Hardwick looked doubtful. ‘No intimation, no warning, nothing?’
‘What point would it serve?’
‘Well, there’s never been a ‘quake there in recorded history.’
‘No matter. Even a major ‘quake there wouldn’t be of great importance. Devastation of property and loss of life would be insignificant, because the area is so sparsely populated. Owens Valley, eighteen-seventy-two, the largest recorded earthquake in Califomian history — how many people died there? Maybe sixty. The Arvin-Techapi ‘quake of nineteen-fifty-two, at seven-point-seven the largest in Southern California — how many died there? Perhaps a dozen.’ Benson permitted himself his customary smile. ‘Now, if this latest jolt had happened along the Inglewood-Newport Fault I’d take a different view entirely.’ The Inglewood-Newport Fault, which had been responsible for the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, actually ran under the city of Los Angeles itself. ‘As it is, I’m in favour of letting sleeping dogs lie.’
Hardwick nodded. Reluctantly, but he nodded. ‘So we blame it on the poor old blameless White Wolf Fault?’
‘Yes. A calmly reassuring release to the media. Tell them again, briefly, about our ESPP, that we are cautiously pleased that it seems to be going according to plan and that the intensity of this shake corresponds pretty closely to our expected estimate of fault slippage.’
‘Release to the TV and radio stations?’
‘No. General. Wire service. We don’t want to lend anything that smacks of undue urgency or importance to our — ah — findings.’
Preston, another senior assistant, said: ‘We don’t let ethics creep into this, huh?’
Benson was quite cheerful. ‘Scientifically indefensible. But from the humanitarian point of view — well, call it justifiable.’
It said much for the immense weight of Benson’s prestige that the consensus of opinion was heavily on his side.
In the refectory hall in the Adlerheim Morro was being equally cheerful and reassuring to the anxious hostages who had gathered there. ‘I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no cause for alarm. I grant you, it was quite a nasty shake, the worst we have experienced here, but a shake of a thousand times that magnitude would leave us completely unharmed. Apart from the fact that you will probably have already learned from your TVs that there has been no damage throughout the State, you must all be intelligent enough and widely- read enough to know that earthquakes spell danger only for those who live in dwellings on made-up filled land, marshy land whether drained or not and on alluvial soil. Damage rarely occurs to dwellings that have their foundations on rock — and we have our foundations on thousands of feet of rock. The Sierra Nevada has been here for millions of years: it is not likely to disappear overnight. It is unlikely that you could find any safer or more desirable — from the earthquake point of view — residence in the State of California.’ Morro glanced smilingly around his audience, nodding his approval when he saw that his words seemed to have had the desired calming effect. ‘I don’t know about you people, but I have no intention of allowing this passing trifle to interfere with my night’s sleep. I bid you all goodnight.’
When Morro entered his private office the smile was markedly absent. Abraham Dubois was seated behind Morro’s desk, a phone in one hand, a pencil in the other, his huge shoulders hunched over a large-scale map of California. Morro said: ‘Well?’
‘It is not well.’ Dubois replaced the phone and delicately pricked a pencil dot on the map. ‘Here. Exactly here.’ He used a rule then set it against a mileage scale. ‘The epicentre, to be precise, is exactly eleven and a half miles from the Adlerheim. This is not so good, Mr Morro.’
‘It’s not so good.’ Morro lowered himself into an armchair. ‘Does it not strike you as ironic, Abraham, that we should pick the one spot in the State where an earthquake takes place outside our back door, so to speak?’
‘Indeed. It could be an ill omen. I wish I could fault the triangulation, but I can’t. It’s been checked and re- checked.’ Dubois smiled. ‘At least we didn’t pick an extinct volcano which has suddenly turned out not to be so extinct after all. What option do we have? There is no time, there is no alternative. This is our operating base. This is our perfectly secure cover. This is our weaponry. This is the only multi-band radio transmitting station we have. All our eggs are in one basket. But if we pick up that basket and try to walk away with it the chances are that we will fall and be left with only the ruined ingredients for an omelette.’
