"Who says the Booree is going to go?"
"Engineers. Came in to check once those lawyer fellas got around sayin' so. If you own property here, better sign up with them. They sure know what they're talkin' 'bout. Chief engineer wonders how they could've figured it out."
"Where is he?"
"Over at Grand Booree. But better not go there. It's a danger zone now."
Before Remo left for the dam itself, Chiun gave him an order.
"Forget all our troubles. Forget everything but what your body has been taught. Listen to your body. It has learned everything it needs."
"Thank you," said Remo.
"You will survive," said Chiun.
"Yes. I will survive." And then there was a long silence, broken only when Chiun turned away to let his thoughts and being quiet and focus on the center of the universe.
At the dam Calvin Rutherford was giving orders. He wore a plastic safety helmet, and his white shirt pocket contained a plastic case filled with pencils and pens. His face was ashen, and every few moments he sighed in frustration and rage, feeling more helpless by the moment.
When he saw Remo he ordered him off the dam. "This is no place to be," said Rutherford.
"I'm safer than you are. Do you know how this happened?"
"You from the government?"
"Yeah. Who the hell else would be interested?"
"Reporters," said Rutherford. "But what the hell. I've already told them. I'll tell you. Don't care who sues us. This is a disgrace. The damned engineers made a mistake."
"After all these years?"
"Hell, the mistake didn't happen now. It's just showing up now. I'll take you down to see for yourself. "
Inside the dam Remo could feel its mass. He sensed the hugeness of this man-made mountain. He felt the awesome weight of the water in Lake Booree, and sensed the vibrations through the elevator that had brought him and Engineer Rutherford twenty stories down into the bowels of the Grand Booree.
They walked through a half-mile of internal piping that Rutherford explained in detail and Remo did not understand at all.
"A dam, any dam, has got to have its sluices working. You've got to let the water out below, because if it comes out over the top, it'll be useless for energy and eventually will wear down the surface of the dam, grind it down just like waterfalls do to the stone they fall on, understand?"
Remo nodded. He thought he understood.
"So the sluices are important. It's what we run the turbines with. Water pressure pushes the blades and we create electricity. The Grand Booree supplies much of Colorado. Okay?"
"Gotcha," said Remo.
"Now, understanding the turbines, you've got to understand vibrations. Soldiers break step when they walk across a bridge because otherwise the vibrations would set the bridge to rocking. What we have here are not cables, but masses of concrete. The very mass has picked up the vibrations from turbines synchronized in such a way as to turn this whole damned incredible mass of concrete into a pane of window glass that'll crack when the vibrations get strong enough."
"So where was the negligence?" asked Remo.
"You sound like a lawyer."
"I'm trying to catch lawyers."
"The negligence is that not only did we fail to perceive the effect of synchronized vibrations but we built the turbines in such a way as to be able to run them in only one direction."
"What's wrong with that?"
"If we could get them reversed to create a counter vibration, which would be diametrically opposed to the one that is gathering momentum now, we could stop the vibrations perfectly."
"Well, why not just shut down the turbines? Won't that stop everything from shaking?"
"No, it's too late for that. Other than reversing the turbines, the only solution's a construction one. We're working on it now."
"So what's the problem?"
"The problem is we have to reconstruct the sluices at the entrance point. In other words, we have to do it from underwater at lakeside. We've got divers there now."
"Good," said Remo.
"Not so good," said Rutherford. "The desilting of the bottom near the sluices is due this month. The whole area is so heavy with silt from the bottom of the lake that our diving gear keeps getting fouled. If only this had happened a month from now we would be okay. Divers are just having no luck in the goo, and if we don't fix those sluice entrances pretty soon, the divers, the diving barge, and everything is going to go along with the dam."
Remo saw the giant turbines set with metal bolts twice the size of a man.
"Pretty soon," said Rutherford, "you're going to be able to feel the vibrations. Then they'll continue to build on themselves until . . . boom!"
"How much time do we have?"
"A half hour till I clear everyone out of here."
On top of the dam Remo saw a large sign calling the Grand Booree "America's Pride." It was built during the Depression when a president had to give hope to a nation. It was a symbol as much as it was a stunning technical achievement to keep a river in check and provide electricity.
Men on the barge were signaling Rutherford with their hands. He had a walkie-talkie on his hip. He pulled out its antennas.
Remo heard the voice crackle across the airwaves. "Too much silt. Can't work in that much silt. That's what's fouling the diving gear," came the voice.
"I can work in silt," said Remo.
"You a diver?"
"Sure," said Remo.
"I thought you were an investigator for the government. "
"Used to be a frogman," Remo lied.
He wasn't going to let America's Pride go under and he was grateful that Chiun wasn't there to see him do it.
"Explain to me again what has to be done," said Remo, taking over a diving suit on the barge. The other divers were warning against trying.
"You'll be buried alive. You can't get down there. It's like a big blanket clinging to your gear: There's nothing but death down there."
"Shh," said Remo. "I'm trying to understand how that sluice works."
"It's not the sluice that's a problem. It's the silt," said Rutherford. "If you really want to see something that'll make it simple for you, read this."
He took a flier out of his rear pocket. It had been folded several times. Over a pale gray sketch of the Grand Booree was a message to concerned citizens. It came from the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto It decried an age when the lives of people were of little concern to a government bent on aggrandizing its image. It did not matter that the aggrandizing had been done a half-century before. The problem was coming to a crisis point now.
Because the government had rushed ahead without testing the massive structure, it was vulnerable to vibrations. Just when the vibrations would come, the law firm did not know. Hopefully, the flier stated, this would never happen. But should the vibrations occur, and if the vibrations should be caused by a buildup of silt at the sluices, the only way to stop them was to reach the sluices from the lake side of the dam. And that meant diving. But because of an engineering oversight, the flier continued, the sluice entrances were below, not above, the sluices. And this underwater area was now almost completely obstructed by silt.
"Absolutely simple," said Rutherford. "If we had put the openings above instead of below, we could get in."
"Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I? Hell. I wasn't born then, and whoever thought there would be a problem today back then?"
"So I have to get in from below. Okay," said Remo. He stepped into the diving suit, feeling the rubber wet and cold against his skin. He let his mouth breathe for him and then put on the diving mask and tanks.
He ignored the offer of fins and jumped overboard. On deck the crew noticed something peculiar.
"Hey, there's no bubbles coming from him."
"I didn't think he looked like he knew what he was doing," said one diver.