Fear is the Key

Both men made perfunctory noises of greeting. Larry prodded me in the back so I said I was delighted too, but they obviously had no interest at all in me. Both men looked worried and uneasy, and both men were doing their best to conceal the fact. But the general didn't miss it.

"Something bothering you, Harrison?" Out here on the rig it was obviously the policy for Vyland to keep very much in the background.

"Very much so, sir." Harrison, a crew-cut youngster with heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, looked to me as if he should still be in college, but he must have been good to hold down the responsible job he did. He produced a small chart, spread it out and pointed with a carpenter's pencil. "This chart's good, General Ruthven. It couldn't be better, and Pride and Honeywell are the best geological team in the business. But we're already twelve hundred feet overdue. We should have hit oil at least five hundred feet back. But there's not even a smell of gas yet. I can't even begin to explain it, sir."

I could have explained it, but it was hardly the time.

"Those things happen, my boy," the general said easily. I had to admire the old coot; I was beginning to have more than a fair idea of the almost inhuman strain he was labouring under, but the control, the self-possession were admirable. "We're lucky if we make it two out of five. And no geologist would claim to be 100 per cent accurate, or even within shouting distance of it. Give it another thousand. The responsibility's mine."

"Thank you, sir." Harrison looked relieved, but there was still a certain uneasiness about him and the general was quick to get on to it.

"Still something worrying you, Harrison?"

"No, sir, of course not." He was too quick, too emphatic, he wasn't half the actor the old boy was. "Nothing at all."

"Hmm." The general considered him thoughtfully, then looked at Jerrold. "Something on your mind, too?"

"The weather, sir."

"Of course." The general nodded understandingly. "Latest reports are that Hurricane Diane is going to hit Marble Springs fair and square. And that means the X 13. You don't have to ask me, Jerrold. You know that. You're the captain of this ship, I'm only a passenger. I don't like losing ten thousand dollars a day, but you must suspend drilling the moment you think it's right to."

"It's not that, sir," Jerrold said unhappily. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "That experimental leg you're working on, sir — shouldn't it be lowered to give maximum stability?"

So the drilling crew did know there was something going on in that pillar I'd investigated the previous night. When I came to think of it, although it wasn't inevitable that they should know, it was advisable. So much easier to give the crew a specious explanation for the activities taking place there than to cordon off a section and raise suspicion and unwanted and possibly dangerous speculation. I wondered what sort of yarn had been spun to them. I was to find that out right away.

"Vyland?" The general had turned to the man by his side and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"I'll accept full responsibility, General Ruthven." He spoke in the quiet, precise, confident tones that a top-flight engineer might have employed, although it would have surprised me if he knew a nut from a bolt. But he could use reason, too, for he added: "This storm is going to hit from the west and the maximum strain is going to be on the other the landward side. The effect on this side will merely be to lift it." He made a deprecating gesture. "It does seem rather pointless, doesn't it, to lower an additional leg just when the other legs on that same side will have far less strain than normal to carry? Besides, General, we are now so near the perfection of this technique which is going to revolutionise underwater drilling that it would be a crime to set it back, maybe several months, by lowering the leg and perhaps destroying all our delicate equipment."

So that was the line. It was well done, I had to admit: the dedicated enthusiasm in his voice was so exactly right, without being in any way overdone.

"That's good enough for me," Jerrold said. He turned back to the general. "Coming across to your quarters, sir?"

"Later. To eat, but don't wait lunch for us. Order it for my stateroom, will you? Mr. Smith here is keen to get to work right away." Like hell I was.

We left them and made our way down a broad passage. Deep inside the platform here the sound of the wind and the rising waves crashing and breaking against the pillars was completely inaudible. Perhaps some faint murmur of sound might have been heard if the air in that brightly-lit steel passage hadn't been filled with the hum of powerful generators: we appeared to be passing by some diesel engine room.