d mountain tops. They soared over the Clearwater River that
flowed to its confluence with the once-mighty Snake River at Lewiston
where both vanished into a subterranean aqueduct. As they neared
Spokane, the country began to flatten out into the great Columbia
basin, where once nearly a fifth of the nation's entire electrical
output was produced in a series of hydroelectric dams on the great
river and its tributaries. A century ago, high tension power
transmission lines and towers laced the face of the nation, carrying
power from the waterways to the wheels of industry and cities hundreds
of miles away. Like the dams, they, too, were gone and each industry
and metropolis and village generated its own power with compact
nuclear reactors.

The copter dropped down into an airways lane as it came over the edge
of the suburbs of Greater Spokane. The air lane followed almost
directly above one of the crowded ten-lane North American Continental
Thruways that cut five-mile wide swaths across the continent from
Fairbanks to the southern borders of Mexico; from San Francisco to
Washington, D.C., and from Montreal to Vancouver.

As the chopper settled down over the heliport at Region Six
headquarters, Troy and Alec climbed back down to the cargo deck and
went to their Sno cars. On the ground, the ramp came down and they
drove out of the copter and across the pad towards Snow Hydrology
Section's motor park. The Sno cars were parked in the garage for a
service check and with their ruckpacs slung over one shoulder, they
headed for the offices.

The prominent peak of Mount Spokane north of the city gleamed
intermittently as the sun began to break through the remnants of the
storm now blowing away to the east.

"I hope I don't get transferred out of the Region," Alec said moodily
as he surveyed the distant mountain.

"Why should you?" Troy asked.

"You never know what's going to happen when you step up a notch," Alec
replied. "You know that both of us are due for grade promotion
sometime this year to senior status. Depends on how many Grade One
senior hydrologists they need in the Region."

"Snow is snow," Troy shrugged. "It doesn't really make that much
difference to me. If they want me to move, I'll move."

"It's doesn't make much difference to you," his partner said, "because
you're not married yet. But with Carol and Jimmy, it makes a lot of
difference to me. It's bad enough living like we do here, jamming in
against fiv