The Weathermakers (1967)

by Ben Bova

  “Good luck with THUNDER,” the President said to us as we left. “I’ll be watching your progress closely.”

  Ted nodded. Outside in the corridor, he muttered “We’d make a lot more progress if he’d bought all of THUNDER instead of just the safe part.”

  16. Project THUNDER

  IT WAS a wild four months. Between March and July we had to organize a project that involved Air Force planes, Navy ships, NASA satellites, and a good percentage of the Weather Bureau’s talent and equipment. The Project staff was drawn mainly from Ted’s small group at Climatology and my people at Aeolus. I was also in charge of hiring new people, who officially worked for Aeolus, but actually were THUNDER personnel. And, since the Project was not a military one, Barney and Tuli were free to work with us.

  Finally, the first week of July, we were ready to leave for Miami. Dr. Barneveldt saw us off at Logan Airport, together with a crowd of newsmen and photographers. We were no longer hidden from the public view; in fact, there was a major news conference scheduled for later that afternoon, in Miami.

  After a few final words of parting, we took off in the executive jet. Inside it, we still had work to do. I was reviewing a draft of our agreement with the British government concerning the island of Bermuda. Ted had decided that THUNDER would protect the mainland of North America and the Caribbean islands; but he wanted to leave the open-ocean storms alone, he had two reasons. First, he needed a scientific control on the THUNDER experiments, and the storms we didn’t touch could be used as a comparison against those we worked on. Second, we simply didn’t have the resources to tackle every disturbance in the whole ocean.

  But storms that stayed well away from the mainland still threatened Bermuda, so we had worked out an agreement with the British that Bermuda would not be protected.

  While I read through the State Department’s paperwork, Ted and Barney, across the aisle from me, were talking about the press conference we would be facing that afternoon.

  “It’s important to give the newsmen the correct impression,” Barney was saying. “We’ve got to show them that THUNDER is strictly an experiment.”

  Ted nodded impatiently.

  I looked up from my reading. “Ted, don’t forget that Dr. Weis is going to be right there on the platform with you. You’d better not say anything that sounds like weather control.”

  He shot me a surly glance.

  “And don’t try to predict the future,” Barney added. “Just talk about the work we’re going to do for the Project. Don’t let the newsmen work you into a position where you’re making any promises . . .”

  He threw up his hands. “Maybe I ought to put on a false beard and dark glasses and sneak away before the press conference starts! Listen, you know as well as I do that either we produce results with THUNDER or get booted out. Don’t try to hedge it. No matter how much we jabber, everybody knows that if we let one hurricane get through and cause damage, we’re dead. We’ve got to throw a shutout.”

  Tuli popped up from the seat behind Ted. “We won’t be able to stop every hurricane. Not unless the disturbances are spaced apart well enough so that we can work on just one or two at a time. At the height of the season, when the disturbances come in groups, some of them will get past us.”

  “That’s right,” Barney agreed. Turning back to Ted, she urged, “We’ve got to be cautious, especially in front of the newsmen.”

  “If we were cautious,” Ted grumbled, “we wouldn’t be on this plane right now.”

  One of the plush Miami Beach hotels had been chosen for the press conference. The main ballroom was jammed, and under the television lights we all felt hot and edgy.

  The chief of the Miami Weather Bureau office introduced us with a long, rambling speech. “Brilliant young men . . . challenging new ideas . . . youthful daring. . . Ted sat slumped back in his seat, glowering like a thunderhead: powerful, looming, dangerous.

  When the Miami chief finally finished, Dr. Weis gave the main pitch. In his careful way he reminded everyone about the hurricanes that had hit the mainland United States the previous year, and of the billions in damage they had cost. (While he spoke, most of the Florida tourist trade was piling into the airports and terminals, leaving for safer areas until after the hurricane season.)

  “If we can successfully stop even one hurricane that would hit the coast,” Dr. Weis went on, “the savings in storm damage—not to mention human lives—will more than pay for the cost of the entire Project.”

