Back at their combination laboratory and office area, the trio split up to their respective cubicles to go over the report. Troy and Alec, as semispecialists in snow depth and moisture gauges, would study the problem from the viewpoint of increasing the accuracy and volume of their instruments in inventorying Region Six snowfall. Other members of the headquarters staff would tackle it from soil moisture content; stored water capabilities; increasing domestic, municipal and industrial water economies; while the meteorology men would venture even farther into left field via data, formula and Ouija board, to increase the potential future limits of their forecasts. The key to the entire problem lay in streamflow forecasting. Accuracy in predicting the amount of water entering the vast underground reservoirs now had reached ninety-eight point three per cent. Yet in the remaining one point seven per cent was the equivalent of more than seventy-five million acre feet of water. The question now was--how much more water would the new units require and could the forecast be projected another tenth or more percentage points closer to supply than demand. That was the basic problem. There were thousands of allied problems involved, ranging from where and how the additional water would be stored and channeled and how it could be used after the new factories had had initial use. At 1630, Alec stuck his copy of the prospectus, together with some other more pressing reports, in his briefcase and headed for home. He stopped in the door to Troy's cubicle. "You going to work all night?" he asked. Troy swung his feet down from his desk and snubbed out his cigarette. "Nope," he replied, "but I thought I'd finish reading this before I shoved off. After all, I haven't got a section chief waiting for me at home with a stop-watch in hand to make sure I report in on time. All I have waiting for me at the apartment is a good, cold highball." Alec grinned: "See you in the morning, doctor." Troy swung his feet back up onto the desk and went back to the Southern Cal report. In the parking lot, Alec found his little sport jet and fired up. He eased into the line of cars filing out of the headquarters compound and shot into the stream of homeward-bound traffic on the state expressway. The torrent of vehicles was moving along at an almost steady seventy miles an hour. Alec worked his way into the middle lane since he would be crossing the entire city to reach his apartment complex on the north side. The expressway roar turned into a hollow thunder as it threaded its way for five miles under the high NorCom Thruway that carried high speed traffic across and around the city.