Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization Read Online Free PDF Page A

isolated various support cubicles. Anxious voices exchanged technical data in Japanese.
    Joe spotted the men in charge, Haruo Takashi and Ren Hayato, huddled over a bank of monitors. All eyes turned toward Joe, the hubbub of voices quieting somewhat. He could tell right away that there was more bad news coming.
    Some birthday this is turning out to be.
    “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
    Takashi turned to face him. The Deputy Plant Administrator was a slim young man, who looked like he was having a bad day as well. “Maybe not such a good time for a meeting,” he suggested.
    “Agreed,” Joe said, pushing the seismic graphs on Takashi. “Have you seen this?”
    Takashi nodded toward the bank of monitors he had been glued to before. Hayato, the Senior Reactor Engineer, stepped aside so that Joe could see for himself. Joe immediately recognized the distinctive waveform snaking and pulsing across the monitors. It was the same pattern that he had been staring at for days.
    “Do we have a source?” he asked crisply. “Where’s the epicenter?”
    Takashi threw up his hands. He was more rattled than Joe had ever seen him. “We keep trying… nothing…”
    Joe shook his head. “It’s got to be centered somewhere.”
    Hayato spoke up. “No one else is reporting. We’ve contacted every other plant in the Kanto region, Tokai, Fujiyama… they’re unaffected.”
    Joe wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. “Are we at full function?”
    Takashi nodded. “Perhaps we should be drawing down. To be safe.”
    “Is that my call?” Joe asked.
    “Right now, maybe yes,” Hayato conceded. He was an older man with graying temples, only a few years from retirement. “We’re trying to reach Mr. Mori, but he’s not answering.”
    Joe wasn’t inclined to wait on the owner of the company. Those weren’t profit-and-loss charts on the monitors. This was a safety issue.
    As though to drive that point home, another tremor rattled the building. This one was felt even harder and sharper than before. Joe felt the weight of dozens of eyes upon him. He made up his mind.
    “Take us off-line,” he said.
    Stan balked. A shutdown could cost millions—and possibly their jobs. “Joe…”
    “Do it. Wind it down.” He issued the order in Japanese. “Seal down the reactors.”
    There was a brief moment of hesitation before the room erupted into a quiet frenzy of activity. Joe suddenly found himself at the eye of storm, overseeing emergency measures he had expected to go his entire career without implementing. The full import of his decision hit home and he felt weak in the knees. A cold sweat glued his shirt to his back. What if he had over-reacted and pulled the plug too soon? This could be the biggest mistake of his career…
    Breathe
, he reminded himself.
Think.
    He put down his coffee cup on a nearby table, figuring that his heart was already racing fast enough, thank you very much. Diagrams and blueprints were strewn across the table, along with a selection of walkie-talkies on a tray. He snatched one up and started scanning through the channels, searching for a signal. He needed info and he needed it now, damnit.
    And he needed to know that Sandra was okay.
    Before he could get hold of her, the mug started vibrating across the table, spilling coffee onto the blueprints, which were also shaking as well. Joe glanced in alarm at the monitors, where the pulse pattern was spiking into a new shape. A stronger, secondary jolt, accompanied by a deep sonic thrum that Joe could feel all the way to his teeth, rattled the glass windows of the control room. The walls shook.
    Even worse, all the monitors and other electronics lost power for a second, briefly killing the lights, before they popped back on again. Startled technicians swore and shouted and scrambled to check their systems. Agitated voices competed with each other, everybody talking at once.
    “No status!” Takashi blurted. “Everything’s