The Thirst Quenchers Part 6

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 cha.s.sis 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 cl.u.s.tered 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, smas.h.i.+ng 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 G.o.d," 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 b.u.t.tons 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."