deep chasm and
terminating on bare wet soil. Sitting on the ground, slightly off
center to one side of the original hole was the foot-round gray metal
shape of radiation snow gauge P11902-87. A half-inch round tube
projected upwards for three inches from the center of the round
device.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alec was down in the ice chasm, ski pole reversed in his hand.
Standing as far from the gauge as possible, he dangled a leaden cap
from the end of his ski pole over the projecting tube. On the third
try, the cap descended over the open end of the tube, effectively
shielding the radioactive source material in the gauge. Once the cap
was in place, Alec moved up to the gauge and put a lock clamp on the
cap and then picked up the gauge and moved back up the ramp.

The wind was screaming across the top of the slot in the snow pack as
he pushed the device over the edge and then heaved himself out into
the teeth of the storm.

He could barely make out the form of Troy fifty feet east of the
original position of the gauge. The tall engineer had taken the
replacement gauge from his pack and was positioning it into the snow
on the surface of the snow pack. The replacement was bulkier than the
defective unit and it was different in design.

This was a combination radiation-sonar measuring gauge. Placed on top
of an existing snow field, its sonar system kept account of the snow
beneath the gauge to the surface of the soil; the radiation counter
metered the fresh snow that fell on it after it was placed in
position. The two readings were electronically added and fed into the
transducer for automatic transmission.

Troy hollowed out a slight depression in the fresh snow and pressed
the gauge into the hollow, then packed the snow back around it to keep
it from being shifted by the high velocity winds until fresh snows
buried it. Satisfied that it was properly set, he removed the
radiation cap lock and slipped his ski pole through the ring on the
cap. He backed away, lifted the cap from the gauge and then quickly
moved out of the area.

Alec had stowed the bad gauge in his pack and removed a pressure
pillow gauge to put into the deep hole in the snow. The man-cut chasm
would serve as a partial gauge hole and, from a purely research point
of view, it would be interesting to know how much snow would drift and
fall back into the hole. The pressure pillow contained a quantity of
antifreeze solution and some air space. As the snow fell upon the
pillow and piled up, its weight would press down and the pressure upon
the pillow would be measured by instruments and again relayed to a
small transmitter for reading back at Spokane. The pillows were used
in many flat open areas where snow pack was uniform across a large
level surface.

The pillow in place, Alec again climbed from the chasm and was locking
on his skis when Troy slid up. The ice-dry snow was driving almost
horizontally across the face of the ridge and the two engineers had to
lean into the force of the wind to keep their balance. Troy fumbled a
small service monitor from his parka pocket and shifted it to the new
radiation gauge frequency. The signal was steady and strong and its
radioactive source beam was hot.

"Now is the time for all good snow surveyors to get the hell outta
here," Alec exclaimed as he slipped his ruckpac onto his shoulders.
"The gauge O.K.?"

Troy glanced once more at the monitor and nodded. "Hot and clear." He
shoved the monitor back into his pocket and grasped his ski poles.
"Ready?"

"Let's go," Alec replied.

Turning their backs into the wind, the men veered sharply away from
the site of the new gauge and dropped off the crest of the mountain
top back to the lee side of the slope. Out of the worst of the wind,
they skied easily back down towards the timberline.

Once back among the trees, the visibility again rose although the
going was much slower. It would be dark in another two hours and they
wanted to be back at the Sno cars with enough light left to pitch camp
for the night.

"I heard of a guy over in Washington," Troy said as they worked their
way down through the trees, "that won the DivAg award as the most
absent-minded engineer of the decade."

"Since you never tell stories on yourself, it couldn't have been you,"
Alec quipped, "so what happened?"

Troy schussed down an open field in the trees and snowplowed to a
slowdown at the opposite side to once again thread through the dense
spruce and pine.

"This joker did the same job we just finished," he continued. "He put
the new gauge in place while his partner fished the old one out. Then
he forgot that he had put the new gauge in place, uncapped mind you,
and when they took off he skied right over it."

"Right over the top of it," Alec gasped.

"Yup," Troy said.

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing to speak of. Of course, he's the last of his family
tree--genetically speaking, that is."

       *       *       *       *       *

Fresh snow had completely covered their tracks made during the climb
to the summit, but they wouldn't have followed the same trail back
down in any case. Both men were expert skiers and they cut back down
the shortest route to the Sno cars. A faint audio signal sounded in
their right ears from the homing beacons in the snow vehicles. As they
shifted directions through the trees, the signal shifted from ear to
ear and grew stronger as they neared their cache.

A few minutes later they broke out into the edge of the small clearing
with its downed spruce and the two Sno cars. From the carriers they
extracted light-weight collapsible plastic domed shelters. A half hour
later the domes were joined together by a two-man shelter tube and
their sleeping bags were spread in the rear dome. While Alec was
shaking out the bags and stowing gear, Troy set up the tiny camp
stove in the front dome, broke out the rations and began supper. The
detachable, mercury-battery headlight from one of the Sno cars hung
from the apogee of the front dome and the other car light was in the
sleeping dome.

By the time they had finished eating, the wind had died but the snow
continued to fall, piling up around the outside of the plastic dome as
it drifted and fell. Its sheltering bulk added to the already
near-perfect insulation of the domes. The outer air temperature had
fallen to minus fifteen degrees but the temperature below the surface
of the snow held at a constant twenty-five degrees above zero and
within the front dome with its light and stove, it was a warm
seventy-five. The excess heat escaped through a flue tube in the top
of the dome.

Both men had stripped down to shorts and T-shirt and now quietly
relaxed.

"That's a goodly amount of precip piling up out there," Alec remarked
languidly. "God knows we can use it."

"If this keeps up all night," Troy said, "we may have to dig ourselves
outta here in the morning." He leaned back and surveyed the rounded
roof above him. "Remember what I said this afternoon about nothing
ever changing in DivAg?"

Alec nodded.

"Well, sir, here's another fine example of progress halted dead in its
tracks," the lanky hydrologist went on. "For centuries the Eskimos
have lived through Arctic winters in igloos, made of snow blocks, cut
and rounded to form a cave in the snow.

"What's good enough for the Eskimos is good enough for DivAg. Here we
are right back in the Ice Age, living in an igloo. If that stove used
blubber or seal oil instead of chemical fuel, the picture would be
complete."

Alec grinned. "Just because something is old doesn't mean it's no
good, Dr. Braden," he said. "The Eskimos proved the efficiency of the
igloo. We've just adopted the principle and modernized it. It still
works better than any other known snow-weather shelter. But I didn't
see you cutting any snow blocks with your skinning knife to build this
snug haven, nor crawling for hours on your belly across the snow to
sneak up on a seal for your supper."

"Technicalities," Troy scoffed lazily. "The point is, that here were
are living almost under the same conditions that the primitive savages
of the frozen north lived under for centuries." He belched gently and
stretched his long legs luxuriously away from the webbing of the
bucket camp chair.

[Illustration]

"I must say that you seem to be enjoying it," Alec commented.
"Primitive or not, I still like this better than those rat warrens
they call cities today."

       *       *       *       *       *

Nearly two miles above them, the replacement snow gauge, C11902-87,
already buried in a half-foot of new snow, sent out a strong and
steady signal. At midnight, when both snow hydrologists were sleeping
soundly in their bags, hundreds of miles away in regional survey
headquarters at Spokane, the huge electronic sequencer began its rapid
signal check of each of the thousands of snow gauges in the five-state
area of Region Six.

A dozen red lights flicked on among the thousands of green pinpoints
of illumination on the huge mural map of the area indicating gauges
not reporting due to malfunctions. The technician on duty compared the
red lights with the trouble sheet in his hand. He noted two new
numbers on the list. When he came to C11902-87, he glanced again at
the map. A minute, steady green ray came from the tiny dot in the
center of a contour circle that indicated a nameless peak in the
Sawtooth Range.

The technician lined out C11902-87 on the trouble chart. "They got to
that one in a hurry," he murmured to himself. Another figure had been
returned to the accuracy percentage forecasting figures of the huge
computers that dictated the lives and luxuries of more than a half a
billion Americans.

Water, not gold, now set the standard of living for an overpopulated,
overindustrialized continent, where the great automated farms and
ranches fought desperately to produce the food for a half billion
stomachs while competing with that same half billion for every drop of
life-giving moisture that went into the soil.

In the winter, the snows and early fall rains fell in the watershed
mountains of the continent, then melted and either seeped into the
soil or first trickled, then gushed and finally leaped in freshets
down from the highlands to the streams and rivers. As the great cities
spread and streamflow waters were dammed and stored and then metered
out, there was no longer enough to meet agricultural, industrial and
municipal needs.

The cities sent down shaft after shaft into the underground aquifers,
greedily sucking the moisture out of the land until each day, each
month and each year, the water tables fell deeper and deeper until
they, too, were gone, and the land was sucked dry.

There was water in the highlands, in watersheds and spilling unused
down to the sea in many areas. Soon the cities and industries sent out
great plastisteel arteries to bring the lifeblood of the land to the
vast sponges of the factories and showers in home and food-processing
plants and landrounits. Water for the machine-precise rows of soy bean
plants and for babies' formulas and water for great nuclear power
plants and water for a tiny, sixty-fifth floor apartment flower box.

But there was never enough and a nation finally could no longer evade
the situation that had been forewarned and foredoomed a century
earlier by the pioneers of conservation.

