Chambers beneath the desert

The high, smooth concrete walls sent our footsteps echoing all the way up to the vaulted ceilings 50 or more feet above our heads. My companion was tall and thin, dark eyed and with curled dark hair that fell between her proud shoulders to the middle of her back. I had never been in this complex, deep beneath the California desert, but my friend wanted a guide with some actual drain time under his belt, and I was the only one she knew.
We had been walking an hour or so before the walls opened into this vault. It was huge and well lit by sodium arc lamps on 15-foot squared steel posts. Conduit, steam pipes and industrial hose snaked across the walls and floor in a baffling network of rusty iron and dingy accordians of yellow rubber. This was unlike any storm-drain I had visited before, and I told the girl as much...

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