  After a detailed review of THUNDER’S organization—and paying due credit to ESSA, the Defense Department, the Coast Guard, the Congress, and every other Government organization that had anything to do with land, sea or air (he even mentioned Aeolus)—Dr. Weis asked for questions from the newsmen.

  They had plenty. And after five minutes, they realized that Ted was their key to a good story; they kept shooting their questions at him. Finally, one of the newsmen asked: “There’ve been a lot of weather-modification trials in the past, but this is really the Government’s first large-scale weather-control program, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Weis took the microphone on the table in his hands and answered before Ted could. “Project THUNDER is not a weather-control program. This is merely an experiment, and a limited one at that, despite its size. The Project will attempt to modify tropical disturbances that might grow into hurricanes that would threaten populated areas. That’s all that will be done. No other aspect of anyone’s weather will be touched, and we will not control the weather, by any stretch of the imagination.”

  Ted looked down the long table at the Science Adviser, then turned to his microphone. “The Government isn’t ready for weather control. Not yet, anyway. Most of us on THUNDER would love to try a full-scale weather-control program. In fact, real weather control would be a lot better as far as keeping hurricanes off your doorstep is concerned.”

  “I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way,” Dr. Weis said, fumbling with his pipe. “Project THUNDER is a very exciting first step toward eventual control of the weather. But—”

  “But we’re restricted to working on disturbances while they’re out at sea . . . we’re not trusted with changing the weather over the United States.”

  Dr. Weis’ face was changing color. “You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run. You haven’t demonstrated that you can modify the disturbances yet. With good luck—and patience—you’ll get to weather control in due time.”

  Ted shrugged. “I think the due time could be this year. We’ve already learned to walk. We can run as far as we have to . . . if the Governments let us.”

  One of the newsmen called out, “Mr. Marrett—after this hurricane season is over, say around election day, how will we be able to judge the success of Project THUNDER?”

  Ted shut his eyes momentarily, like a man about to plunge from a great height. “If any part of mainland America or the Caribbean islands suffers loss of life or property damage from a hurricane—THUNDER will have failed.”

  There was an eternal moment of shocked silence.

  I felt my jaw go slack. No one could live up to that guarantee! Ted glared down the table at the rest of us, as if daring anyone to contradict him. The newsmen scrambled for the phones.

  The evening headlines summed it up neatly:

  NO HURRICANES TO HIT U.S., VOWS STORM CONTROL CHIEF

  Dr. Weis exploded. He raked Ted over the coals for three hours before flying back to Washington. He threatened to cancel the entire Project, or at least fire Ted and replace him with someone else. But the damage had been done. And Ted stubbornly insisted:

  “It’s the truth. We’re here to stop hurricanes. No matter how many we stop, if one gets through, everyone’ll think we’ve flopped. Nobody’s going to be satisfied with a hurricane-killing project that doesn’t kill hurricanes. One storm gets through and we’re dead. Why hide it?”

  So we went to work, setting up Project headquarters in a prefab building on the Miami city waterfront that the Navy loa
ned us. But Ted’s promise hung over us like a death knell.

  By the end of July the first hurricane took shape.

  Fifteen hundred miles east of Florida and two hundred feet underwater, a school of bonito as numerous as the human population of Miami suddenly veered from a menacing form bearing down on them. Larger than a cachalot whale or even a giant blue, the submarine slid darkly through the crowded sea, sampling water temperatures and reporting them every half hour to THUNDER headquarters. An unmanned Dromedary patrol plane droned automatically across the mid-Atlantic sky, continuously measuring atmospheric conditions and relaying the information to the Project. The plane and submarine crossed paths. A technician in THUNDER’S data-reduction section watched curiously as one of the big computers rattled to life. He took a fast look at the cryptic words and symbols being printed out, then reached for the nearest phone. A low-pressure trough with cool air mixing into it, a warm column of air at the center rising straight up to the tropopause, and upwelling water beneath the disturbance. A hurricane was being born.

