The Weathermakers (1967)

by Ben Bova

  “Most of the Committee members,” Jim told us, “would be suspicious of a brilliant young genius. It’s hard to admit to yourself that someone younger than you can be a whole lot smarter.”

  Ted reluctantly agreed, but I decided to keep a careful watch on him, and enlisted Barney and Tuli to help.

  The Committee hearings began with Major Vincent and his people explaining the need for a military weather-control project. The press gave them tremendous publicity, and the hearings were on television every morning. Meanwhile, Dr. Weis called with the news that the hurricane-killing idea had passed through his advisers with flying colors. He suggested that Dr. Barneveldt testify before the Congressional Committee about it. So Ted got busy briefing Dr. Barneveldt about THUNDER.

  Just who named the idea THUNDER is a mystery we’ll probably never clear up. Someone in the Washington maze of people and committees came up with it; it stood for Threatening HUrricane Neutralization, DEstruction, and Recording. Ted grumbled something unintelligible when he first heard the title, but Project THUNDER became the official name.

  The day Dr. Rossman was scheduled to appear before the Committee, Tuli and I just happened to drop in on Ted at his Climatology lair. And a good thing we did.

  Barney came by to watch the session on Ted’s TV set. Dr. Rossman, looking very dour and unhappy, chose to agree with Major Vincent all the way down the line. Military needs for weather control were extremely important, he said. Possibly just as important as the military need for missiles and space stations. The Climatology Division, he made clear, was ready to do whatever the Pentagon wanted.

  Ted leaped out of his desk chair as though he was going to smash the television set.

  “He’s sold out! He figured that Weis can’t beat the Pentagon, so he’s lining up with Vincent!”

  “No, wait Ted. Maybe—”

  “He knows I’m against the military game,” Ted raged, “so he’s trying to get rid of me by backing them!”

  There wasn’t anything we could do to calm him down. We were lucky to keep him from jumping onto the next tube train and storming into the Committee hearing with a flaming sword.

  We took Ted to dinner that evening, and stayed with him far into the night. Dr. Barneveldt was scheduled to appear before the Committee the following day, and this was about the only thing that calmed him down. He spent an hour on the phone to Washington, talking to Dr. Barneveldt in his hotel room, giving him some last-minute points about Project THUNDER.

  Tuli went straight to Climatology with Ted the next day, and I made sure to get there in time for the telecast of the hearing.

  Even on the small screen of the portable TV you could see that Dr. Barneveldt obviously impressed the Committee members. His Nobel Prize awed them in advance, and as he sat at the witness desk, before a battery of microphones, he looked like a Congressman’s idea of a scientist. He seemed to sense this, for he played his role to the hilt.

  After agreeing that there were important military applications for weather control, Dr. Barneveldt went on to say:

  “But there are equally important—no, more important—needs for this new knowledge in the peacetime, civilian world. It would be a pity if the short-term needs of the military obscured the long-term benefits that weather control can bring to all mankind. If man can control his weather, he may be able to avert many of the causes of war. Poverty, disease, hunger . . . all these are immensely influenced by climate and weather. Imagine a world where there is no lack of water, where crops flourish every year, where disastrous floods and storms are a thing of the past.”

  Jim Dennis, from his seat at the Committee members’ table, leaned forward to ask: “Can this kind of thing be done now?”

  Dr. Barneveldt hesitated dramatically. He seemed to be enjoying the television limelight. “It is possible to begin work toward that goal. Some of my colleagues at the Climatology Division and elsewhere, for example, have evolved a technique that could possibly prevent hurricanes from threatening our shores . . .”

  The rest was lost in a stampede by the newsmen for the phones. By evening Project THUNDER was the biggest scientific news since the moon landings. But it was a Washington story: Dr. Weis and Dr. Barneveldt were the “experts.” Ted and the rest of us stayed in Boston, grateful for once that Rossman had kept us out of the public eye.

