1636 Commander Cantrell in the West Indies: Chapter Eleven

Undisclosed location near Wietze, USE

    Ann Koudsi finished her morning cup of broth — it had been unseasonably chilly overnight — and nosed back into her books and progress charts again. As the second in charge of the rotary drill test rig, and ultimately, the superintendent who would be responsible for the new machine and its crew in the field, it was her job to be The Final Authority on all things pertaining to its operation. That, in turn, meant minor or full mastery of a wide range of topics, including practical geology, mechanical engineering, the physics of pressurized fluids and gases, and even organizational management. To name but a few.

    So it was not merely frustrating but alarming and infuriating when, once again, concentration on the words, and charts, and formulae did not come easily. Indeed, she discovered that she had been reading the same line about assessing imminent well-head failures because, instead of seeing it, she was seeing something else in her mind’s eye:

    Ulrich Rohrbach, down-time crew chief for the rig.

    Which was not just foolishness, but utter, stupid, and dangerous foolishness. As she had kept telling herself over the last nine months. It was foolishness to allow him to court her at all. Foolish that they had started taking all their meals together. Foolish that they had spent Christmas visiting what was left of his war-torn family: a widowed sister and her two perilously adorable kids. More foolish still when they had started holding hands just before Valentine’s Day, a mostly up-time tradition which he had somehow learned of (Ann secretly suspected their mutual boss, Dave Willcocks, of playing matchmaker). And most foolish of all had been their first kiss as they were laughing beneath the Maypole just weeks ago.

    And there were so many reason why it was all extraordinarily foolish. Firstly, Ulrich was a down-timer, albeit an extraordinary gentlemen and more patient than any up-time American would have been in regard to the glacial progress of their relationship. It was foolish because Ulrich barely had a fourth grade education, although, truth be told, his reading had become much faster and broader in the past half year and revealed that his mind was not slow, merely starved. And it was foolish because he just didn’t look the way she had imagined the man of her dreams would look: he was not tall, dark, or particularly handsome. But on the other hand, he had kind eyes, thick sandy hair, dimples, a wonderful bass laugh, and a surprisingly muscular build, which, compacted into his sturdy 5’8″ frame, would have put any number of up-time body-builders to shame.

    And what had been especially foolish about their first kiss was her own response: not merely eager, but starved. She had absolutely embarrassed herself. And why? Because, as she learned when she started flipping backward through the months on her mental calendar, it had been at least — well, it had been a long, long, long time since she had had sex.

    So all right, maybe her physical reaction — her over-reaction, she firmly reminded herself — to the kiss had been understandable. But Ulrich wasn’t likely to understand it. Or, more problematically, he was all too likely to understand it the wrong way: that her sudden avid response had been to him, personally, rather than to his, er, generic maleness. And so how would she explain that to him so that he wouldn’t get more attached or more hopeful?

    Are you sure that’s really what you want to do? said a voice at the back of her mind, the one that had been growing steadily louder and more ironic for the past three weeks.

    Her response was indignant and maybe a little bit terrified. Of course she wanted to let Ulrich know that she wasn’t interested in him, per se. She had work, important work, to do. And after all, where could a relationship with him wind up?

    Well, let’s see, said the voice, it could start in bed, then move to a house, which would quickly acquire some small, additional inhabitants —

    Ann Koudsi stood up quickly, her stomach suddenly very compact and hard. She did not want to get married to a down-timer. No matter how nice, or how good-natured, or how gentlemanly — or how damnedly sexy — he was. It wouldn’t end well.

    Right, agreed the grinning voice, because it wouldn’t end at all. Just like it hasn’t ended for the hundreds of other up-time-down-time marriages that have occurred over the past few years.

    She paced to the bookshelf to get a book she didn’t need, opened it, furiously thumbing through the index for she had no idea what.

    Unless, said the voice, what it’s really about is home.

    Ann stopped thumbing the pages, forgot she was holding the book.

    Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? If you marry a down-timer, it’s the final act of acceptance that you’re here in the past for good. That so much of your family, so many of your friends and almost everything else you ever knew and loved. is gone like that awful song said: dust in the wind. You won’t embrace anyone in this world because you won’t let go of the people in the other world.

    Ann discovered she had clutched the book close to her chest, could feel her heart beating with a crisp, painful precision.

    But here’s the problem, girl: you can’t hold on to what isn’t there, what no longer exists. And if you wait too long, if you push Ulrich away too hard, you just might lose the best thing — the best man — you’ve ever laid eyes on in this world or the —

    A distinctive metallic cough broke the stillness of the remote, steep-sided glen in which they had set up their test rig. Ann looked up, disoriented and startled. That was the drilling rig’s engine, starting to run at full speed. But today’s test run had been cancelled —

    Then she detected an almost subaudial hum: the rig’s turntable was spinning at operating RPMs.