Only by total conservation of every possible drop of moisture could
the nation survive, and to conserve, it is first necessary to have an
accurate and constantly-current inventory of the substance that is to
be conserved.

To the executive branch of the government had come the Secretary of
Water Resources, and with the creation of the new cabinet office, the
former cabinet posts of Agriculture and Interior were relegated to
subordinate and divisional status.

To the thousands upon thousands of trained hydrologists,
meteorologists and agronomists of the federal agencies of
agriculture, interior and commerce fell the task of manipulating and
guiding the delicate balance of the world's water cycle. The snows and
rains fell upon the earth, to soak into the land, flow down the
streams and rivers to the sea or to the great lakes, and then be
returned to the atmosphere to fall again in the ageless cycle of life.

But the happenstance habits of nature were steadily being integrated
into the control program of man. The rains and snow still fell where
nature intended but man was now there to gauge and guide the moisture
in a carefully controlled path through its cycle back to the
atmosphere.

An inch or an acre-foot of water falling as snow upon the high
mountains was used over and over many times and by many persons before
returning to its starting place in the atmosphere.

With the age of nuclear power, the need for hydroelectric sources
vanished and with it went the great dams and reservoirs with their
vast, wasteful surfaces of open water that evaporated by the thousands
of acre-feet before ever being utilized by man. The beds of the great
rivers were dry and the cities spread upon them together with the new
controlled auto-farms. Only the smaller rivers and streams continued
to flow until they reached a predesignated flow force. Then they
vanished, spilling down into tunnels and flowing for hundreds of miles
along subterranean aqueducts into great storage reservoirs beneath the
surface of the land and protected from the drain of the sun and wind.
From these, each precious drop of water was rationed upwards to meet
the increasing needs of the people. And still there was never enough.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was still snowing when Troy and Alec awoke in the morning. The
snows had drifted over both the domes on the windward side. They
cooked a quick breakfast and then Alec began stowing the camp gear
into its compact containers. Troy took a small hand shovel and crawled
out through the double opening of the front dome and tunneled his way
up out of the snow. Twin plumes of vapor rose through the snow that
curved in gentle hummocks over the buried domes. The tall engineer
shoveled a short path to the downed spruce and cleared the way into
the shelter where the Sno cars waited. He removed the protecting
boughs and shoveled a short ramp out of the trough to the surface of
the snow.

The temperature had risen during the night and the snow had changed
from the crystal dry powder of the night before to fluffy, gentle
flakes, falling in a steady curtain through the trees. Troy opened the
side hatch of the bubble canopy of his Sno car and climbed in. He slid
into the single bucket seat and with a flick of his finger set the
tiny reaction motor into operation. Moments later heat filled the
bubble and a cloud of steam moisture flared from the thrust pipes.

The ten-foot-long tapered Snow car sat on twin broad-planted skis in
front with a single retractable wheel raised between them for snow
travel. At the wider rear, another pair of short, broad ski blades
rested on the surface of the snow on either side of a wide, continuous
track assembly. A pair of handle bars, much like an early-day
motorcycle, extended into the bubble from the front fork. The grips
were studded with additional control buttons. Troy pressed one and the
two rear skis rose on outrigger arms like a small catamaran to allow
the Sno car to sink a couple of inches back onto the gripper track.

As the weight of the vehicle shifted to the track assembly it
automatically diverted the tiny nuclear engine output from jet thrust
to gear box drive. Troy settled himself in the seat and increased the
power. The track started to turn and the Sno car glided slowly out
from under the protecting branches and churned up the slight ramp to
the top of the snow pack. He turned the front skis and plowed to a
halt beside the tunnel into the domes.

Alec emerged with one of the camp kits and handed it up to his
partner, then went to the shelter for his own Sno car. Troy stowed the
kit in the carrier and dismounted and began digging snow away from the
domes. Alec's Sno car pulled up alongside and the chunky engineer
vanished once more into the domes to emerge with his own kit. Then he
joined Troy in the digging operation. Fifteen minutes later, both
domes were collapsed and stowed in the carriers. The men boarded their
vehicles.

Inside the warm bubble canopies, air circulators kept the plastic free
of condensation. Outside, the snow glanced off the treated surface,
keeping it clear.

"Lead off, Dr. Patterson," Troy called out over the car radio.

Alec increased power and the track of his Sno car dug into the soft
surface, then caught and the vehicle moved forward and into the trees.
Troy fell into line behind the other vehicle as they drove down the
gentle slope towards the snow-covered access trail another mile below
them on the side of the mountain.

Out of the trees and onto the trail, both drivers shifted gears,
dropping rear skis to the more solid pack of the trail and sending
jets of steam shooting out from the thrust tubes of the Sno cars. Troy
dropped back to stay out of Alec's vapor cloud as they now glided
smoothly and easily along the trail. A bright red metal pole, topped
by a small housing and antenna came into view on the side of the road.
The tube went down through the snow and deep into the soil of the
mountain side. Inside, electrostats read soil moisture at depths up to
thirty feet and transmitted the information on automatic or demand
signal.

Ahead, the vapor cloud from Alec's Sno car vanished as the trail
dipped down the side of the mountain and the driver cut his thrust to
let the momentum carry him on the twin set of skis. Troy gunned his
car for a final burst of speed then cut rear drive and dropped
swoopingly down the grade, whipping along in Alec's tracks. The trail
curved sharply ahead and Troy gently manipulated the front fork skis
into a snowplow to cut speed. His fingers rested lightly on the
pressure switch that would open small scoops on the under surfaces of
all skis for additional braking power. As a final resort, the engine
thrust could be shifted from rear to forward reaction to bring him to
a complete stop and even send the car backwards.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Sno car whipped around and down the trail. As the roadway swung to
the south slope of the range, the track in the fresh snow cut by the
lead vehicle turned dark gray and then almost black. When the present
storm had ended and before new snow fell again, the south slopes would
again be stained with clouds of black, mono-molecular film, gushing
out in clouds behind spray jets of the survey planes. Each successive
layer was treated, lessening the evaporative surface effects of the
sun upon the south slopes and holding as much of the moisture-giving
snow to the earth for controlled runoff. A pair of fresh elk-tracks
came down the side of the mountain and cut across the trail and Troy
braked to peer through the trees for a glimpse of the animals. But
they had vanished, frightened by the sudden intrusion of the men.

A half hour later and four thousand feet lower, the trail joined a
wider and more traveled road. Alec turned onto the road and increased
speed. A few minutes later, the Sno cars flashed by a sign reading
"Elk City--4 miles." Alec cut speed and waited for Troy to pull
alongside, then the two cars glided slowly to the edge of the
wilderness community. At the outskirts of the little town the snow on
the road came to an abrupt end. Chemically-treated paving kept the
roadways warm and bare of snow. Ahead, the pavement into town was wet
and glistening and even falling snow had stopped. Rear skis were again
retracted and the front wheels lowered for non-snow driving and then
the two vehicles rumbled slowly into Elk City.

They came to a halt at the ranger station and dismounted.

"Let's call for a taxi and then go for a cup of coffee and another
bite," Troy said. "I'm starved again."

"You and that hollow stomach to match your head," Alec grunted.

They entered the ranger station. Behind the counter, one of the four
rangers on permanent duty at the station was transferring a radar
storm plot onto a weather chart. He glanced up as the two men entered.

"Back so soon," he commented. "That was a quick trip. Get the job
done?"

"Neither rain, snow or sun stops the Division of Agriculture in its
appointed rounds," Troy said flippantly. "Harry, call Spokane and tell
'em we're ready for a pickup, please."

The ranger reached for a mike. "Spokane Region," he called, "this is
Elk City station."

"This is Spokane," came the reply.

"Your two snow boys are here," Harry said, "looking for a lift. Can
you send a 'copter after them?"

"Affirmative, Elk City," Spokane communicator replied. "We'll pick
them up in about forty-five minutes."

"Thanks, Harry," Troy said. "We're going to take a walk uptown and get
something to eat. If the chopper should get here sooner, tell him
we'll be right back."

"O.K.," the ranger said, "but there's a pot of coffee on the stove in
the kitchen if you want to save yourself the walk."

Alec grimaced. "I had a cup of that concentrated sulphuric acid you
call coffee on the way up," he said. "No thanks, anyway. What do you
make that stuff out of? Leftover road oil?"

"Man's drink for a real man," the ranger grinned. "Us forestry men
learn to make coffee from pine pitch. Makes a man outta you."

"Huh," Alec sniffed as they turned to leave, "pine pitch is just sap
and anyone who'd drink that stuff deserves the name--'sap' that is."

The ranger grinned as the hydrologists walked out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Troy and Alec were walking back up the street to the station when the
big cargo copter settled down to the pad at the rear of the station.
They hurried their pace and got to their Sno cars. By the time they
had driven around to the pad, the copter crew had lowered the ramp and
they drove directly up and into the craft. A row of front-wheel racks
studded the after wall of the cargo deck and Troy and Alec nosed their
Sno cars into the racks. By the time they had cut power and climbed
out, the crewmen had cargo locks on both vehicles.

The crew chief closed the ramp and punched a signal button. As Troy
and Alec climbed up the gangway to the crew-passenger deck, the big
jet rotors were already churning and the copter lifted into the again
lightly falling snow.