  The Science Committee hearings went on for weeks, but it was clear that Project THUNDER had at least pulled up to a neck-and-neck position with Major Vincent’s plan for a military weather-control program. Most of the Congressmen made it look as if they wanted both a military and civilian project.

  In effect, the Committee dropped the Pentagon vs. THUNDER problem into the hands of the Administration. Which was right where Dr. Weis wanted it, since he was the White House’s adviser in scientific and technical matters. So it came as no surprise when, early in March, Dr. Weis invited Ted and me to his White House office.

  Cyclogenesis: the birth of a storm. Mix equal parts of moist maritime air and frigid polar air. Stir well in a counterclockwise motion. Place the cyclonic storm over Cape Hatteras in early March and watch closely. Obeying the logic of the sun’s energy input, the earth’s spin, the winds and waters and lands around it, the storm moves northward along the Atlantic seaboard. In the Carolinas it drops freezing rain and sleet, but as it moves into Virginia, with more polar air feeding into it from aloft, the precipitation turns to huge, wet dollops of snow. Washington is buried in white, while farther north—in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston—armies of men and machines begin to mass for the coming attack, and hope they can prevent their cities from being paralyzed by the blizzard.

  When Ted and I took the tube train in Boston, the sky was still clear. But Washington, we knew, would be in the middle of the blizzard as we pulled into the terminal. Even underground you could see the effects of the weather: people jammed the capital terminal, late for work, upset, some even angry. Those coming down the escalators from the street had shoulders and hats crusted with the heavy, sticky snow. Boots left wet, sloppy trails everywhere. Underground slideways were choked with people.

  Ted insisted on going topside and walking the few blocks between the terminal and the White House. Nothing was moving on the city streets; even the surface slideways were shut down. The few struggling pedestrians had to bend over nearly double against the howling wind. The snow was thick and heavy underfoot, and in half a minute I was as cold as I ever want to be—even inside my sturdiest coat, boots, gloves, and fur-lined hat.

  Ted loved it. “With a couple of platoons of ski troops we could take over the Government!”

  “You can have it,” I mumbled from behind my turned-up collar, “on a day like this.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be over in an hour or so. Blowing north. We’ll run into it in Boston again tonight.”

  “Nice timing.”

  Dr. Weis’ office was an airy, spacious room in the White House executive wing, with French windows that looked out over the blizzard-smothered lawn.

  “At least it’s warm in here,” he said as he gestured us to chairs. “You two looked as if you’d walked all the way from Boston when you came in!”

  “I feel as if we did,” I answered.

  Ted laughed.

  “I want to give you a firsthand report on where we stand with THUNDER,” Dr. Weis said, rocking back slightly in his big, padded chair.

  “Before you do,” Ted interrupted, “you ought to know about the coming hurricane season. Ran a few preliminary checks last week. Kind of shaky, but it looks as if it’ll be the same kind of season as last year. Same number of storms, roughly. If we let ’em develop, that is.”

  Dr. Weis reached for a pipe from the rack on his desk. “The prospect of killing hurricanes is very attractive, although extremely expensive. It’s about the only thing that can stand up to the pressure the Pentagon’s been putting on in Cabinet meetings.”

  “It’s gotten to that level,” I said.

  “Indeed it has,” Dr.
Weis puffed his pipe alight. “But I think we have the edge. I’ve been claiming that hurricane killing will help Major Vincent and his people to learn some of the basic things they must know before they can start weather-modification experiments. So, in a sense, THUNDER isn’t stopping the Pentagon, it will be helping them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ted said. “Hurricane killing is only part of the show . . . and we’ll be killing tropical disturbances, not full-grown storms.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But the real aim of the Project is to learn how to control the weather well enough to steer hurricanes away from the coast. We’ll only hunt out tropical disturbances and smother ’em until we get smart enough to control the hurricanes.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dr. Weis said. “This weather-control part of the scheme has drawn a considerable amount of criticism. And it’s come from several different sources.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Now hear me out, Ted.” Dr. Weis hunched forward and leaned his arms on the desk. “You admit that you don’t know enough to control the weather so that hurricanes will be kept away from our coasts. And even if you did, you’d have to control the weather over most of the continental United States . . .”

