Lost City (NUMA Files 5)

"Parlez-vous Frangais, Monsieur Austin?"

"Iparle a little," Austin replied as he got out of the truck.

"D'accord. Okay," the man said with an indulgent smile. "I speak enough English. My name is Guy Lessard. I am the plant supervisor. This is a terrible business."

"Then you must know that time is of the essence," Austin said.

Lessard was a short wiry man with a precisely trimmed mustache adorning his thin face. He had an air of nervous energy, as if he had tapped into one of the power lines that streamed from the plant on high metal towers.

"Yes, I understand. Come. I'll explain the situation." Walking briskly, he led the way through the door.

Austin glanced around at the small plain lobby. "Somehow I expected a larger facility."

"Don't be deceived," Lessard replied. "This is a portal building. It's used mostly as office space and living quarters. The plant itself extends deep into the mountain. Come."

They passed through another door on the far side of the lobby and stepped into a large, brightly lit cavern.

"We took advantage of the natural rock formations to give us a start on the drilling," Lessard said, his voice bouncing off the walls and ceiling. "There are some fifty kilometers of tunnels running under the mountain and beneath the glacier."

Austin let out a low whistle. "There are highways in the States that aren't that long," Austin said.

"It was a formidable achievement. The engineers used a tunnel-boring machine with a diameter of nearly thirty feet. It was a simple matter to drill the research tunnel."

He led the way across the cavern to a tunnel entrance. Austin's ears picked up a low hum, like the sound of a hundred beehives.

"That noise must be your generator," he said.

"Yes, we only have one turbine now, but there are plans to build a second one." He paused at a door in the tunnel wall. "Here we are in the control room."

The plant's nerve center was a sterile chamber about fifty feet square, that looked like the inside of a giant slot machine. Arrayed along three walls were banks of blinking lights, electrical dials, gauges and switches. Lessard went over to a horseshoe-shaped console that dominated the center of the room, sat down in front of a computer monitor and motioned for Austin to take the chair beside him.

"You know what we do at this plant?" he said.

"In general. I've been told that you tap the melting water from the glacier for hydroelectric power."

Lessard nodded. "The technology is relatively uncomplicated. Snow falls from the sky and builds up on the glacier. In warm weather the glacier ice melts, forming water pockets and rivers. The torrent is channeled through the tunnels to the turbine. Voila! You have electricity. Clean and cheap and renewable." Lessard's routine explanation couldn't hide the pride in his voice.

"Simple in theory, but impressive in execution," Austin said as he pictured the system in his mind. "You must have a large crew."

"There are only three of us," Lessard said. "One for each shift. The plant is almost entirely automated and could probably run itself without us."

"Could you show me a diagram of the system?" Lessard's hands played over the keyboard. A diagram flashed onto the screen, similar to the display in a metropolitan traffic control center. The intersecting colored lines reminded Austin of the map for the London Underground.

"Those lines that are blinking blue represent tunnels that have water running through them. The red ones are dry conduits. The turbine is here."

Austin stared at the lines, trying to make sense of the confusing display. "Which tunnel was flooded?"

Lessard tapped the screen with a fingertip. "This one. The main access to the observatory." The line was blinking blue.

"Is there any way to shut down the flow?"

"We tried when we detected water getting into the research tunnel. Apparently, the concrete wall between the research and water tunnels has been breached. By diverting the flow in the other tunnels, we were able to contain it. The research tunnel remains filled with water."

"Do you have any idea how this wall you mentioned was breached?"

"A gate at this intersection provides access from one tunnel to another. It's closed this time of year as a safeguard because the water is high. The gate is made to withstand tons of pressure. I don't know what could have happened."

"Is there any way to drain that tunnel water off?"