The hydrologists settled into seats for the short ride to Spokane. The
copter swung to the northwest, roaring a thousand feet above the
snow-covered mountain tops. They soared over the Clearwater River that
flowed to its confluence with the once-mighty Snake River at Lewiston
where both vanished into a subterranean aqueduct. As they neared
Spokane, the country began to flatten out into the great Columbia
basin, where once nearly a fifth of the nation's entire electrical
output was produced in a series of hydroelectric dams on the great
river and its tributaries. A century ago, high tension power
transmission lines and towers laced the face of the nation, carrying
power from the waterways to the wheels of industry and cities hundreds
of miles away. Like the dams, they, too, were gone and each industry
and metropolis and village generated its own power with compact
nuclear reactors.

The copter dropped down into an airways lane as it came over the edge
of the suburbs of Greater Spokane. The air lane followed almost
directly above one of the crowded ten-lane North American Continental
Thruways that cut five-mile wide swaths across the continent from
Fairbanks to the southern borders of Mexico; from San Francisco to
Washington, D.C., and from Montreal to Vancouver.

As the chopper settled down over the heliport at Region Six
headquarters, Troy and Alec climbed back down to the cargo deck and
went to their Sno cars. On the ground, the ramp came down and they
drove out of the copter and across the pad towards Snow Hydrology
Section's motor park. The Sno cars were parked in the garage for a
service check and with their ruckpacs slung over one shoulder, they
headed for the offices.

The prominent peak of Mount Spokane north of the city gleamed
intermittently as the sun began to break through the remnants of the
storm now blowing away to the east.

"I hope I don't get transferred out of the Region," Alec said moodily
as he surveyed the distant mountain.

"Why should you?" Troy asked.

"You never know what's going to happen when you step up a notch," Alec
replied. "You know that both of us are due for grade promotion
sometime this year to senior status. Depends on how many Grade One
senior hydrologists they need in the Region."

"Snow is snow," Troy shrugged. "It doesn't really make that much
difference to me. If they want me to move, I'll move."

"It's doesn't make much difference to you," his partner said, "because
you're not married yet. But with Carol and Jimmy, it makes a lot of
difference to me. It's bad enough living like we do here, jamming in
against five hundred other families in the complex. The only thing
that makes it worthwhile is the chance to get away from the city with
the family on our days off. I want that kid of mine to know what real
country looks and feels like. God help him if I should get transferred
back east."

"You could always resign," Troy said half seriously.

Alec stopped dead in his tracks and turned to stare at him. "Are you
out of your mind," he cried. "Resign from this for what? For the
chance to be buried in a city or a bureau for the rest of my life?
Never to see the mountains except on rare vacations and then with a
guide on my back? Never to see a river flowing or fight a trout? Have
my kid grow up with his only knowledge of the woods from history books
with an occasional trip to the zoo to see what a deer or elk looks
like. I'd rather half-starve as an autologger operator in some gyppo
timber camp than live like that."

"I was just kidding," Troy said. "When it comes right down to it, I
wouldn't be happy away from this either. Come on, let's check in with
the 'Scourge of the Northwest.'"

At SHS headquarters, they dropped their ruckpacs by the door and Alec
fished the faulty radiation gauge from his pack. Then they went in to
report to Snow Supervisor Morley Wilson, known affectionately to his
subordinates as "The Scourge."

The leather-textured face of the senior engineer turned up at them as
they entered the office. Wilson's face was tanned and weather-beaten
by the sun, wind and snows of a thousand mountains and it was rumoured
that when he went up for annual physical examination, the lab merely
ran pollution tests on the ice water that flowed in his veins instead
of blood.

"I didn't expect you two back so soon," he said with a scowl. "What's
the matter? Couldn't you get to the gauge?"

Alec laid the faulty device on Wildon's desk. "No trouble, boss. Just
speedy work by your best juniors."

Wilson snorted. "You must have had the chopper land you on the ridge
in spite of orders." He reached for the gauge. Troy and Alec exchanged
smiles. The old man had received a full report of the conditions in
the Sawtooths together with a check on their activities at least an
hour ago. He knew what they had to contend with to switch the
gauge--and he knew they knew he was just barking.

"Another one of the transmitters shot again," he muttered. Wilson
punched the intercom on his desk. "Shiver," he called, "get up here
and get this radiation gauge you said was so good."

In the communications repair section three levels underground, the
senior comm tech snapped out a fast "yessir" and bolted for the door.

"What did you leave up there?" Wilson asked.

"We put a CS gauge thirty feet from the survey point," Troy said. "It
was working fine and it's on a flat shelf with virtually the same pack
and strata formation this one came out of."

"What's it look like up there," Wilson asked. The supervisor was
nearing the end of forty years of service with Snow Hydrology and in
his early days, the last vestiges of the crude "man-on-the-spot"
surveys were still in operation.

Despite loud and emphatic defense and reliance on the new and complex
techniques of electronic measurements, he still felt the need to feel
the texture of the snows himself and to observe with his own eyes the
sweep of the snow pack molded against the shoulder of a towering crag.
Chained to the desk by responsibility, he used the eyes of his junior
engineers and surveyors to keep a semblance of the "seat of the pants"
technique of forecasting that he had lived with and lived by.

"The pack is good," Alec reported, "and what we saw of the south
slopes is holding well. It was snowing from the time we got into the
area until we pulled out this morning, so we didn't really get a long
sighting. But what we saw looked fine."

The old man nodded with satisfaction. "You two go get out of that
field gear and then report back here in an hour. We've got a staff
conference and I want you two in on it." He dismissed them with a wave
of his hand and went back to the reports piled on his desk.

In the locker room, Troy and Alec peeled out of the snowsuits and
changed into street clothes. "I wonder what's in the wind," Troy asked
thoughtfully. "Must be something big enough to bug the old man into
brain-picking, otherwise he'd never stoop to juniors before making a
decision."

"Probably just wants to set up next summer's vacation schedule," Alec
grunted as he bent over to slip on his shoes. "You can bet that if it
were something important, he'd never be concerned with the opinions of
the likes of us."

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later they walked back into the supervisor's office to find it
jammed with the heads of all sections together with leading techs and
junior engineers. "Go next door and grab yourselves a couple of
chairs," Wilson barked, "and then get back in here."

When the full staff was assembled, Wilson stood up and faced the
group.

"This won't take too long," he began, "but it's a problem that I want
all of you to be considering during the next fifteen days because we
have to come up with a reasonable solution to the problem--just
another one that's been dumped in our laps."

He pressed a button on his desk and a mural, three-dimensional
typographical map of the five-state Region Six flashed on the wall
behind him. Across the top of the map was a line of illuminated
numerical panels that shifted in values before their eyes, changing
with the factor information constantly being fed into the computers.
These were the constant monitoring reports from the regional computers
on snow pack, moisture content, streamflow, water consumption and
other that formulated the equations that the forecasters and ration
controllers user in determining water supply allocations.

Hundreds of multi-colored lights on the map indicated industrial,
municipal, domestic and agricultural water use facilities.

"We've been asked to assist in the critical situation in Region Five,"
Wilson continued. "Region Five included California, Nevada, Arizona
and Utah. As you've seen from the combined western forecasts, snow
pack has been much below normal this year in Region Five and has for
the past three years. We've been piping a lot of water down the line
and so far, they've been able to meet demands. But a new factor has
entered.

"For the past three years, again as many of you are aware, Space
Department has been gearing for the start of Venus Colony. I'm not
expert in this field but from what friends of mine who are closely
associated with the project tell me, there's a big difference in
building a vehicle to carry a survey and exploration team and the
technology involved in building both vehicles and life-support
equipment for a colony operation. All of which leads up to the current
problem.

"Our friends in Space have now firmed up the specialized equipment
they want and the quantities. Prototype of all of this gear have been
built and tested, mostly fabricated by the Southern California Space
and Electronics Complex. Now they're ready to go into production. But
the fly in the ointment is that it calls for five new production
units.

"With the Southern Cal Complex operating under water deficits plus
transmission costs for the past three years and with no improvement in
sight, they just don't have the water to handle five more major
industrial units. Their population census is also up again. This means
the units will have to be located somewhere else, possibly only until
the production schedule is completed; possibly on a permanent basis if
Venus Colony pans out. The trained manpower pool is in Southern Cal
Complex and it will have to be displaced to wherever the units are
located."

       *       *       *       *       *

Wilson paused for a moment and looked around the room.

"I can see that you're way ahead of me. And you're right. We've been
asked to make a projection to determine if we can handle them in
Region Six, preferably in the Portland-Seattle Industrial Complex or
near thereto."

He indicated a stack of bound manuscripts on his desk. "These are
copies of the full prospectus of the proposed units; power output,
equipment, manpower, water absorption, water return, domestic and
municipal demands, et cetera, for the project.

"I want each of you to take a copy, study it in the light of your
specialty, and then submit your recommendations to your department and
section chiefs within the next ten days. The departmental and
sectional reports will be consolidated for my study and then we'll
make our report to Washington.

"But let me give you this parting thought to keep foremost in your
consideration. In all probability, whether we agree to it or not,
we're going to get stuck with the units. We have the most dependable
water recharge in the nation and we have the physical space for the
units. Dislocating and trying to relocate just the people involved in
this project is a monumental thing in itself and would be a virtual
impossibility east of the Mississippi. You can bet your last cent that
this was all taken into account before Washington ever politely
suggested that we review the situation and give our opinion.

