As she said this, sirens could be heard approaching.

Two behemoth green and white airport fire engines pulled into the long chamber, one through the doors at the far end, and the other coming in through the big double doors right next to the group. They slowly pulled up to either end of the tube, as the committee stepped smartly out of the way.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” shouted Madeline over the engines’ low grumbles, “the dense foam these engines produce is just the substance we need, unfortunately it does not stay in its foam state for more than five or so minutes, so we were forced to wait till the last moment to have them come in and fill us up.”

As she spoke, the engine operators climbed down from their cabs and began unwrapping the hoses, connecting them to specially installed valves on either end of the long tube.

With a radio confirmation from the distant second team the engine chief shouted commands to the hose team and both engines started pumping. Foam was squirting out of small gaps in the tube’s side as it coursed from each end, and the stunned audience stepped back as it quickly filled the tube.

So that the tube would not explode when it was full, the team had removed the central top hatch and through this a thick jet of foam suddenly exploded as the two streams met in the middle.

The hose teams cut off the supply, and the probe was activated. As the compound image began to form on the screen, Madeline reiterated: “In the dossiers we gave your assistants, we included the consistency and refractive properties of jet-fuel fire retardant just in case, once again I reiterate that, for the purposes of our experiment, this amount of the foam behaves the same way as roughly two-mile-deep water does.”

Slowly the image began to resolve on the screen and the military men confirmed it matched the predetermined layout shown in the previously unexplained depth test section of their dossiers. Happy and suitably impressed, they were keen to exit the noisy and messy room, and Laurie looked at Neal as they filed out the way they had come. He was laughing, along with his colleagues, as James Hawkson walked up to him and shook his hand, shaking his head and laughing as well. Neal and Laurie’s eyes met across the room, he grinned boyishly and she chuckled, a small victory shared amongst new friends.

As Dr. West followed the committee members to their conference room to join the closed-door discussion about the project’s future, James and Neal thanked the fire teams and they, in turn, exited the long room.