He paused and pulled a pad of scratch paper towards him and brought out a pen to make rough sketches. Troy swung his feet off the desk and leaned forward to watch. "The idea came to me," Alec said, continuing to sketch, "from the runoff trough you cut to carry off the snow melt from around the hot box. Now just suppose that the crack in the reservoir is along the bottom side, although that doesn't really make much difference ... yet it might make the operation a little easier since it would concentrate the leak runoff. "We know the reservoir is set in the bed of the Columbia from the confluence of the Spokane River down to old Grand Coulee. And we know just what the strata formations are both below the reservoir and in the aquifer downstream. That lost water is going into that strata and is going to work its way down the slope of the terrain but it's also going to level off on the first bedrock strata it hits and that's where I think we can stop it. "If we ran a deep and big enough bore down ahead of the flow and cut a catch basin and then dropped a series of pumps into the basin, I think we could save a lot of that water by getting back onto the surface." Troy studied the sketch for a minute. "How are you going to sink a bore that fast?" "Laser," Alec replied simply. "It would take one hell of a lot of industrial laser units," Troy murmured thoughtfully, "but, if we could get them, it just might work. What do we do if we can get the water back to the surface?" "Same story," Alec pointed out. "If we can get the bores down behind the old Grand Coulee Dam, then we cut a channel and drain it into the old surface reservoir. Oh sure, we'll lose some surface evap until we can get it back down underground again. But that would still be one helluva lot better than letting millions of acre feet just seep out to sea. And if we had to, we could use the lasers to cut a channel around Grand Coulee and let it run down to the Okanogan where it would go into the Lake Chelan reservoir." Ten minutes later, Plumber and the two juniors were closeted with Supervisor Wilson, going over Alec's plan. When Alec was through talking, Wilson flipped a switch on his desk intercom. "Harbrace here," the speaker sounded. "Jim," Wilson said, "this is Morley. A couple of my harebrained kids have come up with an idea that makes sense and looks like it might salvage a lot of lost water. But we've got to move on it right now if it's going to work." "Get them over here," Harbrace snapped. * * * * *