  We dubbed the first storm Andrea. It stayed out in midocean, so we didn’t have to attempt modifying it. The hurricane was a living laboratory for us, though; we followed its course minute by minute, and sent squadrons of planes into it to measure and sample every facet of its make-up. Andrea blew close to Bermuda, but with our advanced warning of its path, the islanders held damage to a minimum.

  Bettina turned up hard on the heels of the first storm, developing practically overnight in the Caribbean. We caught her in time—barely—and kept Bettina down to a small tropical storm. She never neared hurricane force, although she caused trouble enough wherever her gale winds and heavy rains hit.

  “Close,” Ted muttered as the results of our work on Bettina showed up on the big plotting screen that dominated THUNDER’s main control center. “Another couple of hours and we’d’ve been too late. Got to do better.”

  We learned fast. The hurricane season was really getting started now, and we were faced with dozens of tropical disturbances. We sharpened our techniques and honed our teams to a fine fighting edge. Dr. Weis called practically every day, but we had no time to worry. We worked, we ate, we slept, and then worked some more. Time became a dizzy spiral of finding, fighting, and killing tropical disturbances.

  Ted was acting strangely, though. He was away from THUNDER headquarters almost as much as he was with us. I kept track of him by reading his expense vouchers: Cape Kennedy, Boston, Washington, Kansas City—he even spent a weekend up in the Atlantic Station satellite (which cost the Projcct eighteen thousand dollars; orbital flights were still expensive).

  But whenever we faced a really tough job, Ted would show up to direct the battle. Sometimes he was hustling toward his desk with his travelkit in one hand and his dirty laundry in the other, but he was always there when the chips were down.

  “What are all these trips about?” I asked him one evening. The watch at control center was changing shifts, and Barney, Ted, and I were eating a dinner of cold sandwiches and soda at his desk.

  “Been visiting people who can help us,” he said, between gulps of a sandwich.

  “In Kansas City?”

  He grinned. “They’ve got meteorologists in K.C.”

  “Isn’t that a bit inland for hurricane control?” Barney asked. She was as curious as I.

  “Look, I’m not talking about THUNDER to these guys. It’s weather control. Sooner or later, we’re going to need all the brains and help we can get . . . when we start controlling the weather across the country.”

  “But you’re not going to do any weather-control work until THUNDER is proved successful,” I said.

  “Why wait?” he snapped. “Weis and his committees want to go slow. If THUNDER flops, it’s back to the labs for all of us. Even if THUNDER succeeds, what d’you think they’re going to do?” Before we could answer he went on, “They’ll want to do THUNDER all over again next year. And maybe every year. Hurricane control is great . . . but not this way. Even if it works. I’m shooting for weather control, no matter what.”

  Barney glanced at me, then said, “I don’t understand how your trips around the country are helping us toward weather control, Ted.”

  “When this hurricane season’s over, I want to hit Weis and Dennis and the others with a solid story on weather control. I’m getting as many people on our side as possible. I want to show ’em in Washington that there’s a big-league team ready to go.”

  “But what happens if THUNDER fails?” I asked. “And all we need is one hurricane to kill us.”

  “We haven’t flopped yet.”

  “But the hardest part of the season is just starting,” Barney said.

  “I know. We’re holding our own so far. Tuli and his people are doing a little work on the side for me . . . nothing much, not taking many people off the regular Project work. But we’re getting enough data on the storms and their weather patterns to start thinking about some honest weather control. You know, keep ’em off the coast by controlling the weather across the continent.”

  “Weather-control research?” I said. “If Dr. Weis finds out. . .”

  “Don’t let him. And Barney, give Tuli all the computer time he needs.”

  “We’re running twenty-four hours a day as it is,” she said. “We’ll have to time-share with more computers somewhere else.”

  “Okay, do it. But keep Tuli’s stuff on our own machines; don’t let it out of the Project.”

  “Ted, I don’t like this,” I said. “We’ve got the hardest part of the season ahead of us. Tuli warned us that there’ll be situations when there’re simply too many disturbances for us to hit all at the same time. We know from experience now that we can’t run more than two or three missions a day . . . we simply don’t have enough men and equipment for more than that. And now you’re taking valuable men off the real work of the Project to do research we have no business doing . . .”

