opportunity to ruffle the aristocratic plumage." He paused, then said thoughtfully: "At least I hope I don't believe it. Come on, let us examine our defenses."
"You've got a pistol. I've got a pistol. That's defenses?"
"Well, where we'll mount the defenses when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine."
"// they arrive."
"Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers."
"From his own private armory, I suppose."
"It wouldn't surprise me."
"What do you really think, Commander?"
"I don't know. All I know is that if Lord
AHstair MacLean
Worth is even halfway right, life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days."
The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on the platform. The Seawitch was moored in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water-—nine hundred feet, which was well within the tension-ing cables* capacities—safely south of the U.S. mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, right on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.
Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.
Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night. The
42
Seawitck
men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well-housed and well-fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song, but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn't hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal, then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.
Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some tune, then turned and walked back toward the accommodation quarters.
Scoffield said: "Decided on your gun emplacements yet, Commander—if there are any guns?"
"There'll be guns." Larsen was confident. "But we won't need any in this quarter."
"Why?"
"Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, Fm not too sure. It'll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four."
The oil was not stored aboard the rig—it is forbidden by a law based strictly on common sense to store hydrocarbons at or near the working platform of an oil rig. Instead, Lord Worth, on Larsen's instructions—which had prudently come in the form of suggestions—had had built
Alistair MacLean
a huge floating tank which was anchored, on a basis precisely similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleaned oil was pumped into this after it came up from the ocean floor, or, more precisely, from a massive limestone reef deep down below the ocean floor, a reef caused by tiny marine creatures of a now long-covered shallow sea of some half a billion years ago.
Once, sometimes twice, a day a 50,000-ton-capacity tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the crisscross run to the southern United States. The North Hudson Oil Company did, in fact, have supertankers, but the use of them in this case did not serve Lord Worth's
"You've got a pistol. I've got a pistol. That's defenses?"
"Well, where we'll mount the defenses when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine."
"// they arrive."
"Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers."
"From his own private armory, I suppose."
"It wouldn't surprise me."
"What do you really think, Commander?"
"I don't know. All I know is that if Lord
AHstair MacLean
Worth is even halfway right, life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days."
The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on the platform. The Seawitch was moored in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water-—nine hundred feet, which was well within the tension-ing cables* capacities—safely south of the U.S. mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, right on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.
Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.
Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night. The
42
Seawitck
men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well-housed and well-fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song, but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn't hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal, then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.
Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some tune, then turned and walked back toward the accommodation quarters.
Scoffield said: "Decided on your gun emplacements yet, Commander—if there are any guns?"
"There'll be guns." Larsen was confident. "But we won't need any in this quarter."
"Why?"
"Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, Fm not too sure. It'll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four."
The oil was not stored aboard the rig—it is forbidden by a law based strictly on common sense to store hydrocarbons at or near the working platform of an oil rig. Instead, Lord Worth, on Larsen's instructions—which had prudently come in the form of suggestions—had had built
Alistair MacLean
a huge floating tank which was anchored, on a basis precisely similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleaned oil was pumped into this after it came up from the ocean floor, or, more precisely, from a massive limestone reef deep down below the ocean floor, a reef caused by tiny marine creatures of a now long-covered shallow sea of some half a billion years ago.
Once, sometimes twice, a day a 50,000-ton-capacity tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the crisscross run to the southern United States. The North Hudson Oil Company did, in fact, have supertankers, but the use of them in this case did not serve Lord Worth's
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