that Nobelist Richard Feynman to be on the committee for the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.”
“I suppose I’ll have to pay for this astrophysicist.”
“Well, yeah, if he remembers to bill you. He sometimes forgets.”
“Is he a smart-ass like you?”
Cooper looked up at the huge helicopter hovering over the ocean a quarter-mile away. He could almost see Haggerty’s glower.
“Nope, but he sees things in a way nobody else does. He’s smarter than me. His name’s Gerald Meier.” Cooper signed off, clicked off the radio and slipped it onto his belt, still staring down at the body. Another rifle shot from the ship interrupted his private mourning for the seaman he’d never known, the one who, without even speaking, had told him of the horror that had happened here.
• • •
Dacey ran her hand absentmindedly over the glass-smooth surface of the rock from the cavern, as she sat at her desk and studied the seismograms once more. For two weeks she’d pondered the mystery, leaving it and coming back, as if she might sneak up on some unsuspecting insight and pounce. She leaned back in her comfortable desk chair in her well-appointed office in the geology building. Geology at Oklahoma Tech was very highly prized and well-supported, given the state’s dependence on oil. So, the building was a handsome concrete-and-glass structure with carpeted halls, offices outfitted with the best oak furniture, and walls decorated with handsome framed images of geological strata and formations. Dacey had taken care to decorate her own office to suit the quality, with some beautiful geodes, a chunk of iron pyrite, some large malachite crystals, and a small collection of framed antique geological maps.
Today, she was especially glad she’d made it a nice office; and that she’d spent two hours the day before cleaning up piles of papers, books, rock samples, and assorted tools.
Today, she would get a site visit from the representative of the Deus Foundation. He’d probably inspect the research labs, talk to the department chairman, and critique her research plan. And then she would know whether she’d gotten the grant.
She felt a bit out of place sitting in the neat office, dressed in nice beige linen pants and a blue cotton blouse with puffy sleeves, low heels and her silver Indian-feather earrings. Her hair was done up in an efficient, businesslike bun, although stray blondish wisps kept escaping to hang down at her neck.
The graduate students who had come by to consult on their research had noticed the changes. Especially that she wasn’t dressed in her usual jeans and t-shirt with a flannel work shirt. She’d always had problems dressing like an associate professor, however that was supposed to be.
She remembered the newspaper photo one of the students had taped on her door, and arched an eyebrow and made a worried face. Maybe she should take it down. Maybe the guy from the foundation wouldn’t think it professional. After all, it showed her covered in mud, rising out of the cavern in the basket with the rescue workers. The handwritten caption was, “Guess which one is the geologist?” Beneath it, somebody else had added, “Our den mudder.”
To hell with it, she shrugged. That’s who she was. She went back to her study of the seismograms, fiddling with her left earring as she examined the jagged up-and-down scrawls on the laptop screen. Side by side were the traces from the Gillard collapse and the San Francisco event. Her conclusions were still unshakeable. These weren’t earthquakes. No way. An earthquake typically produced two sharp spikes of ground motion, one right after another. When an earthquake fault ruptured, it sent out shear waves and pressure waves — those that shook the earth back and forth, and those that shoved it forward and backward. One kind of wave always traveled faster, arrived before the other, making two separate spikes the signature of the earthquake. And an underground
“I suppose I’ll have to pay for this astrophysicist.”
“Well, yeah, if he remembers to bill you. He sometimes forgets.”
“Is he a smart-ass like you?”
Cooper looked up at the huge helicopter hovering over the ocean a quarter-mile away. He could almost see Haggerty’s glower.
“Nope, but he sees things in a way nobody else does. He’s smarter than me. His name’s Gerald Meier.” Cooper signed off, clicked off the radio and slipped it onto his belt, still staring down at the body. Another rifle shot from the ship interrupted his private mourning for the seaman he’d never known, the one who, without even speaking, had told him of the horror that had happened here.
• • •
Dacey ran her hand absentmindedly over the glass-smooth surface of the rock from the cavern, as she sat at her desk and studied the seismograms once more. For two weeks she’d pondered the mystery, leaving it and coming back, as if she might sneak up on some unsuspecting insight and pounce. She leaned back in her comfortable desk chair in her well-appointed office in the geology building. Geology at Oklahoma Tech was very highly prized and well-supported, given the state’s dependence on oil. So, the building was a handsome concrete-and-glass structure with carpeted halls, offices outfitted with the best oak furniture, and walls decorated with handsome framed images of geological strata and formations. Dacey had taken care to decorate her own office to suit the quality, with some beautiful geodes, a chunk of iron pyrite, some large malachite crystals, and a small collection of framed antique geological maps.
Today, she was especially glad she’d made it a nice office; and that she’d spent two hours the day before cleaning up piles of papers, books, rock samples, and assorted tools.
Today, she would get a site visit from the representative of the Deus Foundation. He’d probably inspect the research labs, talk to the department chairman, and critique her research plan. And then she would know whether she’d gotten the grant.
She felt a bit out of place sitting in the neat office, dressed in nice beige linen pants and a blue cotton blouse with puffy sleeves, low heels and her silver Indian-feather earrings. Her hair was done up in an efficient, businesslike bun, although stray blondish wisps kept escaping to hang down at her neck.
The graduate students who had come by to consult on their research had noticed the changes. Especially that she wasn’t dressed in her usual jeans and t-shirt with a flannel work shirt. She’d always had problems dressing like an associate professor, however that was supposed to be.
She remembered the newspaper photo one of the students had taped on her door, and arched an eyebrow and made a worried face. Maybe she should take it down. Maybe the guy from the foundation wouldn’t think it professional. After all, it showed her covered in mud, rising out of the cavern in the basket with the rescue workers. The handwritten caption was, “Guess which one is the geologist?” Beneath it, somebody else had added, “Our den mudder.”
To hell with it, she shrugged. That’s who she was. She went back to her study of the seismograms, fiddling with her left earring as she examined the jagged up-and-down scrawls on the laptop screen. Side by side were the traces from the Gillard collapse and the San Francisco event. Her conclusions were still unshakeable. These weren’t earthquakes. No way. An earthquake typically produced two sharp spikes of ground motion, one right after another. When an earthquake fault ruptured, it sent out shear waves and pressure waves — those that shook the earth back and forth, and those that shoved it forward and backward. One kind of wave always traveled faster, arrived before the other, making two separate spikes the signature of the earthquake. And an underground
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