  “Hey, whose side are you on anyway? This research is for weather control, buddy, and that’s what we’re shooting for. Not hurricane tinkering. THUNDER’s only a drop in the bucket compared to what we can really do.”

  “But if you don’t get that first drop into the bucket, what then?”

  He frowned. “Okay, so we’re gambling. But let’s gamble big. Shoot for the jackpot.”

  We could have argued all night. But it wouldn’t have budged him a millimeter. And the biggest argument of all was brewing out on the Atlantic as we sat there at Ted’s desk.

  It took a few more days for the facts to show up on THUNDER’s giant plotting screen. But when they did make themselves clear, we knew that all our dreams were going to come crashing down in the howling wind of a mammoth hurricane.

  17. Hurricane Fury

  THE viewscreen map that loomed over Ted’s desk at THUNDER control center showed our battlefield: all of North America and the North Atlantic Ocean, including the coasts of Europe and Africa. As September entered its final ten days, we saw disturbances mushrooming all across the ocean. Most of them we left alone, since they weren’t threatening. One of them developed into a hurricane, which we called Nora, that stayed well out at sea.

  Then the day that Tuli warned about finally arrived.

  Ted gathered us around his desk, with the giant viewscreen staring down our throats. Hurricane Nora was howling up the mid-Atlantic; she was no trouble. But four tropical disturbances, marked by red danger symbols, were strung out along the fifteenth parallel from the Antilles Islands to the Cape Verdes.

  “There’s the story,” Ted told us, prowling nervously along the foot of the viewscreen. Gesturing toward the map, he said, “Nora’s okay, won’t even bother Bermuda much. But these four Lows’ll bug us for sure.”

  Tuli shook his head. “We can’t handle all four of them at once. One, possibly two, will get past us.”

  Ted looked sharply at him, then turned to me. “How about it, Jerry? What’s the logistics picture?”

  “Tuli’s rig
ht,” I admitted. “The planes and crews have been working around the clock for the past couple of weeks and we just don’t have enough—”

  “Skip the flute music. How many of these Lows can we hit?”

  Shrugging, I answered, “Two. Maybe three, if we really push it.”

  Barney was standing beside me. “The computer just finished an updated statistical analysis of the four disturbances. Their storm tracks all threaten the East Coast. The two closest ones have point-eight probabilities of reaching hurricane strength. The farther pair are only point-five.”

  “Fifty-fifty for the last two,” Ted muttered. “But they’ve got the longest time to develop. Chances’ll be better for ’em by tomorrow.”

  “It’s those two closest disturbances that are the most dangerous,” Barney said. “They each have an eighty percent chance of turning into hurricanes that will hit us.”

  “We Can’t stop them all,” Tuli said. “What will we do, Ted?”

  Before Ted could answer, his phone buzzed. He leaned across the desk and punched the button. “Dr. Weis calling from Washington,” the operator said.

  He grimaced. “Okay, put him on.” Sliding into his desk chair, Ted waved us back to our posts as Dr. Weis’ worried face came on the phone screen.

  “I’ve just seen this morning’s weather map,” the President’s Science Adviser said, with no preliminaries. “It looks as if you’re in trouble.”

  “Got our hands full,” Ted said evenly.

  I started back for my own cubicle. I could hear Dr. Weis’ voice, a little edgier than usual, saying, “The opposition has turned THUNDER into a political issue, with less than six weeks to the election. If you hadn’t made the newsmen think that you could stop every hurricane . . .”

  The rest was lost in the chatter and bustle of the control center. The one room filled the entire second floor of our headquarters building. It was a frenetic conglomeration of people, desks, calculating machines, plotting boards, map printers, cabinets, teletypes, phones, viewscreens, and endless piles of paper—with the huge viewscreen map hanging over it all. I made my way across the cluttered, windowless expanse and stepped into my glass-walled cubicle.