^"Well, that's impossible," was professor Henry's first assessment. "Clearly we have a data acquisition problem." This was a room of black enameled long laboratory work benches with trough-like sinks and rows of tall arcing water faucets alternating with gas fixtures. None of the Bunsen burners were active, right now, save the one under the professor's espresso pot. Glass windowed closets with a fine wire inner working invited inspection of the many reagents and devices that made this place, this place.

Professor Henry was the classic wild haired professor. His knowledge ran the full scope of academics. Although having two Ph.D. degrees in chemistry, inorganic and organic, he prided himself in in-depth discussions of the literary classics. In fact he stood in for the literature professors, who called in sick from time to time. He brought his chemistry students along. His off the cuff lecture on Tristram and Isoude, in one such last minute substitution, was classic Henry. In it he not only sung possible minstrel ditties as might have been voiced by the so called harper Tramtris, he went on and included complex neurochemistries that might account for the philter conveyed by Brengwain, and then derived the historical antecedents of the code of knighthood as it was understood by King Mark. Who the hell knew what this guy was talking about? They all just figured that he did, that he knew. Actually, he did know. His mind was a thousand mile deep compression of knowledge.   

How do you correct such a man? Just do it. He lives for the chase of the unknown. "No. I don't think so, Doctor Henry. The cylinders of chlorine gas are weighed by the delivery guys going and coming. See?" Marcus countered, holding out the log he had copied. The active cylinder is on a scale. I tested it and re-calibrated it myself. My figures, here, match theirs, in this column. See?"

"Air losses?"

"No way! The chlorine room is like a small broom closet. A leak in there would kill you in a second. We spray ammonia test vapor even approaching that room, and also around all the connections. There is no leak. All of that chlorine goes into the water."

"Flow rates are accurate?"

"Ruby float, crystal viewing cylinder with double precision calibration. I checked the back up unit. Absolutely on spec. I really don't think the installed unit is any different."

"Well, it can't be. Something can't be. Marcus, my good man, the children would dissolve. Look at your figures. Here's the depth... uh feet, here, times 12, times 2.54, length times 12 times 2.54, times width... let's see, OK, times 12 times 2.54 gives us rectangular volume, minus the pitch to shallow water volume. What is pool temperature? Your log shows it to be fairly steady at 80 degrees. OK, the maximum concentration of chlorine at 80 degrees, oh, here.. Let's check our conversion to Celsius, uh.. mmmm, OK. Its OK. Now we figure evaporation and sublimation at worst case - 100 degrees air temperature?"

"Naw."

"No. No. Do 100 degrees, worst case, in Celsius... hmmmm Jesus. They'd all be dead! Just standing over the water and breathing, you'd be dead!"

"Wind factor!" Marcus was jubilant at an insight, "It is the top of a mountain. Breezes?"

A sudden sucking hiss declared that the espresso was ready. The sudden reentry of hot water to the lower pot from the upper was easy to hear, "Cup?"

"Sure." Mac knew where the demitasse cups were.

"No. That's what the temperature adjustment was for. I took a steady headwind allowance for the calculation. See? You got children blowing off the mountain? Unless you are on Jupiter, there is no wind that could blow that much chlorine away."

Marcus was lost again, eyes screwed up, then closed, then screwed up again then closed, until the deep grunting moan crossed his lips, "Unless,.." Marcus's more recent and worldly education was creeping in.

"Unless what?"

"Unless, it ain't chlorine. Watered down with something?"

"Gad! No! That would be a bomb! Anyway, the residuals would not look this way. But you may be right, something else may be deactivating it, something organic, AFTER it is in the water. Are all the kids pissing in the water?"

"No. Well the little ones, probably. We allowed for that in the original organics deduction scale. Didn't we. Wouldn't it have to be a monumental piss fest?"

"Oh yeah. Right." A long pause ended with, "Do you get anything unusual in your filters?"

"That's it! We use diatomaceous earth. Bags of it. We use it like firemen use water."

"No good. That's silicon. Zero effect, practically. But why do you use so much silicon, that's supposed to be a once only pore restricter - no? It isn't consumed."

"Oh yes it is. It gets full of the goo that continually plugs up the filter sheets. We get loads of goo and, come to think about it, rocks in the filters."

"ROCKS? ROCKS? Excuse me. Did you say rocks? When were you going to tell me that your supposed closed water system had rocks wandering in?" Henry held his arms wide.

"Forgot. We have a leak, obviously. Could that much chlorine go out a broken pipe?" Mac wondered as the detailed calculations crashed on an immeasurable and unknown variable.

"I doubt it," Henry scratching numbers from his experience with a lab pipe leak, "It'd have to be a pisser. Big leak. Let's see, the leak size would have to be the computed original minus... no.. not a leak, per se. The leak is exposing organics which are consuming the chlorine."

"How do we find it, a radioisotope? Could I borrow.."