"I don't think they give a damn about our opinions. They just want to
see how lavishly they can operate with what we offer. So bear that in
mind for my information. I need to know as close to the absolute last
drop of moisture where this is going to put us and where we have to
shut down and cut corners throughout the Region to accommodate the new
industry.

"Now we're not going to get this solved or anything else done by my
talking about it. Get out of here and back to work. You've got ten
days to come up with the answer and you can expect to be saddled with
the additional production units within one hundred twenty days. That's
all gentlemen except to say that, as occurred when I asked you two
years ago for a similar projection for the laser unit complex, I will
not accept any solutions calling for a pogrom of all Anglo white
Protestants between the ages of six and sixty."

The meeting broke up in laughter as the engineers crowded up to the
desk to pick up copies of the prospectus.

Troy and Alec fell into step with Jordan Plumber, their section chief.

"One thing you have to admire in the old man," Alec commented, "he has
faith in his staff to come up with the answers."

"Hm-m-m," Plumber sniffed, "he doesn't need faith. He's a realist from
the old school. He knows that we have no choice and all that's left is
to come up with a formula for living with the situation. It doesn't
bother him a bit how we figure this one. He knows we have to work it
out."

Back at their combination laboratory and office area, the trio split
up to their respective cubicles to go over the report. Troy and Alec,
as semispecialists in snow depth and moisture gauges, would study the
problem from the viewpoint of increasing the accuracy and volume of
their instruments in inventorying Region Six snowfall. Other members
of the headquarters staff would tackle it from soil moisture content;
stored water capabilities; increasing domestic, municipal and
industrial water economies; while the meteorology men would venture
even farther into left field via data, formula and Ouija board, to
increase the potential future limits of their forecasts.

The key to the entire problem lay in streamflow forecasting. Accuracy
in predicting the amount of water entering the vast underground
reservoirs now had reached ninety-eight point three per cent. Yet in
the remaining one point seven per cent was the equivalent of more than
seventy-five million acre feet of water. The question now was--how
much more water would the new units require and could the forecast be
projected another tenth or more percentage points closer to supply
than demand.

That was the basic problem. There were thousands of allied problems
involved, ranging from where and how the additional water would be
stored and channeled and how it could be used after the new factories
had had initial use.

At 1630, Alec stuck his copy of the prospectus, together with some
other more pressing reports, in his briefcase and headed for home. He
stopped in the door to Troy's cubicle.

"You going to work all night?" he asked.

Troy swung his feet down from his desk and snubbed out his cigarette.
"Nope," he replied, "but I thought I'd finish reading this before I
shoved off. After all, I haven't got a section chief waiting for me at
home with a stop-watch in hand to make sure I report in on time. All I
have waiting for me at the apartment is a good, cold highball."

Alec grinned: "See you in the morning, doctor."

Troy swung his feet back up onto the desk and went back to the
Southern Cal report.

In the parking lot, Alec found his little sport jet and fired up. He
eased into the line of cars filing out of the headquarters compound
and shot into the stream of homeward-bound traffic on the state
expressway. The torrent of vehicles was moving along at an almost
steady seventy miles an hour. Alec worked his way into the middle lane
since he would be crossing the entire city to reach his apartment
complex on the north side. The expressway roar turned into a hollow
thunder as it threaded its way for five miles under the high NorCom
Thruway that carried high speed traffic across and around the city.

Troy finished reading the prospectus about an hour later and then he,
too, left the office. He drove to a small restaurant near Coeur
d'Alene for dinner and then, yawning and tired from the night in the
mountains and the work of the past two days, headed for his small
bachelor apartment on the east side of Spokane.

He watched the vidicast for a half hour and then mixed a nightcap,
downed it, bathed and piled into bed. He was sound asleep by 2000.

Across the city, young Jimmy Patterson played with his father, howled
and talked his mother out of taking a bath and was put to bed. Alec
and Carol curled up on the divan to watch the same show Troy was
viewing. At 2030 they, too, were in bed and asleep. The sounds of the
city were deadened by the high insulation construction of the
building. Possibly half of the nearly three million residents of
Greater Spokane were asleep in their beds shortly after midnight, but
the other half were either at work or play when the earthquake hit.

There were three distinct and violent temblors, lasting from one to
four minutes. The great buildings of the metropolis swayed, glass
shattered and fell amidst the screams of frightened thousands. But the
city was built to withstand fringe nuclear destruction and the damage
was relatively light. The shocks rocked the entire Northwest and were
felt from British Columbia as far south as San Francisco and east to
Salt Lake City.

In his bachelor apartment, Troy was sprawled on the edge of his bed
when the first shock wave struck. The shuddering, stomach-churning
wave tossed him to the floor and a picture dropped to smash against
the floor.

[Illustration]

"What the hell," Troy exclaimed in shocked sleepiness as he tried to
get up. The floor continued to sway under him. He got to his hands and
knees and fought to orient himself and his thinking about what was
happening.

His first thought was an explosion and he staggered toward the window.
There was no sign of one. A minute later, the second and lighter
tremblor hit and he grabbed for support.

Across the city Alec and Carol sat up wide awake during the last
instants of the first jolt. Without a word and with a single mind,
they rushed for the other bedroom to seize and comfort the frightened
and crying Jimmy. They were clutching him closely when the second
shock struck.

"It's a quake," Alec analyzed calmly, "nothing to be frightened
about." He, too, walked to the window to see if there were outer signs
of damage. When it looked fairly normal, he went back to the bed to
help Carol calm the frightened child.

"Mother Nature is just shaking things into place a little," Alec told
his son. "It's nothing to fear, old man. Come on, let's go out in the
kitchen and get a cup of hot chocolate and then we'll all go back to
bed."

Jimmy wiped his eyes and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. "Can
I sleep in with you and Mom," he asked.

Alec ruffled the already mussed hair. "Sure you can, big fellow."

They went into the kitchen and Carol began making cocoa. Alec was
fishing in the cupboard for the cookie jar when the vidiphone buzzed.
He went to the wall and pressed the "Answer" button.

The worried face of Jordan Plumber snapped onto the screen.

"Alec," he said grimly, "get over to the office right away. All hell's
broken loose."

"I'll be there as soon as I can dress," Alec said. "What's happened?"

"The quake has cracked the Spokima Reservoir. Right now we've already
lost nearly a million acre feet and God only knows how much more is
going out. Snap it up." The screen went blank.

Alec turned to Carol. Her face was ashy and she bit on a knuckle to
fight for control.

He put an arm around her. "We'll manage it, baby. I've got to go." He
turned and hurried from the kitchen to dress. At the door he paused
and turned back. "Fill up every possible container you've got empty
with water. Right now! Fill the bathtub and half the kitchen sink.
Just use the other half for drain. And make every drop count. I don't
know how long I'll be gone but I'm sure they'll be cutting the
domestic water off any minute now."

       *       *       *       *       *

Alec heard the wail of sirens in the distance as he climbed into his
car. Threading his way onto the expressway, he switched the radio to
standard broadcast band.

[Illustration]

"... Is little damage reported," the voice of newscaster said in
matter-of-fact tones. "Seismologists at the University of California
and Seattle University have placed the epicenter of the quake within
fifty miles of Pullman, Washington. We repeat, there has been little
damage and no reports of personal injury in the Spokane area. However,
communications with the Pullman-Moscow, Idaho area have been
temporarily disrupted. Early reports from the quake center seem to
indicate possibility of heavy damage and possible injuries there.
There is no confirmation at this time but stay tuned for details as
they ..." the announcer paused, then continued. "Here is a bulletin
just handed me from the Greater Spokane Municipal Authority.

"The quake has caused some minor damage to water mains in some areas
in the city. Crews are now being dispatched to the scene to make
repairs but in the meanwhile, domestic water supplies are being shut
down while the repairs are in progress to conserve water supplies.
Only emergency water line are being maintained for fire and disaster
control. The Authority says water service will be resumed shortly and
there is no need for alarm."

Alec shut off the radio and concentrated on the traffic. By the time
he reached Regional headquarters, traffic flow was already increasing
and he caught glimpses of family cars piled high with obviously
tossed-in belongings, heading out of the city.

The gate to Region Six headquarters normally stood open twenty-four
hours a day. Now it was closed as an armed security guard stopped him.
The officer stooped and peered into the car. "Hi, Dr. Patterson, go
right in." He waved to another guard on the gate and the portals swung
open.

"What's the check for, officer?" Alec asked.

"I don't really know, doctor," the guard replied. "Must be something
to do with the quake. All I know is that we got ordered to check all
persons coming in and not allow anyone in who's not connected with the
division." He waved Alec ahead.

Patterson parked his car and walked quickly to Snow Hydrology. He
entered the offices to be struck by a bedlam of sound. Men were
scurrying from cubicles, hands loaded with papers. Others were talking
rapidly to distant vidiphone reporters. Alec skirted around one group
huddled over some topographical maps and headed for his office.

From across the room Plumber spotted him and shouted: "Alec, staff
briefing in the conference auditorium in five minutes."

Alec nodded and went into his office. He gathered a notebook from a
desk drawer and then walked around the partition and looked in to see
if Troy had arrived. Braden's coat was hanging from the back of his
chair, but he was not in the office. Notebook in hand, Alec headed
down the corridor for the big conference room in the adjacent wing.
People from every section in the headquarters were streaming towards
the same location and the outer doors along the corridor kept swinging
open as latecomers dashed in.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alec joined the crowd squeezing into the auditorium conference room.
Inside, he looked around and spotted Troy against the side wall. He
worked his way to his side.

