Chapter 2

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.