"Now we're not going to get this solved or anything else done by my talking about it. Get out of here and back to work. You've got ten days to come up with the answer and you can expect to be saddled with the additional production units within one hundred twenty days. That's all gentlemen except to say that, as occurred when I asked you two years ago for a similar projection for the laser unit complex, I will not accept any solutions calling for a pogrom of all Anglo white Protestants between the ages of six and sixty."
The meeting broke up in laughter as the engineers crowded up to the desk to pick up copies of the prospectus.
Troy and Alec fell into step with Jordan Plumber, their section chief.
"One thing you have to admire in the old man," Alec commented, "he has faith in his staff to come up with the answers."
"Hm-m-m," Plumber sniffed, "he doesn't need faith. He's a realist from the old school. He knows that we have no choice and all that's left is to come up with a formula for living with the situation. It doesn't bother him a bit how we figure this one. He knows we have to work it out."
Back at their combination laboratory and office area, the trio split up to their respective cubicles to go over the report. Troy and Alec, as semispecialists in snow depth and moisture gauges, would study the problem from the viewpoint of increasing the accuracy and volume of their instruments in inventorying Region Six snowfall. Other members of the headquarters staff would tackle it from soil moisture content; stored water capabilities; increasing domestic, municipal and industrial water economies; while the meteorology men would venture even farther into left field via data, formula and Ouija board, to increase the potential future limits of their forecasts.
The key to the entire problem lay in streamflow forecasting. Accuracy in predicting the amount of water entering the vast underground reservoirs now had reached ninety-eight point three per cent. Yet in the remaining one point seven per cent was the equivalent of more than seventy-five million acre feet of water. The question now was—how much more water would the new units require and could the forecast be projected another tenth or more percentage points closer to supply than demand.
That was the basic problem. There were thousands of allied problems involved, ranging from where and how the additional water would be stored and channeled and how it could be used after the new factories had had initial use.
At 1630, Alec stuck his copy of the prospectus, together with some other more pressing reports, in his briefcase and headed for home. He stopped in the door to Troy's cubicle.
"You going to work all night?" he asked.