"Hi" Troy said. "How's Carol and Jimmy?"

"They're O.K.," Alec said. "I told her to fill up everything in the
house with water and I think she had time to get them filled before
the water shut down. How bad is it?"

"It's not good," Troy said. "At this point, I don't think anyone knows
just how bad or how good it really is. Spokima ruptured and is
spilling but it doesn't appear to be going out too fast. The worst
situation seems to be in the Columbia Riverbed System. Unofficially,
the grapevine has it that Moses Lake and McNary tanks have had it and
God only knows how many aqueducts have been fractured. We're in deep
trouble, buddy."

The babble of voices in the jammed auditorium stilled as the figure of
Regional Director James Harbrace and his staff of sectional
supervisors came onto the stage.

Harbrace moved quickly to the rostrum microphones.

"I won't waste words or time," he began. "As of ten minutes ago,
Regions Five and Six have been on Emergency One Condition. They will
remain on Emergency One indefinitely--certainly until we have had a
chance to assess full damages to the systems and have made what
repairs we can."

Emergency One conditions put all water control for the entire United
States under the direct supervision of Harbrace and his counterpart
director in Region Five. It meant all but emergency fire and disaster
systems shut off; industrial supplies halted; domestic waters limited
to a pint of water per person per day. Since it was midwinter,
agricultural waters were not running in the Northwest. But in Region
Five, already in short supply, only those crops nearing maturity and
having essential food needs for the populace, would be given minimal
supplies to bring them to harvest. The later-growing crops were
doomed.

"Here's what we know right now," Harbrace turned to an illuminated map
of the region and using a light beam indicator, began pointing to the
various storage and supply facilities.

"Spokima is leaking at the rate of a quarter million acre feet an
hour. We've got sub scanners working the bottom now to survey the
crack. The bottom has gone out of Moses Lake and the whole east end of
McNary is shot. Hanford has enough water in emergency storage to
continue reduced power output for about another seventy-two hours."

The point of light moved east towards the Snake, Clearwater and
Kootenai rivers in Idaho.

"All aqueducts leading into the Columbia system have been closed and
we can give thanks that this has come in winter rather than in the
spring runoff. Even so, we're going to have some flooding problems as
the rivers back up.

"We feel that the aqueducts in the Pullman area are probably gone
although we haven't verified. Our big problem now is to find out what
transfer systems are still functional and start salvaging what we can.

"Secondly, if and when we can make repairs, we've got to get water
back into the critical areas and figure some way of storing and
valving to keep it functional.

"That's the big picture and it's damned black. Public Information is
taking care of the video and radio information. We want to avoid panic
if we can and to avoid mass exodus into outlying areas that couldn't
possibly cope with the population demands because of the messed-up
system. We've got to handle it where we are, keep the people in place
and face it here. And by here I mean not only Spokane but Portland,
Seattle and all the rest of the major cities. We live or die on this
situation. Now let's get to work. You'll have detailed instructions
from your section leaders in fifteen minutes."

       *       *       *       *       *

Back at Snow Hydrology, Alec and Troy lighted cigarettes and waited
for Plumber to show up with their assignments. Of all of the sections,
theirs was the one which would have the least immediate action. The
bulk of the emergency was falling on the waterflow and engineering
sections.

"Let's go have a look at the profiles," Troy suggested. "This quake
could have set off quite a few avalanches."

They went into the survey data room where a half dozen technicians
were running bank scans of the gauges throughout the Region. At the
desk on a raised dais in the center of the room, the junior duty
engineer was poring over a fresh set of graphs.

"How's it look, Walt?" Troy asked. The young engineer looked up at
them and smiled. "Hi Troy, Alec. Oh, not too bad from our point of
view." He indicated the graphs on his desk. "We've had some shifting
in loose pack and ice stratas along the Palouse Range, a little in the
Sheep Mountain Range. But so far, we've been lucky. The worst one is
right here, on Lookout Peak. She must have dumped at least a hundred
thousand tons down the slope and into the valley and she stripped
right down to the rock and took out every gauge on the way. Then it
piled up in the valley and knocked out all but three gauges there. And
they're reading anywhere from sixty-five to more than one hundred foot
depths. We'll lose some of that if it's not lying right for
retardation spraying."

The three engineers studied the new profiles as they came in from the
techs. They were huddled over the desk when Plumber entered the room
and joined them at the table.

"What's the word, Jordan?" Alec asked.

"Nothing for us right now," Plumber said. "We're to remain on standby
alert, possible fill-in in other sections for the time being. Then
we'll have to come up with some new figures as quickly as possible."

He glanced down at the charts and then asked the duty engineer, "How
many positions knocked out?"

"No reports from sixty-eight gauges on this last scan," Walt reported,
"most of them in Idaho. But there may be a few more before noon
tomorrow. According to my last avalanche report before this thing hit,
there should be at least ten more cornices that could have been
cracked by this shock but that haven't fallen yet. It's still snowing
over most of the Sawtooths but it's due to let up by dawn and a
warming trend set in. That ought to trigger the others and when they
go then we'll have just about all the replacement figures we'll get.
What's the chance for more quakes?"

Plumber shrugged. "Seismology says we can expect settling tremblors
for as long as four more weeks and possibly even another sharp jolt. I
wish those guys were a little more scientific in their predictions."

Troy hid a grin. "Want us to get ready to head back to the hills,
Boss?"

"No," Plumber said, "you two stay put for the moment. You just got
back and unless I really need you, I want you here for the moment.
I'll get a couple of other teams together to take care of the
replacements. For the time being, see what you can come up with in
some equations for the Pullman-Moscow potential east of the aqueducts.
Break it down, stream by stream for me. I can't tell you which systems
are going to be functioning or how we'll be able to divert if needed,
so keep the equations at gate-head pressures and flow."

The two engineers nodded and headed back to their offices. Alec
punched his home number on the vidiphone and Carol's face appeared on
the second ring. "Oh, Alec, I'm so glad you called, honey," she said.
"I've been worried sick since I heard the broadcast."

"You get that job done that I told you to do before I left," Alec
asked.

"All filled," Carol replied with a smile. "What do we do now,
darling?"

"You and Jimmy just stay put," Alec warned. "You've got a pretty good
supply of food in the apartment right now. In the morning, go down to
the store in the building and see what you can buy in the way of
staples and long-storage foods. And get all the juices you can. Don't
worry about the money end of it now. Spend it like it was going out of
style."

"That bad, Alec?"

"Nothing that can't be handled," he replied, "but it may take a while
and it may get awfully dry before it gets wetter. And listen Carol,
you and Jimmy are to stay in the apartment and don't let anyone else
in. You understand?"

She nodded.

"I don't want you or the boy out on the street under any
circumstances. I'll probable be here at the office for at least
another day, but if I'm not, then we won't be away for very long. I
don't know when I can get home, but I'll call you every chance I get."

"All right Alec," Carol said. "I love you, darling. Do be careful."

Alec smiled and blew her a kiss and then snapped off the connection.

       *       *       *       *       *

Troy had picked up the latest revised ten-, thirty and sixty-day
meteorology predictions and was beginning to lay them up against the
strip segments of the snow profiles from north to south along the
length of Region Six. He was engrossed in the problem when Alec stuck
his head in the cubicle.

"I'm bugged," the chunky engineer said. "Got a moment to talk?"

Troy shoved the papers back and waved to the chair. "Have a seat
doctor and unburden yourself. Relax, let your mind go blank. Tell me
about your childhood. Did you hate to take baths? Does the sound of
flowing water stir subconscious hatreds in you? Dr. Braden will
analyze all your problems."

Alec grinned and palled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to
his partner.

"Now that I think about it," he quipped, "I used to tangle almost
every day in fifth grade with a kid that looked just like you.
Seriously, Troy, I've got a wild idea and I want to try it out on you
before I hit Jordan or The Scourge with it."

Troy leaned back and put his feet on the desk and listened.

"Actually, this is a little out of our line," Alec continued slowly,
"but something we did up in the hills day before yesterday brought
this on. The idea stems from the way we excavated that gauge, yet it
calls for an entirely different idea and technique.

"Now I haven't the slightest idea how bad Spokima is cracked or just
where the crack is, but I think there may be a way to recover some of
the lost water. And if it works, it might be used on Moses Lake and
McNary."

He paused and pulled a pad of scratch paper towards him and brought
out a pen to make rough sketches. Troy swung his feet off the desk and
leaned forward to watch.

"The idea came to me," Alec said, continuing to sketch, "from the
runoff trough you cut to carry off the snow melt from around the hot
box. Now just suppose that the crack in the reservoir is along the
bottom side, although that doesn't really make much difference ... yet
it might make the operation a little easier since it would concentrate
the leak runoff.

"We know the reservoir is set in the bed of the Columbia from the
confluence of the Spokane River down to old Grand Coulee. And we know
just what the strata formations are both below the reservoir and in
the aquifer downstream. That lost water is going into that strata and
is going to work its way down the slope of the terrain but it's also
going to level off on the first bedrock strata it hits and that's
where I think we can stop it.

"If we ran a deep and big enough bore down ahead of the flow and cut a
catch basin and then dropped a series of pumps into the basin, I think
we could save a lot of that water by getting back onto the surface."

Troy studied the sketch for a minute. "How are you going to sink a
bore that fast?"