"NO!" Dr. Henry was very emphatic, "They'd eat you alive if you put isotopes in the water with children... You and I know it's harmless, but you'd never get to explain it as they boil you in oil." Beaming and holding his small cup of espresso high into the air, "Amido Schwartz!" Henry chucked as he bounced like a kid toward the reagents, lifted a sealed snap top glass vial from an old faded pale green cupboard, and accentuated, "Amido Schwartz!" Mac was familiar with this substance. Maybe that is why a small thrill ran his spine. "This stuff is great!" Henry proclaimed, "One microdrop in a tub of water will give you the equivalent of India ink. It won't be consumed by organics." The concept is easy enough. If you cut something red with equal water, you get pink. Its just a matter of the measurement device. But this stuff, as black as nonexistence, increased its blackness with dilution. Incredibly small amounts could trace very large volumes given the right detection equipment. That Dr. Henry had in spades. The trick was to know how to portion out a small enough amount.

The instructions he set out were clear, typical color analysis stuff, only on a grand scale. Put one picomicrodrop, "use this special picomicropipette" into the outflow water. "In the huge volume of water in your facility, a picomicrodrop will never be seen." Doctor Henry was setting up a page that was marked off in horizontal and vertical light blue lines. A series of labels were lettered down the left column. Along the top were sequences of abbreviations "Ti24---Cel---##  Ti24---Cel---##  Ti24---Cel---##  Ti24---Cel---##  .." for time in 24hr notation, temperature Celsius and vial ID number. "Take three before and three after water samples. Get a shallow, mid, and deep sample each time. Then bring them here. We'll run the analyzer and calculate the leak." Doctor Henry was smiling with confidence.

Perfect. It seemed a good idea, at the time, you know - shooting the chemical breeze with your professor. Surrounded by ring stands, coiled glass implements, and eye high utility shelves, it made perfect sense - there. Squirting tracer dye into the filter would be easy, but not snapping the vial and doing the careful draw and measurement inspections required to set the picomicrodropper at the exact volume. It looked too much like drug behavior, might just as well stick a hypo into your jugular out on the diving board. Need a strategy. Fill the pipette somewhere else and palm it to the filter room, that would work, just don't engage anybody's eye, they might engage you back, in conversation...

Standing there in the Charles Darling guard's change room, a place where even a new shoe lace was an object of attention, trying to measure a picomicrodrop from a snap top glass vial was not going to be possible. Nothing was private in this place. Fill it. Where? There was no privacy anywhere......except, the bathroom stalls! It was a very nervous Marcus Macaluso who couldn't believe how loud a paper bag was in a tile lined bath room. "Shit!" his mind revised the plan, but it was too late. This bag was open. Very very carefully, leaning against the stall door with his back, covering the side crack where the door didn't quite meet the stall side wall so that nobody would see his clandestine process, the picomicro drop was carefully, very very carefully pulled into the delivery tiny measurement pipette, as he had practiced it with Professor Henry, until he could do it blindly. The rest of the Amido Schwartz, he just dumped down the toilet and flushed.

Disposal of the bag was made easy by the distraction of a commotion going on outside. Maybe whatever it was would help cover his walk to his mission's target. But that is why research is research. If you know how it is going to work out, if you know everything from the outset, then it isn't research. You suppose how it ought to work out, based on your assumptions, but then revise your assumptions based on how it really goes. There are no scientific failures. Scientific failures are the pointing sign posts to new knowledge.

And what a pointing sign post this turned out to be! Mac never got to the filter room with his secreted pipette. The screaming of children as he left the locker room was deafening. Deafening screaming and laughing and hooting and wild enthusiasm as he looked out over the waters of Charles Darling, the black black, totally black, blacker than the darkest cavern, black waters of Charles Darling.

"Oh shit!" then an awesome insight, "Shit? The goo is shit!" although nobody heard him in the commotion or noticed his dropping the micropipette and spent vial into the trash, trash that he himself carted off, later. Policing the deck - cleanup - was, after all, guards work.

But now, Frank just stood there on the deck and shook his head. "The Ink Well. They called this place the Ink Well just before that ass hole.. You didn't have anything to do with this?" suddenly turning to the Marcus who just did the big eyeball thing with his hands up in wonder. But Frank was laughing, "Macaluso! You do this?"

"Frank! How?"

The county board of health inspector happened to be on premises when the ink hit, and that's what he, too, wanted to know. How? All the guards were culled for clues. Nothing. Marcus offered that this town was swarming with dye mills at one time. Maybe an underground drum of dye corroded. We get rocks in the filter, so there must be a leak... Maybe a drum ruptured near the leak? That sounded good. It fit the history of the place.

But Grunt meandered in, wiping his thick face with his hand, "grnnnn, the toilet is black."

"Toilet?" the inspector startled.

All agreed that no single person could have carried so much ink on his or her person to do this. The only clue was a blackened toilet. Flushing the black water let in clear looking water that immediately turned every bit as black as it was before the flush. An underground dump of old mill dye was the obvious answer. The blackening toilet must be a sewage backup, but that meant both sources had leaks. It also meant that Charles Darling would be closed until the decks were torn up for pipe repairs.

Tearing up the decks? That could expose - the pool! There was hell to pay, at city hall. Charles Darling being torn up in mid season was out of the question. State inspection? A rubber liner perhaps - none that big, cement the drains and use above ground equipment - none with specs big enough, and besides the county yielded to the state inspector who was appointed by the other political party. He couldn't wait to open this present.

Who needs sex when you have black ink in the other party's hole?