"Get those lasers outta there," the engineer roared, "and get those
other pumps down, fast."

More cranes were clustered around the grate hole and the three other
pumps went quickly to the bottom. Down in the cavernous basin, the
laser rolled quickly back to the bore hole where crews slammed
magnaclamps on them and lofted them to the surface.

By the time they were starting to rise, three more closer gauges were
reporting underground water flow.

As soon as the first two lasers reached the surface and were swung
onto the gravel bed, they were sent waddling on their tracked carriers
a hundred feet upstream beyond the upper end of the underground
emergency cavern. The beams were set on angle and seconds later the
light lanced out and down into the earth, smashing down through the
strata and punching two great holes into the roof of the upper end of
the cavern. Clouds of superheated steam gushed out of the twin
punctures as the beams shut off. The beams had burned through the head
of the seeping waters. Now the other four lasers were on the line and
in rapid order, a dozen more holes were on punched down through the
bed and into the catch basin. The upstream roof of the cavern fell in
for forty feet and a torrent of mud cascaded into the basin.

The instant the last beam closed down a roar arose from the workers
clustered about the lip of the vertical pump bore. A wall of water
came surging down from the upstream end of the cavern and smashed into
the bore hole wall in a muddy, seething maelstrom. The strata-borne
water had found the hole and were pouring down into the cavern and
catch basin. The water began rising in the walls of the hole, sealed
into a shining shaft of fused rock and silicon by the laser beams.

"It works," Troy yelled, pounding his partner on the back, "you
harebrained son of an engineer, it works."

Alec's face was wreathed in smiles as the two of them hurried down the
bank to the edge of the bore. By the time they reached the lip, the water
level had risen past the underground upstream mouth of the catch basin and
was boiling steadily upwards past the sixty-foot mark towards the
surface. Despite the vent holes and the volume of water seeping through
the strata from the ruptured Spokima Reservoir, there still wasn't enough
pressure to raise the water level much above the fifty-foot mark, once the
catch basin filled. That was the purpose of the four nuclear pumps in the
sump hole. Their great mill