"Laser," Alec replied simply.

"It would take one hell of a lot of industrial laser units," Troy
murmured thoughtfully, "but, if we could get them, it just might work.
What do we do if we can get the water back to the surface?"

"Same story," Alec pointed out. "If we can get the bores down behind
the old Grand Coulee Dam, then we cut a channel and drain it into the
old surface reservoir. Oh sure, we'll lose some surface evap until we
can get it back down underground again. But that would still be one
helluva lot better than letting millions of acre feet just seep out to
sea. And if we had to, we could use the lasers to cut a channel around
Grand Coulee and let it run down to the Okanogan where it would go
into the Lake Chelan reservoir."

Ten minutes later, Plumber and the two juniors were closeted with
Supervisor Wilson, going over Alec's plan. When Alec was through
talking, Wilson flipped a switch on his desk intercom. "Harbrace
here," the speaker sounded.

"Jim," Wilson said, "this is Morley. A couple of my harebrained kids
have come up with an idea that makes sense and looks like it might
salvage a lot of lost water. But we've got to move on it right now if
it's going to work."

"Get them over here," Harbrace snapped.

       *       *       *       *       *

Six hours later, the first light of the cold winter morning began
competing with the batteries of floodlight tubes banked around a
rocky, gravel-based site in the dry bed of the Spokane River. More
than three hundred men had been thrown into the experimental project
and for three hours a steady stream of huge cargo carriers and
aircraft had been piling equipment around the site. A cluster of men
stood around a compact pole-beam laser unit aimed at the ground.
Upstream a line of metal poles extended up from the dry river bottom
for a mile.

"This should be the last one," Alec said. "Let 'er go."

The laser operator fired and the light beam shot down into the earth,
burning a narrow hole. "We'll set this one at one hundred and ten
feet," Alec told the operator. The man nodded and turned back to his
control panel. Two minutes later another metal pole was dropped into
the hole. Projecting from the bottom of the pole were several soil
moisture detectors. Extensions were coupled on section by section as
the electrodes dropped down into the hole. A dozen of the eight-foot
sections went down with the last section projecting from the river
bed. A technician slapped a meter box onto the connections. "Dry
here," he reported.

Alec, Troy and Harbrace, together with Wilson and a half dozen
engineers from research and hydraulics and two laser engineers,
consulted substrata profile readings.

"Well, if this scheme is going to work," the senior hydraulics man
said, "this is the place to try it. We're still ahead of the seepage
but not for long. We've got a good quarter-mile of deep rock for the
sump hole. Let's try it." Harbrace nodded in assent and the group
dispersed to the side of the dry river bed. Alec and Troy trudged up
the shallow slope to a mess truck sitting on the flat. "Nothing we can
do now but pray," Alec muttered. They picked up cups of hot coffee and
walked back to the bank to watch the operations.

The light laser unit had been moved out and ten huge crawler cargo
carriers with van were being mover into a wide circle around the last
soil moisture stake. Crews were unshipping the beam heads of the giant
industrial laser guns and making power connections to the series of
mobile power reactors that had been set up on the riverbank.

When all of the units were in place and connected, the crews pulled
out. At a safe distance from the bore site, a master control panel had
been jury-rigged to control all units simultaneously. Two programmers
and a pair of operators sat behind shields while the senior hydro
engineer took a place between them and focused on his remote video eye
at the site. A quarter of a mile away, vehicles still moved up with
new equipment, but the remaining vehicles and other gear had been
pulled back from the river bed to the bank.

The hydraulics chief looked around at Harbrace and waited. "Let's try
it," the director ordered.

"Three seconds at a time," the engineer ordered. The programmers
checked the timer cutoffs for a final time. "Ready?" The operators
nod.

"Fire," the engineer yelled.

Ten massively concentrated beams of high intensity light waves slammed
into the gravel bed. The earth shook and a great cloud of dust arose
from the site, momentarily hiding the laser units. A light morning
breeze drifted the dust downstream in a minute.

Ten huge holes gaped in the river bed underneath the laser beam heads
mounted on adjustable cranes out and away from their power units.

"Fire," came the order again. This time there was nothing but the
trembling of the earth as the beams cut a molten path through rock,
clay, sand and boulders.

"Measure," the engineer ordered. A radar gauge bounced a beam off the
bottom of one of the holes. "Eighty-seven feet," the technician called
out.

"Change to a two-second shot." The programmers changed timing.

"Fire and measure."

"One hundred and seventeen feet," the tech called out.

"That's it," the engineer ordered. "Core it out."

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty minutes later, a hundred-foot wide bore extended down to bed
rock. While the lasers were coring out the hole, six cargo cranes on
their 400-ton carrier chassis had been moved into position. Now the
cranes hooked onto three of the lasers, two cranes to each unit.
Minutes later, the light beam units were lowered to the bottom.
Additional video monitors together with portable lights followed them
down into the hole. The lasers were aimed upstream and began burning a
fan-shaped cut into the solid rock. The other three lasers were
lowered down to join them and the great catch basin began to take
shape.

If the geological survey was correct, the basin would be a good ten
feet below the water-bearing gravel strata that should be carrying the
bulk of the lost water from the ruptured underground Spokima Reservoir
fifteen miles upstream. The river bed lay in a slight natural fault
and the water should follow beneath the old river bed without too much
side loss.

In a half hour the six units had carved out a cavern in the solid
rock fifty feet high and extending six hundred feet upstream from the
vertical bore. The engineers divided the units, three to a side and
began widening to each side of the old stream bed and then working
back down towards the surface bore.

While the work was going on beneath the ground, technicians maintained
a constant monitoring of the moisture gauges upstream. The first of
the four huge, sealed nuclear sump pumps had just touched the floor of
the basin at the vertical bore when the tech at the gauge farthest
upstream yelped, "It's wet!"

Harbrace and the hydro engineer jumped for the communications phone.

"How deep is it?" the engineer snapped.

"Forty-two feet," came the reply, "now it's forty-seven. Moisture
content increasing. This is the head and it's coming fast."

"Get those lasers outta there," the engineer roared, "and get those
other pumps down, fast."

More cranes were clustered around the grate hole and the three other
pumps went quickly to the bottom. Down in the cavernous basin, the
laser rolled quickly back to the bore hole where crews slammed
magnaclamps on them and lofted them to the surface.

By the time they were starting to rise, three more closer gauges were
reporting underground water flow.

As soon as the first two lasers reached the surface and were swung
onto the gravel bed, they were sent waddling on their tracked carriers
a hundred feet upstream beyond the upper end of the underground
emergency cavern. The beams were set on angle and seconds later the
light lanced out and down into the earth, smashing down through the
strata and punching two great holes into the roof of the upper end of
the cavern. Clouds of superheated steam gushed out of the twin
punctures as the beams shut off. The beams had burned through the head
of the seeping waters. Now the other four lasers were on the line and
in rapid order, a dozen more holes were on punched down through the
bed and into the catch basin. The upstream roof of the cavern fell in
for forty feet and a torrent of mud cascaded into the basin.

The instant the last beam closed down a roar arose from the workers
clustered about the lip of the vertical pump bore. A wall of water
came surging down from the upstream end of the cavern and smashed into
the bore hole wall in a muddy, seething maelstrom. The strata-borne
water had found the hole and were pouring down into the cavern and
catch basin. The water began rising in the walls of the hole, sealed
into a shining shaft of fused rock and silicon by the laser beams.

"It works," Troy yelled, pounding his partner on the back, "you
harebrained son of an engineer, it works."

Alec's face was wreathed in smiles as the two of them hurried down the
bank to the edge of the bore. By the time they reached the lip, the water
level had risen past the underground upstream mouth of the catch basin and
was boiling steadily upwards past the sixty-foot mark towards the
surface. Despite the vent holes and the volume of water seeping through
the strata from the ruptured Spokima Reservoir, there still wasn't enough
pressure to raise the water level much above the fifty-foot mark, once the
catch basin filled. That was the purpose of the four nuclear pumps in the
sump hole. Their great million-gallon-a-minute jets forced the bore hole
water up to the surface and kept sucking up the waters cascading now into
the cavern.

"Get back," Harbrace yelled at the men still near the edge of the
hole. "When it comes over it's going to blow and backwater."

       *       *       *       *       *

Troy and Alec joined the workmen and technicians hurrying back to the
safety of the riverbank. Two minutes later a deep-throated gurgle
echoed in the cold morning air and huge bubble, then a geyser of water
shot up into the air in a cloud of moisture and vapor spray. It fell
back to the dry river bed, spread once again upon the gravel that had
known only the gentle touch of rainfall for three-quarters of a
century and then boiled and roiled in a gathering head downstream
rolling loose boulders and logs in its teeth.

The water level in the river bed continued to rise and a backwater
began forming, extending nearly a quarter of a mile upstream before it
stopped. Now the bore hole was visible only as a muddy boil of
turbulence churning in the center of the newly-flowing river.

The regional director came over to Troy and Alec and slapped the pair
on the back. "You two have done a terrific thing here," he said with a
broad smile.

"Not me," Troy protested. "This was all Alec's idea. I never thought
the thing would work."

"Where's the water going?" Alec asked.

Harbrace pointed downriver to the hidden wall of the old Grand Coulee
Dam around the curve in the river bed. "We're dumping into the Grand
Coulee until we can get it back underground, probably into Chelan.
Meanwhile, we're going to see if your idea can be used at Moses lake
and McNary."

