feet or so into the abyss several miles deep. There are major pockets off both U.S. coasts. As I said, you can find them in Costa Rica, Japan, India, and under the arctic permafrost. The sheer size of the deposits is astounding. The most recent estimates are ten thousand gigatons. That's double the total amount of all known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas.'
Jenkins let out a low whistle. 'Waiting there to be tapped when we suck our petroleum reserves dry.'
'I wish it were so easy,' Reed said with a sigh. 'A few technical problems have to be ironed out before extraction is practical.'
'Is it dangerous to drill?'
“The first time a ship drilled into a pocket was in 1970. Nothing happened, but drillers were afraid for years afterward that they'd get blown out of the water. Eventually, a few experimental bores showed that research drilling was safe. Getting hydrates to the surface to heat your home or run your SUV is another question. The environment is extremely hostile in the deep water where hydrates are found, and the stuff simply fizzes when we bring it up. The deposits may be another few hundred feet below the seafloor.'
'That sounds like a tough neighborhood for rigs to operate in.”
'Absolutely. A number of countries and companies are working on the problem, though. One method is pumping steam or water down the drill hole. This melts the hydrate and releases methane. Then you pump the methane to the surface of the seafloor through another drill hole. Next comes the question of what you do with it. When you remove the hydrate, the seafloor destabilizes.'
'There goes your expensive pipeline.'
“A good possibility. Which is why engineers have come up with a scheme to put a production facility on the seafloor. You pump the hydrate out and combine it with water. The mix goes into big tanks shaped like dirigibles. Submarines would tow them to the shallows, where the hydrates would be safely broken down into fuel and water.'
'With any of those methods, it sounds like mining hydrates is going to be like walking on eggshells.'
'Even more difficult. Now back to your original question.'
'About hydrates as a source of earthquakes and big waves.'
'It's highly possible. There is evidence that the natural melting has destabilized seafloor slopes. They've found massive submarine landslides off the U.S. East Coast, Alaska and other countries. The Russians found unstable hydrate fields off Norway. They think one of the biggest releases ever recorded caused the Storrega submarine landslide: Eight thousand years ago, more than a thousand cubic miles of sediments slid for miles down the slope of the Norwegian continental slope.'
'I' m acquainted with Storrega,' Jenkins said. 'Then you'd know that the huge mud slide caused unimaginable tsunamis. The Grand Banks and Rocky Point would have been bathtub waves by comparison.'
Jenkins nodded. 'What about man-made landslides. Possible?'
'I'd say they're plausible, sure. A drilling platform inadvertently cause a deposit to collapse, triggering a landslide.'
Jenkins held his breath, then released it. 'Inadvertently, yes. But could something like that be triggered deliberately?'
The tone grabbed their attention. Reed said, 'What are you saying, Dr. Jenkins?'
Jenkins squirmed in his chair. 'It's been driving me crazy. My gut instinct has been in conflict with my scientific training, which says gather all the evidence before coming to a conclusion, especially one as wild as this.'
Reed scratched his chin. 'Maybe, but as a scientist, I'm like you – I can't make that leap from conjecture to conclusion without a bridge of facts.'
Yaeger got into the discussion. 'Poetically said, Doc. Let's see if Max can help us. Were you eavesdropping, my love?'
The auburn-haired image of a woman reappeared. 'It's hard not to listen in when I have six supersensitive microphones. Where would you like me to take you?'
Yaeger turned to the two scientists. 'Gentlemen, it's all yours.'
Reed had been giving it some thought. 'Max, please give us an idea of the undersea methane-hydrate deposits along the U.S. coasts.'
The face vanished and they were looking at a three-dimensional rendering of the sea bottom to the east and west of the United States, complete with mountains and canyons. Pulsating patches of crimson appeared in the shimmering blue sea off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
'Now let's isolate this to the East Coast.' The shoreline between Maine and the Florida Keys appeared.
'Good. Please zero in on Maine and show us the continental shelf.'
They were looking at the long irregular coastline of the Pine Tree state stretching from Canada to New Hampshire. A wavy line appeared off the coast, running through the red patches of hydrates.
'If I may,' Jenkins interjected, 'could you highlight Rocky Point?'
A cornflower blue bull's-eye indicated Jenkins's hometown. A close-up aerial view of the town showing its bay and river appeared in the lower right-hand comer of the screen.
'Not bad,' Jenkins said, noting the extra touch.
“Thank you,' purred a disembodied voice.
Jenkins gave Max his boat's position when he had first seen the nascent tsunami. A silhouette of a fishing boat appeared in the holographic sea.
'Now we need a diagram showing the major undersea faults.'
A spidery network of white lines appeared. The boat appeared to be in between Rocky Point and a major fault due east of the town.
Yaeger said, 'That was great, Max. While you're in profile mode, let's go back to the continental shelf at the epicenter of the shock.'
Displayed on the screen was a cross-section of the ocean floor showing a wavy line representing the ocean's surface and a lower one that was the sea bottom. The continental shelf dropped off sharply. At the edge of the shelf was a thick fault that angled down. The fault intersected a variegated line that represented the methane- hydrate deposit under the limestone crust.
'There's our trouble spot. Show us what happens when methane hydrates are released.' A methane plume rose from the ocean floor. The sea bottom along the slope of the continental shelf collapsed. A depression occurred in the water surface where the landslide occurred. The surface of the water cratered above the slide.
The water tried to stabilize, creating a bump that moved along the ocean surface.
'There's the genesis of the big wave,' Reed said.
'Let me try something,' Yaeger said. 'You heard what Dr. Jenkins said about the Richter scale reading at that location. Please give us a simulation of what happened.'
Ripples that represented waves began to travel out from the area immediately around the slide. Max zoomed in on the wave heading for Rocky Point. When the moving arc was close to shore, the close-up of Rocky Point enlarged to fill the whole screen. The wave could be seen rolling into the harbor, onto the shore and up the river.
Without being asked, Max split the screen showing the side view displaying the profile of the wave. The tsunami grew as it approached land, morphed into a giant watery claw, and crashed down on the sleepy harbor. There was silence in the room as Max repeated the scene again and again in fast and slow motion.
Yaeger swiveled in his chair and said, 'Comments, gentlemen?'
'We've established effect,' Jenkins said. 'The big question is whether the cause was man-made.'
'It's happened before,' Reed said. 'Remember what I said about a drill platform's collapsing after accidentally releasing a plume.'
'Max, I know you've worked hard, but I wonder if you could do me a favor.'
'Of course, Dr. Jenkins.'
'Thank you. Go back to your map of the East Coast and show us weak spots similar to those off Maine.'
The map appeared again with pulsating bull's-eyes of varying sizes. The biggest were off the New England coast, New Jersey, Washington, Charleston and Miami.
'Max, please simulate what would happen if the continental shelf collapsed at the major intersections with methane-hydrate deposits.'
Within an instant, waves rippled out from the larger epicenters, reaching a height of thirty feet, hitting the coast and flowing into bays and up rivers and far onto land.
