Empire Builders by Ben Bova Page A

to the global news channel and saw that the big story was the unseasonal typhoon that had torn across Samoa and was now bearing down on the Gilbert Islands .
    The screen showed a devastated city on one of the Samoan islands, Dan had not caught which one: buildings blown down, trees scattered across streets and roads like tenpins, cars crushed, people homeless, fierce gray surf still pounding the beaches, UN Peacekeeping troops flying in with their sky blue helicopters to build shelters and bring food and medicine.
    Then the scene shifted to the peaceful atoll of Tarawa . “Scarcely five meters above sea level at its highest point,” the voice-over said in a crack-of-doom tone, “this scene of one of World War Two’s bloodiest battles may soon face an even more disastrous fate:
    Mother Nature on a rampage.”
    Dan stared at the flat sandy islands of the atoll. Cripes, it’s just like Tetiaroa. If that kind of a storm hit Tetiaroa there’d be nothing left afterward.
    He waited until the newscast turned to its resident meteorologist and his maps. With considerable relief, Dan saw that the phoon—named Alphonsus was moving west by north, away from Tetiaroa.
    “It is very early in the season for a killer typhoon of such mammoth size and strength,” the meteorologist was intoning, while the screen showed a satellite view of the storm. It was mammoth: its huge swirling bands of clouds covered thousands of square kilometers. “And this is only the first storm in what promises to be a very long and very dangerous hurricane season.”
    No mention of the greenhouse. Dan switched off the video as the newscast switched to the sports report. Looking out the plane’s window, he could see a gray smudge far off on the horizon. Alphonse. Silly name for a killer.
    Greenhouse warming of the atmosphere does more than melt glaciers, Dan knew. The warmer the atmosphere, the more energy it stores. The more energy, the bigger and more frequent storms such as hurricanes and typhoons.
    It’s a good thing I’m going to see Jane, he realized. I’ve got to convince her about Zach’s greenhouse cliff data.
    At one time the “airport” at Tetiaroa had been a strip of sand on the atoll’s largest island alongside the hotel. A small plane could taxi right up to the open-air registration desk; passengers stepping out of the plane would be greeted by the room clerk and a grinning, bare-chested bellman.
    Supersonic jets required longer and stronger runways, however. The French government had started to build a jet landing strip on the next islet in the coral chain, but the people of Tahiti had won their independence before the project could be completed, and for years the jet airport languished half-built. Finally a Japanese Australian consortium bought the hotel, finished the airstrip, and even connected the two isles with a paved road and a concrete bridge arched high enough to allow dugout canoes to pass under it.
    The consortium went broke eventually, and the government of Tahiti took over the entire tourist facility until a new commercial buyer could be found.
    Now, as Dan stepped out of the Yamagata jet onto the hard surface of the jet runway, a smiling pair of young Polynesian women dressed in flowered red pareos greeted him with kisses on both cheeks and leis of colorful fragrant blossoms.
    Slipping his arms around each slender waist as a husky young man took his battered travel bag, Dan started toward the waiting electric cart, wondering, Why would anyone want to live anywhere ruined else in the world? These people are wonderful. Too bad Christianity their morals. The hotel’s registration desk consisted of a bamboo counter beneath a thatched roof supported by four stout pillars, open to the salty sea breeze. By the time the cart had crossed the guano-spattered concrete bridge and pulled up at it, Dan was thinking, As long as Jane’s not here, I might as well invite these lovely creatures to have dinner with me this evening. And then