The great convoy of equipment and men was already on the move to join
the other task forces of similar equipment already on site at the two
other major damage locations.

"Nothing more for us to do here now, and the hydraulics people can
take it from here," Harbrace said. "I'm heading back to Spokane. You
two want to ride back with me?"

They turned and walked towards Harbrace's personal copter waiting
beside the road a couple of hundred yards away.

Without warning, the earth began to shift beneath their feet and the
trio staggered on the rolling surface. From deep within the ground
came a brief but ominous rumble. Harbrace stumbled and would have
fallen as the ground shook had not the two younger men caught him. The
shock was over in less than a minute.

"My God," Harbrace breathed, "not again."

He spun and looked towards the river. A wash of waves from the flowing
current lapped against the bank but from the center of the stream the
waters continued to boil. All three men silently watched for a full
minute. From the south where the tail of the convoy was still visible,
a light survey car came racing back down the road towards the river.

It slid to a halt beside the bank and Hall, the senior hydro engineer,
leaped out and came running towards the director and the two junior
engineers.

"Is it still pumping?" he panted anxiously as he surveyed the waters.

The four men eyed the boil for another half minute. Now it was just a
churning pool in the middle of the waters, no longer bubbling higher
than the surface of the waters. "It's still pumping," Hall muttered,
"but something's wrong."

He jumped for his car and grabbed the radio. "Swenson, Baker," he
called, "hold it up. Get that pump-monitoring rig back here on the
double. And get the rest of that gear turned around and headed back
this way. We've got more trouble."

The other three men had walked to the survey car. "What do you think's
wrong," Harbrace asked.

"I dunno," the hydro engineer said. "Maybe the shock triggered the
pile dampers on one of the pumps. Maybe something else." He squinted
at the barely churning waters over the bore hole. "Can't say until we
get a monitor on those pumps. If it's just a malfunction in one of the
units, I can dump another one down there. If it's something else,
we'll have to see then. One thing's sure, they aren't all pumping."

       *       *       *       *       *

The pump section vehicles had been hauled out of the convoy and were
already pulling up along the riverbank before the rest of the convoy
of heavy equipment was turned around.

In the big monitor van, technicians already were running remote checks
on the underwater pumps. The engineers and the director climbed into
the van to wait the word.

"Number One's O.K.," the section chief reported, "so's Number Two."
The three technicians at the monitor panel punched and re-punched
banks of buttons and switches and watched the patterns on
oscilloscopes.

"Something sour on Number Three," the chief said. "Can't say what
yet."

"Skip over to Four," Hall ordered. "Let's see if that's O.K., then you
can go back to Three."

In two minutes Number Four had been checked out in working order. The
analysis concentrated back to Number Three pump.

"I'm getting a steady pile reading," the board man reported, "as a
matter of fact, it's running a little hot. But no response to damping
effect. She's running wide open."

"Yeah," the section chief muttered as his eyes shifted along the array
of scopes on the panel, "I see that, but why aren't we getting any
head pressure?"

The board men continued to run new series of response checks on the
rest of the pump system. Outside, the head of the heavy equipment
convoy came to a halt and the crews climbed out to wait beside their
vehicles.

Five minutes later the board men finished their checks and then
conferred briefly with the section chief. He came over to the
engineers.

"I think we've got your answer," he said glumly, "but I don't think
you're going to like it. The best we can figure out is that the shock
must have created some kind of a lag turbulence down there and when it
was over the water piled into Number Four and slammed it over on its
side. Or maybe the shock just tipped it over. In any case, it's either
clogged the intake or jammed the nozzles. We don't know which. And
it's jammed the dampers."

"So," the hydraulics chief shrugged, "we put another unit down there."

"It's not that simple, Mr. Hall," the monitor chief continued. "That
pile's running wide open and no place to go. It's got to be stopped or
she'll blow right outta there. And if Four goes--blooey, there go the
other three."

The chief engineer sagged. "No chance of getting the dampers to
respond?"

The monitor man shook his head sadly.

Hall ran his hand tiredly over his face and stared silently at the
flickering oscilloscopes as if to force the damping device into
functioning by sheer will power.

He sighed and straightened up. "All right," he said, "how do we shut
it off. Is there an outer manual system?"

"There is," the monitor chief replied, "but in all likelihood it's
jammed, too, by the shock or tip-over--and I'm more inclined to buy
the tip-over than anything else."

"Any other way to shut it down?" Hall queried.

"Just one," the chief said. "Blow her apart chemically before she goes
critical. And that, chief, is a real tough one. Someone's got to go
down there and clamp some plastic blocks in the right place on the
pile housing. Even then, there's the chance that she might blow in the
wrong direction and the whole shebang will go up in big, fat mushroom
cloud."

Hall's eyes saddened. "If that's it," he sighed, "that's the way it
has to be. Let's get with it. Where does the plastic go?"

[Illustration]

"Better check that out with Barton in the main rig," the monitor chief
replied. "He's got the prints and he can show you the exact spot on
one of the spare pumps. Oh, and Mr. Hall," he paused, "you'd better
hurry it up. She's leaking a little of the pressure down there but
not nearly enough. I'd make a quick guess and say that we've got less
than two hours to either shut that pile down or relieve the pressure.
And if she's tipped, the time in getting it back up and checking out
damage on the pump system is going to take too long and it might not
be repairable. The best bet is to blow her."

Hall nodded and with Harbrace and the junior engineers in his wake
went to the central pump section vehicle.

Walking to the other vehicle, Alec looked at the water with stricken
eyes. "God in Heaven," he said aloud, "I never thought it would end
this way."

Harbrace broke stride and took Patterson gently by the arm.

"None of us did, Alec," he said. "This isn't your fault. You had a
fine idea and it worked. What happened afterwards is no worse than the
original quake that caused the damage. If this thing blows out, we
won't be out any more water than we would have been if you hadn't come
up with the idea in the first place."

"That's not what I meant," Alec said in a shaken voice. "If this does
blow out, not only do we lose the water but we're going to contaminate
this aquifer with radioactivity from here to the mouth of the
Columbia."

"I know that, too," Harbrace replied softly. "It's still not your
fault, son. And we're not licked yet. Come on."

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty minutes later, a double strand of durasteel cable stretched
across the three-hundred-foot wide current, suspended between the
raised crane towers of four of the mammoth crane carriers and passing
twenty feet above the churn of the bore hole.

Hall and a half dozen of his section chiefs stood at the base of one
of the makeshift towers. The chief hydraulic engineer had a headset
clamped on for contact with all the working units.

He turned to one of the men standing by. "Get me a pressure reading on
that hole," he ordered. "I want to know how much weight it's going to
take to get down through that mess."

"Why not just shut the other three down while we go down into the
hole?" the assistant asked.

"Calculated risk," Hall said. "If she's going to blow, it isn't going
to make any difference if the others are shut down or not. And, if we
can keep pumping while we're working, we're staying ahead of the flow
from the reservoir. Get me that reading."

The pressure report was back in minutes. "It'll take at least a
four-ton mass to get down there fast and keep from being bucked
around."

Hall looked around, "What have we got that's small enough and has that
weight or better?"

"How about a van tractor?" one of the supervisors suggested. "They
weigh closer to six tons but they're pretty compact."

"Fine," Hall snapped. "Rig it."

The bulky, almost square, tractor was rolled up and the rigging crews
were swarming over it, clamping suspension cables from the running
pulley that would ride the cable across the current.

"What's the radiation report?" Hall asked monitoring.

"Still building," came the reply. "But we've got a leak somewhere, Mr.
Hall. We're getting readings from the water down there. Not too much
yet, but it may change our time factor. I'd either get on it fast,
chief, or let's get outta here. That thing can go any minute now."

The tractor was rigged. Hall turned and bawled, "Where are those
divers?"

Alec Patterson and Troy Braden stepped out of a nearby van, dressed in
pressure suits and tanks, their helmet flaps open. Alec had a heavy
belt of ultra-high explosive plastic lashed around his midsection.
Troy carried a rack of small clamps strung across his shoulders.

"Where do you think you two are going?" Hall roared. "Get those suits
off and get outta here."

"Shut up and listen," Alec snarled. "I started this. I'll finish it.
This idiot partner of mine hasn't got any better sense than to go
along. We haven't time to argue, so just listen.

"Both of us have been trained in hydrology and have made many dives
before. We've both used this plastic and we've both handled hot stuff,
probably more than any of your people. Your man has checked us out on
the pump assembly and we know just what we're looking for. Let's go."

Hall glared at the pair for a second and then whirled to the rigged
tractor. "Get that canopy off that thing," he ordered. "They can ride
it down in the seat."

He turned back to the junior engineers. "Got lights?" They both
indicated a pair of sealed handbeams on their belts. "All right, get
aboard."

"Casey," Hall called over the intercom, "got that communications line
rigged?"

"All set, boss," came the answer. "It will run out the cable and down
the cab. I've left them plenty of slack to move around when they get
down there."

"O.K.," Hall waved to the riggers, "everybody get outta here. Casey,
plug them in."

Alec and Troy had entered the cab. The communications man leaned over
and coupled the phone system into their helmets and then waved at
Hall.

"You two hear?" Hall demanded.

"Loud and clear," Alec replied.

"All right," Hall ordered, "let's get with it. This is a general
order. All vehicles and personnel not directly involved, pull back a
full mile."

