Peterson ushered them to a large highly polished timber conference table that occupied another room adjoining this office.
Nick wondered why the meeting was being held at the Capitol instead of the Oval Room in the White house.
A small man who was not introduced, sat at one corner of the table hunched over some papers. Nick surmised he was not a politician as he had the same tanned outdoors look as himself. As they took their seats another tall thin man entered and moved directly to the head of the table, followed by the others whom Nick had already met.
‘Josh, this’d better be important.’ He said. ‘I’ve put off a meeting with the Secretary for the Interior.’
‘It’s vitally important Mr President. Nick Torrens here can explain it to you better. It’s about earthquakes. Nick…’
President Walker looked startled and Nick shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He had rehearsed his speech over and over, picking the words that they would understand, and resisting his normal urge to be flippant, he began. ‘Sir, I’ll try to keep this simple. I’ve spent the last few months in Tahiti and Hawaii, and just recently in the Bering Sea off Alaska.’
‘Yes, yes. I know about that. Get on with it.’
Nick fumbled with papers in front of him and sat forward. ‘Er, what I’ve found points toward a major catastrophe!’
Nick watched the bored expressions around the table turn to bewilderment. He continued before anyone could speak. ‘There’s a new long crack in the ocean floor, we call it a fault. It starts at Mururoa Atoll and stretches north through the Bering Straight into the Chukchi Sea, just south of the Arctic Ocean.’
He rose from his chair, pulled out a map from his briefcase and spread it over the table in front of him. The map was instantly projected on to a wall behind him. He pointed to the locations as he spoke. ‘All along this fault, there’s abnormal seismic activity, low frequency earthquake swarms, which indicates impending eruptions along it’s entire length. Big ones.’ He looked the President in the eye. ‘To make matters worse, we discovered a nuclear waste dump in the Chukchi Sea right in its path. Um, no doubt you’re aware of the waste, but there are some nuclear subs dumped there that nobody knew about. Probably with nuclear fuel still on board. A major quake here will create a huge chasm that’ll open up the sea bed and swallow that pile of junk into the bowels of the earth.’ He paused to gauge the reaction around the table. The President’s face paled.
‘God only knows what’ll happen when that explosive force meets the liquid magma chamber below. Maybe a nuclear scientist could predict it more accurately, but my guess is it’ll be big enough to destroy just about everything in that region.’
He paused again before continuing cautiously, long enough for the shocked men to start a babble of disjointed conversation and questions.
The small man at the corner seat ruffled his papers.
The President stared at Nick, a grim expression on his face. ‘Gentlemen.’ Nick paused. ‘I haven’t told you the worst yet.’
Vice President Peterson rose from his chair. ‘The worst!’ He exploded. ‘Are you crazy? I don’t believe it!’
‘I’m sorry, it’s true.’ Said Nick. ‘You all know that the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole began to expand in the nineties, and started the ice melting in 2020. Since then Global warming has accelerated the problem. You also know that all attempts to slow the global warming have failed. The other hole we found over the North Pole four years ago has weakened the northern cap considerably. If the quakes reach the cap it won’t withstand such a huge explosion without shattering. Once shattered the ice will melt very quickly.
When the eruptions start, huge flows of lava will be pushed up from below the earth’s crust, forming volcanoes and new islands in the shallower regions of the Pacific and the North Atlantic Sea. When that happens all the oceans will pour onto the land, raising the sea level anywhere from three to fifteen metres or more! Er, sorry. That’d be ten to fifty feet.’
This time there was no babble. An unnerving silence permeated the room.
The President spoke first in an almost indecipherable whisper. ‘Ten to fifty feet? For how long?’
‘The sea will be displaced by the new islands. It won’t recede. Ever.’
The President pinned Nick with his eyes.
‘Furthermore all that melted ice has to go somewhere. An explosion like this could be the equivalent of five-hundred-thousand megatons of TNT! That’s five times bigger than the explosion that destroyed the volcanic island of Krakatoa in 1883. I don’t know how the planet will react. There’ll be ferocious winds, and there’ll be a chain reaction; one earthquake setting off another, perhaps as far south as New Zealand and probably across to the Peruvian-Chile trench and the Caribbean Plate. All the coastal areas of Australia will be hit by huge tsunami more devastating than anything we’ve seen.’ Nick stopped, his face turned pale and he ran his fingers thorough his hair.Oh my God! He thought. What if…? He swayed a little and promptly sat down.
The secretary for the navy, John Holmes rose from his seat and turned to Josh. ‘What about the dykes? They’ve been keeping the rising sea back for years.’
‘They won’t hold against this.’
‘If we can believe this theory, what will happen first? The rise in the sea level or the tsunami?’
‘It’s more than a theory’’ Josh who had remained quiet, commented defensively, expecting this reaction from the navy. ‘Pretty much the same time. The shock waves will create the tsunami, which will be followed by the rising sea.’
Nick continued. ‘Um, huge amounts of sea water will be swallowed into the magma chamber all along the open fault line and, ah, when confined by rock it will quickly become steam. We all know what happens when steam builds under pressure. There’ll be violent explosions sending the sea water bursting out again to create a tsunami.’
‘Okay, we hear what your saying.’ The Vice President interrupted. ‘How come you’re so sure?’
Nick wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He pushed his shoulders back and flicked his neck. ‘The ERS2 satellite system. It’s been operating for two years and it’s proven to be accurate in predicting earthquakes. It’s not just my findings, you have the eminent scientist Wolf Drescher stationed with the US Coast Guard on Unimak Island. He came with me on the Bunyip and supports me one-hundred per cent. He’d be here now, but he wanted to stay behind to close up his research station. It was Wolf who called me up there from Hawaii. He was concerned about the peculiar things he was finding.’
‘What’s the timing on this?’ The President asked. ‘How long before it happens, if it happens?’
The small outdoors man who had also remained quiet to this point, interjected. ‘Oh, it will happen all right. Maybe sooner than we think.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’ Nick said to him.
Josh looked at Nick.
‘This’s Professor Don Sinclair, he’s a nuclear scientist. I talked to him after our first meeting.’ Josh said.
‘I’ve studied your reports Mr. Torrens, and I agree with you.’ Sinclair said. ‘The atomic explosion you foresee will be the biggest humankind has seen.’
The President frowned. ‘Will there be atomic fallout Mr Sinclair?’
‘Oh, yes. There will be, and long-term leakage of the longer-lived radioisotopes into the surrounding ocean. They’ll be spread by the currents. That will be the least of our worries. Methods can be employed to control this but we can’t control the sea level.’
Josh whispered to Nick. ‘Are you okay Nick, you sound a bit odd.’
Nick’s nodded and his fingers tapped out a silent rhythm on the table. ‘To answer your earlier question Mr President, we don’t know when it will happen but it’s um, building up rapidly. It could happen any time.’