  “And Canada.”

  He nodded. “And Mexico, too, I’ll warrant.”

  “Sure. So what?”

  “It’s politically dangerous. Explosive. Too much of a chance that something might go wrong. Suppose you made a mistake? The consequences could be disastrous.”

  “Now wait,” Ted shot back. “What do you think we want to do, divert the Mississippi through Arizona? We’ll control the weather, sure, but not enough to cause disasters. Couldn’t, even if we wanted to! Too much energy involved. We’re not going to make it snow in California or thaw out Alaska.”

  “You and I know that, Ted, but what about the average voter? Lots of people get sore at the Weather Bureau when their picnics are rained out, or their crops get damaged. Do you realize what political dynamite it would be for the Government to accept the responsibility for controlling the weather?”

  “It was a political bombshell to declare independence in 1776, too. Some things’ve got to be done!”

  “Weather control will eventually become a reality,” Dr. Weis replied, his voice a trifle higher and more nasal. “But you can’t jump into it too quickly. Project THUNDER—the hurricane-killing part of it, that is—is an excellent beginning. After a year or two of successful demonstrations, we’ll be ready to try the next step. And, more important, the country will be psychologically prepared.”

  “But we can do it now, this year! All we need is some time to check out the theories and we’re ready to swing it.”

  “Technically ready, but not politically. And even on the technical side, the earliest operations in weather control will be little more than educated gambles.”

  Ted slammed a fist on the arm of his chair. “Look, I don’t know what you’re scared of. It rains and snows on people now. We have floods and droughts. So the Government steps in and gets blamed for ‘em by a few weirdos and nuts. So what? How about the droughts the Government gets credit for stopping, or the floods that never happen, or the bumper crops that controlled weather can give you?”

  Dr. Weis leaned back and shook his head. “Ted, you understand science, but not politics. It just doesn’t work that way.”

  “Well, THUNDER isn’t going to work without weather control. It’ll be a waste of time and effort without it.”

  “You won’t accept the Project without the weathercontrol feature of it?”

  Ted said stiffly, “Killing the tropical disturbances is a dead end, a stopgap. Unless it leads us into real weather control, it’s the wrong way to fight hurricanes.”

  Dr. Weis got up from his chair. “Well, come on, we’ve talked long enough. Let’s get this thing resolved.”

  “What now, another committee?”

  “No,” he answered, glancing at his desk clock. “We don’t give all our problems to committees. Come with me.” We followed him down a corridor and up a flight of stairs. We went through an unmarked door into a large, oval-shaped office that was dominated by a broad desk covered with papers and three phones of different colors. Behind the unoccupied desk was a pair of flags.

  I looked at Ted. He seemed to realize whose office it was just as I did.

  The door on the other side of the room opened and the President stepped briskly to his desk.

  “Hello,” he said. “You must be Mr. Marrett and Mr. Thorn.”

  He shook hands with us, his grip strong. He was taller than I had thought him to be, and looked younger than his TV image. He gestured us to the chairs before his desk. As we sat down, he tapped some of the papers on his desk. “Can you actually stop hurricanes?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ted answered at once.

  The President smiled. “There’s no doubt in your mind at all?”

  “We can do it, sir, if you’ll give us the tools.”

  “You understand, don’t you, that the Defense Department has also proposed a weather project? If I buck the Secretary of Defense on this, it could create ammunition for the opposition this November.”

  “Hurricanes could be a voting issue all along the Atlantic seaboard,” Ted answered, “and the Gulf Coast.”