Men and equipment began moving away.

"O.K., Number One crane, lift 'em."

The crane operator on the near bank eased his gears into motion and
the six-ton tractor lifted into the air with Alec and Troy aboard.
When it was five feet above the ground, the crane on the opposite
shore began hauling the draw line and the vehicle swung out over the
water.

"Now listen closely," Hall ordered the pair in the swinging vehicle,
"from this point, you are in control. Stop your slide over the hold by
just yelling "Stop." Number one crane is your up and down operator and
also will pull you towards this bank. If you need to go forward or
backwards when you get inside the hole, just say which way and both
crane carriers will move in the direction you want. Got it?"

"Affirmative," Alec replied.

A second later he yelled "Stop." The pull halted and the heavy vehicle
swayed just a foot above the churn in the waters. Alec waited a minute
until the tractor quite swinging and then ordered, "Let's go down."

       *       *       *       *       *

Number One crane began paying out cable and the tractor and men
slipped beneath the surface of the turbulent waters.

Surging, silt-laden water rushed upwards past the sides of the heavy
cab and swirled around Troy and Alec. Both were clamped into the seat
by a steel mesh belt and the waters tore and whipped at them. Despite
the six-ton mass of the tractor, both men could feel it quiver against
the thrust of the waters rushing and breaking against its
undersurfaces. Although both had turned on their powerful suit lights,
the lamps made only a dim glow in the surging waters. When the tractor
had dropped some thirty feet, it was Troy who yelled "Hold it!"

The downward motion stopped.

"Let's get back against the wall," Troy yelled over the roar of the
torrent. "Those pumps are pretty well to the center of the bore and I
don't want to come down on top of one of them, even the bad one. Move
back!"

On shore, both cranes began inching up stream.

In the thundering bore, the tractor bumped against the wall of the
hole. "Hold it," Troy shouted. The carriers stopped. "Take 'er down."

Again the massive vehicle descended into the depths. The roaring
became louder with every foot and the constantly dinning noise rattled
the earphones of the crane and carrier operators. Hall stood on the
bank, his eyes glued to the thread of cable vanishing beneath the
waters.

The tractor was bumping against the wall with more violence and the
engineers could feel it tip and sway as the turbulence increased from
below.

"I think we're too close to Number Two pump," Alec yelled. "Let's get
a little more offshore." On the far bank, Number Two crane began
hauling the pulley towards him.

The undersurface bobbing lessened. "That's good, Number Two," Alec
shouted. The downward motion continued.

As suddenly as it began, the turbulence almost ceased and the sound
diminished in the black, watery hole. The big nuclear pumps stood
thirty feet high with their great jets at the top. The tractor had
descended blow the level of the jet thrust. At the same instant, there
was a forward motion and the tractor began to sweep toward the
downstream wall of the bore.

"Drop us, fast," Alec commanded. "We're being sucked."

Number One crane operator slammed his release button and the tractor
fell with a jarring crash to the floor of the catch basin. On the
floor, its mass held it in place against the drag of the three huge
pumps and the natural flow of the water.

The water was clearer and their lights penetrated a few feet into the
black-green hell around them.

"You see it?" Alec asked his partner.

"Not a thing," Troy replied, "but we can't be more than a few feet
from it. It's got to be somewhere in front of us and I think a little
to my side. The suction drag doesn't seem quite so heavy over here."

"Number One," Alec instructed, "give us a fast one-foot lift and drop
it immediately. The current will move us."

The operator took up the slack in the cable and then gave a short
burst of upwards pull and slammed the release. The tractor lifted and
was carried forward about five feet before it slammed down again and
stopped.

"There it is," Troy yelled, aiming his light to the right front of the
tractor. The beam picked out the massive casing of Number Four pump.
"Let's get in close." On instructions from the submerged engineers
both cranes lifted and hauled briefly. The tract slammed into the bulk
of the disabled pump. Troy and Alec played their lights over the
plate.

"This is the bottom plate," Alec said. "It's tipped all right. Got to
ease around to one side."

Again the cranes dragged and lifted and the massive tractor scraped
along the bottom plate of the overturned pump. Suddenly the vehicle
whipped forward. "Drop it," Troy yelled, and the carrier smashed to
the basin floor.

They were alongside the main outlet tube, now tilted downwards on an
angle towards the floor of the basin. Below them and under the
curvature of the tube was the pile housing. The explosive had to be
placed at the point where the pile housing, the pump base and the
outlet tub met.

Currents of water still swirled around them and tugged at the two men.
But it had much less force than during the downward descent. Alec
unclamped the seat belt, then slammed his magnetic clamp suit boots
against the outer plates of the carrier. His suit buoyancy dragged him
into an awkward crouching position and he swayed and fought against
both the upwards lift and the current swirl.

"Let's go," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

A hundred and seventeen feet above them, Hall and the crane operators
could hear the hollow clang of the magneboots as the two engineers
inched their way back alongside the tractor to a spot where the
tractor hull touched the pump housing. Alec cut one foot loose from
the vertical side of the tractor and slammed it against the pump base
and then quickly shifted the other foot and began forcing his way down
under the curve of the tube. Troy followed.

In the shelter of the base and tube, the current no longer pulled at
them and it was only the suit buoyancy to battle. It took them three
minutes to struggle their way to the juncture point. Alec wedged
himself in with his back against the housing above him and carefully
began unwinding the explosive belt he was wearing.

With his feet clamped on the vertical wall of the pump housing and
knees locked in a skier's stance, Troy handed over the first of the
magnetic clamps. Alec took it and carefully clamped the end of the
plastic explosive belt against the pile housing. They worked slowly
but steadily until the entire band of explosive was in place along a
five-foot arc of the housing.

During the entire operation, neither man spoke and on shore, the
listeners could hear only the heavy breathing of the pair and an
occasional muffled sound of a clamp going into place.

When the plastic was locked down, Troy carefully unclipped a timer
fused from his belt and handed it across. He spoke for the first time
since they left the tractor. "It's set for seven minutes." In the
wavering light of the murky waters, he saw Alec glance up at him and
then gingerly insert the fuse into the explosive.

"Get moving," Alec ordered. Troy started inching his way back along the
pump housing wall. Alec waited until Troy moved into the gloom and almost
out of sight, then flipped the water-tight switch that activated the fuse.
The device was armed. In seven minutes, if the pile didn't go critical
before then, the charge would detonate--whether they were back on the
surface or not.

He shoved himself free of the pile housing and followed Troy back
along the wall of the base. At the hull of the tractor, he made the
foot-at-a-time crossover and again fought suit and current to get back
to the cab. The seconds ticked off into the first minute and into the
second. Ahead, Troy had reached the aperture of the cab door and
reached in to grasp the end of the steel safety belt. He hauled
himself into the seat and looked back for Alec.

The other engineer had just reached the cab. He swung a leg over the
sill and at that moment, a surge of current whipped his suit. He
twisted, grabbed for a handhold and missed and shot up towards the
surface. In that same instant, Troy shot up out of the seat, holding
the end of the belt in one hand and grabbing for Alec's ankle with
the other. He caught it and clutched. "Up, fast," he screamed.

The tractor snapped up under them and threw both men against the seat.
Alec seized a control handle and hauled himself into the seat as the
vehicle surged upwards. Under full power, it was whipping towards the
surface and now, the water pressure was holding them down. The timer
passed the four-minute mark when the six-ton carrier burst out of the
water in a geyser of spray. The cable whipped and almost threw them
from the cab. Then there was a spine-snapping side jerk as the Number
One crane operator began smoking the cable pulling them to the shore.

Thirty seconds later the tractor slammed to the ground. Hall and the
crane carrier driver were waiting. They reached in and jerked the two
engineers from the seat and half carried them to the rear of the
massive crane carrier. The operator had already leaped from his cab
and was lying prone, face down on the ground.

Troy and Alec, together with Hall and the driver, stretched out
alongside each other in the dubious shelter of the carrier and waited.

The seconds ticked off. A minute later, a small geyser of water shot
up a few feet from the surface of the water and seconds later they
heard a slight rumble. Then there was only the sound of their
breathing and the rush of water in the river.

Hall jumped up first while the others were still scrambling to their
feet. He raced to the radio after a hasty look at the river.

"Monitor," he called, "what's the story?"

"They got it, boss," monitor answered. "The pile is dead. You've got
some hot material in the water but it's dissipating fast. All other
pumps in good order."

Hall broke into a big smile. He walked back to where Troy and Alec
were struggling out of their pressure suits.

In the distance, the director's copter was lifting from the ground and
heading towards the riverbank. A few minutes later, while a new pump
was being lowered into the bore hole, the copter took off en route to
Spokane. The two junior engineers were aboard. When it landed at
Region Six heliport, Alec jumped from the ramp and ran to the nearest
building. He found a vidiphone and called home.

Carol's worried face appeared and then lighted when she saw her
husband.

"Honey," Alec said, "You can go ahead and bathe the kid now."

He came out of the building to find Troy waiting. They grinned at each
other. At that moment, Supervisor Morley Wilson came hurrying by.

"All right you two," he snarled, "so you've solved one little problem.
Remember, you've got just nine days left to give me an answer on those
new production units." He hurried away.

Troy gazed at Wilson's departing back.

"That's what I like about working for DivAg," he murmured. "Nothing
ever changes."

       *       *       *       *       *





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Thirst Quenchers" ***

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