    Ann dropped the book and was out the door, sprinting for the drill site, which was located in a dead-end defile a quarter mile away. There was no fire-bell or even dinner-gong to ring, to get them to stop, because other than the three cabins for the workers and the one for the senior site engineer — her — there was no one else nearby. And nothing with which to make alarm-level noise. “No reason to attract undue attention,” Professor Doctor Wecke of the Mines and Drilling Program of the University of Helmstedt had explained coyly to her when she had accepted the position. She had wondered at the isolation of the site and then wondered if Wecke’s caution about gongs and the like wasn’t a bit ridiculous. Why worry about noisemaking bells when you spent most of the day running a loud, crude, experimental rotary drilling rig?

    As she ran, Ann saw the expected plume of steam from the rig’s engine, obscuring the black cloud of its wood-fired boiler, and glimpsed a small figure well ahead of her, also running toward the drill site. That figure was moving very quickly and angling in from the main access road that led off to the rig’s supply and service sheds. Then she saw its grey-dyed down-time coveralls. Distinct from the typical brown ones of the rank and file workers, that could only be Ulrich. He must have heard the engine start, too. Had probably been in the materials depot, checking the quality of the new casing before it went in the hole to shore up the soft, unconsolidated walls that would be left behind by the next day’s digging.

    The next day’s digging: that deferral to tomorrow had not been merely advisable, but essential. Today’s run had to be called off because too many of the main crew, the veterans, were down with the flu. It was one of those brief but vicious late spring bugs that spreads like wildfire, burns through a body by setting both brow and guts on fire (albeit in different ways), and then burns out just as quickly. Even old tough-as-leather Dave Willcocks, head of the rotary drill development team and liaison to the academics and financiers back at the University of Helmstedt, had fallen victim to the virus. Which was a source of some extra concern at the site and beyond: this was the first sign that Willcocks was anything other than indestructible, and at seventy years of age, there was no knowing if this was just an aberration in his otherwise unexceptioned robust health, or the first sign of impending decline. Ann had seen, all too often and too arrestingly, that people aged more quickly in the seventeenth century, and the transition from good health to decrepitude could, on occasion, be startlingly swift.

    Ulrich had reached the rig, seemed to dart around looking for something. Or someone, Ann corrected. He was clearly trying to find who was in charge, who had overridden today’s suspension of operations.

    From far behind her private cabin, Ann heard another engine kick into life with a roar. That was an up-time sound, the engine on Dave Willcock’s pick-up truck. Good, so that meant he was on his way. Ann didn’t like that he was up and about, but right now, her strongest sensation was relief. No one back-talked Willcocks. His word was law on site, and that was what was needed to shut down the rig without a moment’s delay. Without Dave or Ulrich or her there to oversee the commencement of operations, there was no telling what errors might be made.

    Ulrich sprinted up onto the platform upon which the derrick was built. Now only a hundred yards off — but with a wind-stitch suddenly clutching at her left side — Ann could see him engaged in a shouting match with someone up there. Someone very tall and very lean and very blonde, almost white blonde —

    Oh shit, Ann thought, he’s arguing with Otto Bauernfeld. Bauernfeld was the senior overseer for Gerhard Graves, who was the nosiest and most intrusive of all the investors. Imperious and contemptuous both, the Graves family had tried double-crossing David Willcocks and his associates when they undertook their first joint drilling project, a simple cable rig. So this time, Willcocks, his team, and now the University, had unanimously wanted to reject Graves’ money — but they simply couldn’t afford to. The project would not have been possible without Gerhard Graves carrying twenty percent of the upfront costs. And Otto Bauernfeld, as Graves’ visiting factotum, had adopted an attitude to match his master’s: presumptuous, dictatorial, and arrogantly dismissively of the rank-and-file workers. “Shit,” Ann repeated. Aloud, this time.

    She sprinted the last thirty yards to the gravel-ringed drill site, earning stares as she went. Pebbles churned underfoot, slowing her down, but she was able to catch the shouted exchange between Ulrich and Otto Bauernfeld as she traversed the last few yards of loose stone.

    “You must shut the rig down, Herr Bauernfeld. Mr. Willcocks has ordered us not to drill today, not even to –”

    Bauernfeld looked far down his very long nose at the medium-sized but very powerful Ulrich. “Who are you, and why should I care?”

    “I am Ulrich Rohrbach, the site foreman and design consultant. I must ask you to –”

    “I do not take orders from you, workman. Now, do not obstruct me any further.”

    “Herr Bauernfeld, I must insist: on whose authority do you ignore and violate Project Director David Willcocks’ strict prohibition against drilling today?”

    “I ignore it based on the only authority that truly matters on this site: that stemming from my patron’s heavy investment in this project. Which you should understand. I am here for one day — one day, and no more — and must see the progress you have made in developing this drill. My superior expects an impartial report, and he shall have it.”

    “Herr Bauernfeld, with a little warning, I could have –”

    “You are a worker. And an employee of Herr Willcocks. Who will be pleased to tell me whatever he thinks will please my employer. But Herr Graves wants the truth and I know how to get it for him.” Bauernfeld stuck this thumbs into his belt and leaned back, quite pleased with himself. “It was simply a matter of getting the crew to run the drill without your interference. Which they did readily enough, when I told them who my superior was, and the personal consequences they would face if they displeased him. So, now I shall see the operation as it truly is, and with my own eyes.”