I’ll go sleep on it although I don’t think I’ll wake up feeling any differently from the way you do now.’ Morro pushed himself heavily to his feet. ‘We mustn’t let what could be only a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence affect our thinking and planning too much. Who knows, there may not be another tremor in this area for a hundred years. After all, there hasn’t been one for hundreds, not at least that we know of or has been recorded. Sleep well.’
But Dubois did not sleep well for the excellent reason that he did not go to bed. Morro did sleep, but it was for only an hour or so. He awoke to find his light on and Dubois shaking his shoulder.
‘My apologies.’ Dubois looked rather more cheerful than when last he had been seen. ‘But I’ve just made a video-tape of a TV newscast and I think you ought to see it as soon as possible.’
‘The earthquake, I take it?’ Dubois nodded. ‘Good or bad?’
‘One could not call it bad. I think you might well turn it to your advantage.’
The replay of the video-tape lasted no more than five minutes. The newscaster, a bright and knowledgeable youngster who clearly knew enough about what he was talking about not to have recourse to a teleprompter, was remarkably brisk and fresh for one who was up and around at the unchristian hour of 3 a.m. He had a large relief map of California hanging on the wall behind him and wielded a slender cane with all the fluent dexterity of a budding Toscanini.
He began by giving concise details of what was known of the earthquake, the area over which it had been felt, the degree of apprehension felt in various areas and the amount of damage which it had caused, which was zero. He then went on to say: ‘From the latest authoritative statement it would appear that this earthquake is to be regarded as a plus and not a minus, as a matter for some self-congratulation and not as a pointer towards some future calamity. In short, according to the State’s top seismological sources, this may well be the first earthquake ever knowingly and deliberately brought about by man.
‘If this is correct, then it must be regarded as a landmark in earthquake control, the first successful implementation of the ESPP. For Californians, this can only be good news. To remind you: ESPP stands for “Earthquake Slip Preventative Programme”, which must be one of the clumsiest and most misleading titles thought up by the scientific fraternity in recent years. By “slip” is meant simply the rubbing, sliding, jarring, earthquake- producing process which occurs when one of the eight, maybe ten — no one seems very sure — of the earth’s tectonic plates, on which the continents float, push into, above, under or alongside each other. The title is misleading because it gives the impression that earthquakes may be brought under control by preventing this slip from taking place. In fact it means precisely the opposite — the prevention of earthquakes, or at least major earthquakes, by permitting, indeed encouraging, this slipping factor to take place — but to take place in a gradual and controlled process in which there is a continuing and progressive easing of the strain between the plates by allowing them to slide comparatively smoothly past one another producing a series of minor and harmless quakes at frequent intervals instead of massive ones at long intervals. The secret, not surprisingly, is lubrication.
‘It was purely a chance discovery that led to this possibility — which would now appear a strong possibility — of modifying earthquakes by increasing their frequency. Somebody, for reasons best known to themselves, injected waste water into a particularly deep well near Denver and discovered, to their surprise, that this triggered off a series of earthquakes — tiny, but unquestionably earthquakes. Since then there have been many experiments, both in the laboratory and under actual field conditions, that have clearly demonstrated that frictional resistance in a fault zone is lessened by decreasing the stress along the fault.
‘In other words, increasing the amount of fluid in the fault lessens the resistance in the fault while withdrawing the fluid increases the resistance: if an existing stress is present between the faces of two tectonic plates it can be eased by injecting fluid and causing a small earthquake, the size of which can be fairly accurately controlled by the amount of fluid injected. This was proved some years ago when Geological Survey scientists, experimenting in the Rangeley oil fields in Colorado, found that by alternately forcing in and then withdrawing fluids they could turn earthquakes off and on at will.
‘To what may be to their eternal credit, seismologists in our State were the first to put those theories to practical use.’ The newscaster, who seemed to relish his role as lecturer, was now tapping the map on the wall.
