"Well, if this scheme is going to work," the senior hydraulics man said, "this is the place to try it. We're still ahead of the seepage but not for long. We've got a good quarter-mile of deep rock for the sump hole. Let's try it." Harbrace nodded in assent and the group dispersed to the side of the dry river bed. Alec and Troy trudged up the shallow slope to a mess truck sitting on the flat. "Nothing we can do now but pray," Alec muttered. They picked up cups of hot coffee and walked back to the bank to watch the operations.
The light laser unit had been moved out and ten huge crawler cargo carriers with van were being mover into a wide circle around the last soil moisture stake. Crews were unshipping the beam heads of the giant industrial laser guns and making power connections to the series of mobile power reactors that had been set up on the riverbank.
When all of the units were in place and connected, the crews pulled out. At a safe distance from the bore site, a master control panel had been jury-rigged to control all units simultaneously. Two programmers and a pair of operators sat behind shields while the senior hydro engineer took a place between them and focused on his remote video eye at the site. A quarter of a mile away, vehicles still moved up with new equipment, but the remaining vehicles and other gear had been pulled back from the river bed to the bank.
The hydraulics chief looked around at Harbrace and waited. "Let's try it," the director ordered.
"Three seconds at a time," the engineer ordered. The programmers checked the timer cutoffs for a final time. "Ready?" The operators nod.
"Fire," the engineer yelled.
Ten massively concentrated beams of high intensity light waves slammed into the gravel bed. The earth shook and a great cloud of dust arose from the site, momentarily hiding the laser units. A light morning breeze drifted the dust downstream in a minute.
Ten huge holes gaped in the river bed underneath the laser beam heads mounted on adjustable cranes out and away from their power units.
"Fire," came the order again. This time there was nothing but the trembling of the earth as the beams cut a molten path through rock, clay, sand and boulders.
"Measure," the engineer ordered. A radar gauge bounced a beam off the bottom of one of the holes. "Eighty-seven feet," the technician called out.