ion 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."