"Didn't you hear the phone ring? Boy, you must be tired! Let's go. Time for a quick shower and coffee. I've had mine."
Rick saw that a breakfast tray was on a bedside table. He had slept through Scotty's arising, shower, and delivery of breakfast. He shook his head, still groggy.
A quick shower woke him up. He sipped coffee and ate toast while getting into his clothes, then the two hurried down the corridor of the luxury hotel to the conference room Hartson Brant had taken over as headquarters.
The scientists were already there, taking seats around the room as the boys walked in.
Rick looked at the new faces. It was the first time he had seen them in daylight. Dr. Jeffrey Williams was a plump, round-faced man with a shock of pure-white hair. Dr. David Riddle was tall, dark, lean, and heavily tanned. He looked like a mining engineer, or perhaps a forest ranger. Bradley Connel was short, heavy set, with straw-colored hair and the kind of complexion that is always sunburned and peeling so long as the days are hot—which meant always, this close to the equator.
"Let's get to work," Hartson Brant said. "It's obvious that visual inspection is not going to tell us much. We'll have to get tracings before we have any real idea of what's going on under us. Dave, have you found anything of importance?"
David Riddle shook his head. "It's a typical formation. Nothing unusual about it at all. El Viejo is simply a dead volcano, its cone filled in, and plenty of jungle on the slopes. The hot springs are just a seepage point, as Dr. Balgos knows. So far as I can tell, they're the weakest point, so if the mountain lets go, that is where the blowoff will come. Of course, this could be wrong and there may be weaker channels we don't suspect. We'll know when we start shooting."
Hartson Brant looked at Dr. Williams. "Anything to add, Jeff?"
"Not much. I've gone over the seismic data Esteben got from the seismologists in the area, and it's clear that the epicenter of most recent earthquakes in the area is right under us. Something is happening down in the earth under the mountain, but I can't say what it is. It may be volcanism or it may be a fault shifting."
Rick knew that a fault was like a great crack in the earth's structure, but he had thought the scientists had agreed that the earthquakes were caused by volcanic action. He asked, "Sir, doesn't the change in the springs mean something?"