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up a lot of space and contained bulky equipment, including large tanks filled with water, sand, clay and various other soils.
Conducting tsunami studies, seismic analyses and erosion experiments meant that sections of the lab were subjected to artificial earthquakes, weather and flooding and no one wanted overflow from the latest rogue wave simulation dripping down through the ceiling above them.
As Rudi Gunn stepped from the elevator and onto the laboratory floor, he was careful to look for puddles. He found none and made his way to the geology department, where two of NUMA’s best had been working through the night and into the morning. He arrived first at the desk of Robert Henley.
Henley was one of the marine geologists who worked under Paul. Thin and ghostly pale, Henley wore his blond hair long and his beard even longer. It gave him the look of an emaciated Nordic prince.
“Morning, Henley.”
“Is it?” Henley asked. “I’d hoped it was still dark outside.”
“Sun’s just coming up. I was glad to get your message when I arrived. So you and Priya have something to show me.”
“We think we know where the influx of water is coming from.”
“That’s good news,” Rudi said.
Henley looked grim. “You’d better hold off on that until you hear the details,” he said. “I’ll let Priya explain. It was her theory that we’ve been following.”
Henley reached over to an intercom button and pressed it. “Rudi’s here,” he said. “Ready to tell him what we’ve found?”
“Be right there,” an English voice replied.
As Henley straightened some papers on his desk, Rudi caught sight of Priya Kashmir approaching.
Priya was Indian, born in Mumbai but had grown up in London. She’d spent a year at Oxford before transferring to MIT. She had dark eyes, high cheekbones and full lips. Her mahogany-colored hair was cut to shoulder length at the moment, while a tiny diamond stud rested on the right side of her nose where she’d recently had it pierced.
It would have been easy to describe her as beautiful. Easy and a disservice. While she had classic features and an alluring smile, her beauty was secondary to her intellect and perhaps third in comparison to her determination.
Priya had graduated in the top of her class at MIT while building a foundation to bring learning material to poor children in rural India. She’d been quite an athlete as well, running track and swimming competitively while finishing her Master’s.
Rudi had hired her after a single interview and she’d been several weeks from joining NUMA when a terrible car crash had damaged her spine. Five surgeries and six months of painful rehabilitation had been unable to restore her mobility—though she had regained some feeling in her toes and that gave her hope.
Given the choice to come aboard or continue her rehab, she’d taken Rudi’s offer to start working and had spent most her time in Hiram Yaeger’s computer lab. She’d shown a great ability to focus on things others overlooked and, for that reason, Rudi had assigned her to work with the geology team in Paul’s absence.
She came around the corner, propelling herself forward in a compact wheelchair. It was a product of her own design, modeled after the athletic wheelchairs used in sporting activities and moved by her own strength instead of a battery pack.
She rolled up to Rudi and Henley, wearing a sleeveless gray top and blue jeans. Henley couldn’t take his eyes off her. Something Priya did not miss. “What are you staring at, Robert?”
“Sorry,” Henley said. “I can’t decide what I’m more envious of, your perfect tan or your muscular arms.”
Priya broke into a surprised smile. “Nicest compliment I’ve heard in ages. The tan comes from Mum and Dad. The biceps are all mine. Push yourself around in one of these for a while and you’ll be buff before you know it.”
“I’d never make it out of the room,” Henley said. “My arms are like wet noodles.”
Rudi cleared his throat and got everyone’s attention. “I understand you two have found something.”
“Yes,” Priya said. “But I’m not certain it will be welcome news.”
“I warned him,” Henley added.
“Feelings can wait,” Rudi said. “We need answers. What have you got?”
Priya moved to a new position. “It starts with what we haven’t found. The first possibility was a subsurface aquifer that the Chinese had ruptured. It would have to be incredibly large and under massive pressure to cause the geyser field that Paul and Gamay recorded. Hard to hide such a thing. We looked at a pair of sub-bottom profiling studies done by the Japanese. The coverage area doesn’t extend much into the Chinese side, but nothing in the study indicates a major pool of pressurized water beneath the continental shelf. So we went deeper.”
Henley took it from there. “We ‘borrowed’ some data from an oil exploration company that charted the region several years ago. Before the price of oil crashed, everyone was looking for deepwater wells. This company took it to an extreme. They were looking for hydrocarbon deposits, several miles below the seabed. The kind that can’t be extracted profitably unless the price of oil is through the roof. A hundred and fifty dollars a barrel or more.”
“And?”
