Peter Hernon - 8.4

“That’s one of the new robots they’ve been working on. If you need to check out the inside of D-4, it can get the job done. It might even be able to spray some foam.”

Twenty minutes later, a dark gray Dodge van pulled up behind the fire trucks. Jeff Burke got out, and Booker helped him lift the robot out of the back.

Neutron had none of R2D2’s cuteness. All business, it vaguely resembled a television-sized metal box equipped with a computer screen, viewfinder camera, and a high-intensity spotlight that could be electronically raised or lowered. Depending on the terrain, the robot used either wheels or tractor treads. Made of a titanium alloy, it was equipped with two six-foot mechanical arms that could easily lift two thousand pounds.

Its lightweight frame was attached to a Hawkin Directional Platform, which permitted it to swivel quickly and easily in a tight circle.

Neutron was still experimental, but Burke had worked out almost all of the bugs.

Duncan explained what he needed. He wanted the robot to spray as much fire-retardant foam as possible on the mercury and plutonium storage areas. Burke knew exactly where they were located in D-4. He’d direct Neutron’s movements by remote control and follow them on camera.

He used joysticks to operate Neutron’s arms and claw-like hands. Turning on the robot’s power supply, Burke had it pick up two of the big sixty-gallon foam canisters, which he and Duncan strapped to its back. The robot would operate the nozzles with its mechanical hands. The way the pincers gripped the equipment was eerily lifelike, Booker thought.

“Let’s do it,” Burke said.

Neutron rolled slowly to the front of the building, which resembled a ten-story warehouse. The front was made entirely of reinforced concrete painted a muddy red. With Burke working the controls, the robot tapped in a special code on the security lock, opening steel blast doors one-story tall. It then entered D-4, a powerful spotlight attached to the camera illuminating the way.

Burke followed Neutron’s progress through the building from a laptop television monitor. D-4 was open virtually all the way from the ground floor to the roof. The acres of floor space were subdivided into hundreds of separate storage areas.

Neutron advanced down a long, dimly lit corridor, turned, and kept going until it came to a fifty-yard row of wooden skids. The steel tanks of mercury were laid on their sides in sturdy wooden frames and looked like oxygen canisters.

“We’re in position,” Burke said. “Here’s where it gets tricky.”

Booker kept his eyes glued to the television monitor as the robot methodically began moving up and down the line of skids, covering them with a thick layer of white foam.

“Now where?” Burke asked.

“Send him down the corridor to your left,” Booker said. “There’s a fire door at the end and another security keypad. The plutonium beds are on the other side.”

The ground shook. The building seemed to buckle inwardly.

“Everyone back!” Tim Duncan shouted into a bullhorn. “Get away from there. Now!”

The succession of heavy aftershocks had severely weakened the already damaged building. Afraid one of the walls would collapse on his men, Duncan ordered everyone back at least three hundred yards from D-4.

“Forget the robot,” he shouted to Burke and Booker, who hadn’t moved from their advanced position near the front wall. They were about fifty yards from the door. “You’re too close.”

Burke shook his head. “No can do. I’ll be out of communication range with the robot. That’s one of the glitches we haven’t quite worked out. Our range is limited to about two hundred yards.”

The ground rocked again. Booker actually felt himself lifted up and down as the earth rolled under his feet.

There was a shudder, then the sound of heavy chunks of concrete slamming to the ground. Part of D-4’s flat roof had caved in.

Booker measured the distance to the building with his eye. If the front wall came down, they’d never get clear in time. He resisted an overwhelming urge to run.

THE SUN WAS STARTING TO COME UP, REAVELING a chilly gray sky and a landscape that had been torn apart. The sights of cataclysmic liquefaction were everywhere.

Atkins and Elizabeth drove in silence, lost in their thoughts as they surveyed the devastated countryside. They were on Route 61, which paralleled Interstate 55 a few miles to the east. They’d pulled off I-55 when they encountered their first collapsed overpass. They had to drive out into a muddy field to get around the wreckage and wouldn’t have made it without the Explorer’s four-wheel drive. Radio reports said every overpass had been knocked down in the quake zone. Until the debris could be cleared, the major north-south interstate was all but cut off.

No more than ten miles from Blytheville, Arkansas, they were nearing the quake’s reported epicenter. Memphis was about eighty miles due south. Atkins tried to increase the speed, but it was impossible. There were too many obstructions.

Trees were down. Sand blows, volcanic in shape, were still erupting, blasting geysers of mud, carbonized wood, and stone into the air, but not with their earlier force. And the sound they’d noticed most of the long night—the howling roar of the earth cracking open and venting—had all but ceased.

Pushing hard to get to the epicenter, Atkins had to stop frequently to pull around cracks in the highway surface, some of them two and three feet wide. All the delays were maddening. They’d gone nearly four hours without getting a seismograph up and running at the epicenter. That was unforgivable. With each passing hour, they were losing precious data.

In some places, the road looked as though a ditch-digger had cut a deep trench across it.

Despite his increasing sense of urgency, Atkins stopped to inspect one particularly large sand blow. Measuring several hundred feet in diameter and perfectly cone shaped, the crusty sides were about four feet high and had already hardened. Steam was still drifting out of the opening.

Elizabeth slowly approached the side and cautiously touched the steam vapors. She quickly withdrew her hand.

“It’s almost boiling,” she said.

“There’s got to be a strong thermal element at play here,” said Atkins. He was still wondering about the strange light that had made the depths of Kentucky Lake shimmer. It was possible they were caused by thermal disturbances in the crust.

“I hope they’re setting up some good strain-rate databases in Memphis,” Elizabeth said. They needed to know how much energy had been released.

She also hoped they’d gotten the GPS and Radar Interferometry Systems operating again. The satellite data would help them measure with minute precision how much the earth had shifted or risen. And, more important, whether it was still rising, a telltale sign that seismic strain energy continued to build in the ground.

There was so much they needed to know. The greatest need was for seismic information that would help them gather precise data about aftershocks. Where they were hitting. And how often.

The strong-motion seismograph they wanted to install near the epicenter would help them pinpoint the magnitude of the fault that had ruptured. With any luck, it might also show whether any previously undiscovered faults had been activated.

A single seismograph was, at best, of limited usefulness. They needed to set up a whole array of instruments, but that would take time. The seismograph in the back of the Explorer was the best they could do.

Elizabeth was eager to do some trenching along the fault line. If there was ever a time for serious paleoseismology this was it. They might be able to find some clues about what had happened deep in the earth in the ancient past. She wanted to know how often big quakes had occurred—and at what intervals. The data could help them calculate whether or not the massive quake they’d just experienced was likely to be followed by another killer.