The Big Wheels of tomorrow will be men
who can see the big picture. But
blowouts have small beginnings....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was very simple. Some combination of low temperature and highpressure had forced something from the seepage at the ocean bottom intocombination with something in the water around them.
And the impregnable armor around Subatlantic Oil's drilling chamber haddiscovered a weakness.
On the television screen it looked more serious than it was—soMuhlenhoff told himself, staring at it grimly. You get down more thana mile, and you're bound to have little technical problems. That's whydeepsea oil wells were still there.
Still, it did look kind of serious. The water driving in the pittedfaults had the pressure of eighteen hundred meters behind it, and whereit struck it did not splash—it battered and destroyed. As Muhlenhoffwatched, a bulkhead collapsed in an explosion of spray; the remotecamera caught a tiny driblet of the scattering brine, and the picturein the screen fluttered and shrank, and came back with a waveringside-wise pulse.
Muhlenhoff flicked off the screen and marched into the room where theEngineering Board was waiting in attitudes of flabby panic.
As he swept his hand through his snow-white crew cut and called theboard to order a dispatch was handed to him—a preliminary report froma quickly-dispatched company trouble-shooter team. He read it to theboard, stone-faced.
A veteran heat-transfer man, the first to recover, growled:
"Some vibration thing—and seepage from the oil pool. Sloppy drilling!"He sneered. "Big deal! So a couple hundred meters of shaft have to beplugged and pumped. So six or eight compartments go pop. Since when didwe start to believe the cack Research & Development hands out? Armor'sarmor. Sure it pops—when something makes it pop. If Atlantic oil waseasy to get at, it wouldn't be here waiting for us now. Put a gang onthe job. Find out what happened, make sure it doesn't happen again. Bigdeal!"
Muhlenhoff smiled his attractive smile. "Breck," he said, "thank Godyou've got guts. Perhaps we were in a bit of a panic. Gentlemen, I hopewe'll all take heart from Mr. Breck's level-headed—what did you say,Breck?"
Breck didn't look up. He was pawing through the dispatch Muhlenhoff haddropped to the table. "Nine-inch plate," he read aloud, whitefaced."And time of installation, not quite seven weeks ago. If this goes onin a straight line—" he grabbed for a pocket slide-rule—"we have,uh—" he swallowed—"less time than the probable error," he finished.
"Breck!" Muhlenhoff yelled. "Where are you going?"
The veteran heat-transfer man said grimly as he sped through the door:"To find a submarine."
The rest of the Engineering Board was suddenly pulling chairs towardthe trouble-shooting team's dispatch. Muhlenhoff slammed a fist on thetable.
"Stop it," he said evenly. "The next man who leaves the meeting willhave his contract canceled. Is that clear, gentlemen? Good. We will nowproceed to get organized."
He had them; they were listening. He said forcefully: "I want a taskforce consisting of a petrochemist, a vibrations man, a hydrostaticsman and a structural engineer. Co-opt mathematicians and computermenas needed. I will have all machines capable of handling Fourier seriesand up cleared for your use. The work of the task force will be dividedinto two phases. For Phase One, members will keep their staffs as