for the park.
On the short drive to the Institute, she drove with her convertible top down, enjoying the air. The rest of the snow from Sunday’s storm had melted with yesterday’s rain and the smog that usually lay in the valley had blown out. Above the university, sunrise silhouetted the peaks and painted their tops with hues of coral as she parked near the Wasatch Fault.
Once in the building, Kyle stopped by the seismograph lab. Since the light was on, she went in and checked the Yellowstone stations. The blotchy seismic pattern typifying an earthquake swarm seemed more intense than the day before.
With a frown, she went down the hall to the equipment storeroom. The shelves and floor were bare.
Hollis Delbert sat behind his office desk, dressed in a suit again.
“Where are the seismographs?” Kyle demanded.
Hollis took a deliberate moment before looking away from his computer. In two days of being in charge, he’d rearranged his office furniture so supplicants stood on the far side of his desk. A single guest chair sat against the wall. “Kyle,” he said vaguely.
“Pleased to meet you. What happened to the equipment in the storeroom?”
Hollis remained seated but pulled himself up behind the desk as though conducting a formal interview. “I have earmarked it for use on the Wasatch Project.”
“You can’t have put everything in the field.”
“Let’s just say I’ve put things where they can’t be misappropriated.”
Kyle’s face got hot. “We need that equipment in Yellowstone. The caldera has come up six inches in the past week. Even you know that means magma is on the rise.”
“That damned caldera pants like a dog,” Hollis scoffed.
“You know we’ve never seen anything like this. And there’s no evidence the Wasatch is anything but quiet.”
“My students’ work has shown that the Snowbird Branch of the fault, not ten miles from here, has been locked up for the past decade. I’m hoping to God we detect some movement that might relieve the tension before we have a massive earthquake.”
“So we’re damned if the faults move and damned if they don’t.” She reached for the guest chair and swung her leg across the top. Straddling it backward, she leaned her chin on her hands. “I know there’s work to do along the Wasatch, but the threat at Yellowstone is real, too. Think of the park full of tourists, of Mammoth, West Yellowstone, Cody.”
He shoved his glasses up where they’d slid down his nose, but did not reply.
“Come on, Hollis. I’m not taking anything off you with the caldera coming up this fast. Think what we’ve learned about the eruption of Toba in Sumatra 75,000 years ago. Based on DNA studies of human remains found both before and after, the earth’s population was nearly wiped out by ash clouds causing climate change.”
Hollis sneered. “If something like that happens in Yellowstone, we’re both dead.”
“Dammit! Of course, we’d be dead this close to ground zero.” Suffocated by ash, or killed in the collapse of roofs overwhelmed by the weight. “Is death toll just words to you, like passed on, succumbed, and the other tidy euphemisms?”
She rose and kicked aside the chair; it went sprawling on its side with a clatter. “Dead! We’d be dead like my folks …”
Something in Hollis’s eyes stopped her. A look that said her outburst would be reported to Colin and anybody else who would listen.
Kyle took a shuddering breath and tried to get calm. “If Stanton were running things, he’d divide our resources between the projects, get on the phone, and find more. What say we split what we’ve got here right now?”
Hollis stared at her across the desk.
“All right.” She went to the door. “You play your game of hide and seek. I’ll get what I need elsewhere.”
First, Kyle dialed Cass Grain, a fellow seismologist at USGS in Menlo Park. Kyle had met red-haired, ruddy-faced Cass on a plane to Bogotá in November 1985, when the Nevado
On the short drive to the Institute, she drove with her convertible top down, enjoying the air. The rest of the snow from Sunday’s storm had melted with yesterday’s rain and the smog that usually lay in the valley had blown out. Above the university, sunrise silhouetted the peaks and painted their tops with hues of coral as she parked near the Wasatch Fault.
Once in the building, Kyle stopped by the seismograph lab. Since the light was on, she went in and checked the Yellowstone stations. The blotchy seismic pattern typifying an earthquake swarm seemed more intense than the day before.
With a frown, she went down the hall to the equipment storeroom. The shelves and floor were bare.
Hollis Delbert sat behind his office desk, dressed in a suit again.
“Where are the seismographs?” Kyle demanded.
Hollis took a deliberate moment before looking away from his computer. In two days of being in charge, he’d rearranged his office furniture so supplicants stood on the far side of his desk. A single guest chair sat against the wall. “Kyle,” he said vaguely.
“Pleased to meet you. What happened to the equipment in the storeroom?”
Hollis remained seated but pulled himself up behind the desk as though conducting a formal interview. “I have earmarked it for use on the Wasatch Project.”
“You can’t have put everything in the field.”
“Let’s just say I’ve put things where they can’t be misappropriated.”
Kyle’s face got hot. “We need that equipment in Yellowstone. The caldera has come up six inches in the past week. Even you know that means magma is on the rise.”
“That damned caldera pants like a dog,” Hollis scoffed.
“You know we’ve never seen anything like this. And there’s no evidence the Wasatch is anything but quiet.”
“My students’ work has shown that the Snowbird Branch of the fault, not ten miles from here, has been locked up for the past decade. I’m hoping to God we detect some movement that might relieve the tension before we have a massive earthquake.”
“So we’re damned if the faults move and damned if they don’t.” She reached for the guest chair and swung her leg across the top. Straddling it backward, she leaned her chin on her hands. “I know there’s work to do along the Wasatch, but the threat at Yellowstone is real, too. Think of the park full of tourists, of Mammoth, West Yellowstone, Cody.”
He shoved his glasses up where they’d slid down his nose, but did not reply.
“Come on, Hollis. I’m not taking anything off you with the caldera coming up this fast. Think what we’ve learned about the eruption of Toba in Sumatra 75,000 years ago. Based on DNA studies of human remains found both before and after, the earth’s population was nearly wiped out by ash clouds causing climate change.”
Hollis sneered. “If something like that happens in Yellowstone, we’re both dead.”
“Dammit! Of course, we’d be dead this close to ground zero.” Suffocated by ash, or killed in the collapse of roofs overwhelmed by the weight. “Is death toll just words to you, like passed on, succumbed, and the other tidy euphemisms?”
She rose and kicked aside the chair; it went sprawling on its side with a clatter. “Dead! We’d be dead like my folks …”
Something in Hollis’s eyes stopped her. A look that said her outburst would be reported to Colin and anybody else who would listen.
Kyle took a shuddering breath and tried to get calm. “If Stanton were running things, he’d divide our resources between the projects, get on the phone, and find more. What say we split what we’ve got here right now?”
Hollis stared at her across the desk.
“All right.” She went to the door. “You play your game of hide and seek. I’ll get what I need elsewhere.”
First, Kyle dialed Cass Grain, a fellow seismologist at USGS in Menlo Park. Kyle had met red-haired, ruddy-faced Cass on a plane to Bogotá in November 1985, when the Nevado
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