  With a grin, the President said, “I didn’t do too well along the Gulf Coast last election. And if you fail to stop the hurricanes, I’ll do even worse. On the other hand, if I don’t give the go-ahead for Project THUNDER, hurricanes will remain strictly nonpolitical.”

  Ted didn’t reply.

  “Something else has come up,” Dr. Weis said. “Ted here feels that the Project should really be aimed at the broader goal of controlling the weather across the United States, rather than just stopping hurricanes.”

  “Controlling the weather.” The President turned from his Science Adviser to look squarely at Ted. “That seems . . . fantastic. The weather is so violent, so vast and wild. I can’t imagine man ever controlling it.”

  “We can do it,” Ted answered firmly. “It only looks wild and violent because you don’t understand it. There’s logic to the weather; it obeys physical laws, just like an apple falling off a tree. We’re starting to learn what those laws are; once we’ve learned enough, we can control the weather. Just like fire—once it was wild and dangerous and mysterious. But man learned to tame it. We still don’t know everything there is to know about it, but fire’s as commonplace as sneezing.”

  The President pursed his lips thoughtfully. “So there’s a logic to the weather? Certainly there’s a beauty to it, even when it’s storming. Tell me, Mr. Marrett, do you know enough about the weather’s logic to be to tell when this snow’s going to stop? I have to fly to Chicago this afternoon.”

  Ted grinned. Looking at his wristwatch, he said, “Should be stopped now.”

  “You’re sure?” the President asked, turning toward the window drapes.

  Nodding, Ted answered, “It’s got to be.”

  The President pulled the drapes open. The sky was dazzling blue, with just a few departing clouds. The sun sparkled off the heaped snowdrifts across the lawn.

  “You apparently know what you’re talking about,” he said. “But controlling the weather is a big step. A very big step.”

  “I know,” Ted replied. Then, speaking slowly and very carefully, he explained, “With full-scale weather control, the cost of keeping the country free of hurricane damage will probably be lower than it would be if we had to hunt out every threatening disturbance in the ocean and kill it. And weather control is the ultimate objective. It’s going to be done sooner or later . . . I’d like to see it done now, by this Administration.”

  “I hope to be here another four years,” the President replied laughingly.

  Ted went on to repeat most of the arguments he had used with Dr. Weis; the Science Adviser went through his counterargument, too. The President sat back and listened.<
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  Finally, he said, “Mr. Marrett, I appreciate your dedication and drive. But you must remember that the Government bears the responsibility for the well-being of the whole nation. It sounds to me as if your ideas might work. But they’ve never been tested on the scale that you yourself said would have to be done. If you’re wrong, we could lose much more than an election; we could lose lives and a staggering amount of property and resources.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Ted said. “But if I’m right—”

  “You’ll still be right next year, won’t you? I like Project THUNDER. I think stopping hurricanes will be a tremendous gift to the nation . . . and a big enough job for the first year out. Are you willing to settle for that part of it, and let weather control wait for a while?”

  Nodding glumly, Ted said, “If that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  The President turned to Dr. Weis. “We’ll still be sticking our necks out, you realize. THUNDER is something of a risk, and going against the Pentagon isn’t always good politics.”

  “But the return could be immense,” Dr. Weis said.

  “Yes, I realize that. And I suppose the benefits of stopping even one hurricane are more important than a few million votes this fall.”

  Dr. Weis shrugged. “Politics is an art, Mr. President. I’m only a scientist.”

  He laughed. “We’ll make a politician out of you yet. You’re strongly in favor of THUNDER?”

  “Of the hurricane-stopping part of it, yes.”

  “Strongly in favor?”

  “Strongly, sir,” Dr. Weis said.

  “All right, then. If Congress will authorize the funds, let’s go ahead with it.”

  We chatted for a few minutes more, and the President even kidded me about my Massachusetts uncles working for his opponent last election. I quickly told him that Father had been on his side. The President’s secretary came in and reminded him of the next appointment, and we were politely ushered out of the office after another round of handshakes.