    “You are not seeing the operation,” Ann panted.

    Bauernfeld halted as she gasped for breath, and then doubled over to ease the cramp in her gut. Still looking up, she could see the uncertainty in his eyes, the waver in his demeanor as he tried to decide where she fit into his complex constellation of class and professional relationships. A woman of no particular birth, but an up-timer: a person who actually worked alongside laborers, but also a person of considerable achievement and education. There were no ready social equations that defined her place in his social scheme of things.

    But then his eyes strayed to her clothes: grimy, practical coveralls, grey like Ulrich’s. Something like a satisfied smile settled about Bauernfeld’s eyes. “Frau Koudsi, the rig’s motors are running and the drill-string has been lowered. And now — see? It is turning: the drilling has begun. So I am most certainly seeing the operations of your drill.”

    “Proper operations involve more than turning on the machines.” Ulrich’s voice was so guttural that he sounded more animal than human.

    Bauernfeld speared him with eyes that suggested he would have preferred to respond with the back of his hand instead of his tongue. “Your workers know the steps well enough, I perceive.”

    “You perceive wrong, then, you ass.” Ann felt herself rising on her toes to make her rebuttal emphatic. “These aren’t our first crew. Almost all of them are second crew. Replacements who usually carry gear, clean the facility. They’re like apprentices at this stage.”

    Bauernfeld became a bit pale. “And the — the journeymen, or ‘first crew,’ as you say?”

    Ulrich waved an arm angrily back at the workers’ sheds. “Back there. In bed. Sick with the same flu that has Herr Willcocks in bed, and why we shut down operations today.”

    Bauernfeld was now truly pale. “But…all seems to be in order. These men know their tasks.”

    “Do they?” shrieked Ann over the motor and the drill, wondering how long they had to convince Bauernfeld to tell the class-cowed workers shut the rig down — or how long it would take for Dave Willcocks to drive down here, if he wouldn’t listen to reason. “Did you flush the mud hose? Did you check its flexibility? Did you check where it connects to the kelly for signs of wear or fraying? Did you turn the drill in the hole long enough to warm the mud already there before putting weight on the bit? And did you warm the new mud in the tanks before pumping it in?”

    Bauernfeld scowled at the last. “And how could the temperature of mud possibly matter?”

    Ann pointed behind her at the mud-tank. “That mud is being pumped down in that hole, Herr Bauernfeld. At extremely high pressure. Among other things, it scoops up the dross — the debris made by the drilling — and dumps it there, in the shaker tray, where the debris is removed and the mud is returned to the system.”

    With uncertain eyes, Bauernfeld followed the progress of her pointing: from mud pit, to mud tube, to where it connected to the swivel atop the drill string, to where the return tube dumped the fouled mud into the shaker tray. “And to do this,” he said slowly, “the mud must be warm?”

    Ulrich leaned in, face red, voice loud with both urgency and anger. “No, but it cannot be cold.”

    “But why?”

    Ann rolled her eyes. Can Bauernfeld really be so stupid? Well, he might be. “Look, you sit down to breakfast and get thin, hot porridge. How easy can you pour it into your bowl?”

    Bauernfeld shrugged. “Easily enough.”

    “Right. Now let it get cold. Try pouring it.”

    Bauernfeld’s eyebrows lowered, but then rose quickly. “It is thicker. It will be harder to –”

    “Exactly, and that’s why the mud can’t be too cold. But last night we had a hard frost, and the men running the drill haven’t dealt with this. They don’t know how the resistance builds, particularly with the shavings collecting because the thicker mud can’t clear them quickly enough. They have no idea what that could do to –”

    Ann heard a faint groan in the mud-carrying standpipe where it ascended the nearest leg of the derrick. “Uh oh,” she breathed and looked up at the swivel.

    Ulrich was already staring at it but with a surprised expression. “Looks like the swivel coupling is holding,” he breathed. Carefully.

    Ann nodded, was aware of Bauernfeld’s confused gape. He followed their eyes, but did not know what to look at. Which in this case was the swivel atop the spinning drill string. That had been the most problematic piece of machinery to make reliable and robust. Not the swivel itself — that was a fairly straightforward fabrication job — but where the flexible mud hose connected to it.

    While the hose did not fully “spin” with the swivel, there was a lot of random and varying motion imparted to it as the drill string sped up, slowed down, encountered resistance, spun free. In short, the linkage between hose and swivel had to be both strong and flexible.

    And that was a difficult requirement for 17^th century materials. There was no rubber available, yet. That would involve tapping New World trees en masse or growing them elsewhere. And synthetics were a pipedream, an up-time reality that was now a distant fantasy. So they made do with leather. Layered with canvas. Stitched carefully. Reinforced by brass rivets and clamps, where feasible. And at the connecting collar, where the changes in pressure and torque were most intense, precious (which was to say ‘retooled up-time’) steel rings added extra reinforcement.

    And so far, despite the rapid spin-up and overly-thick mud, the epicenter of their engineering headaches and operational worries was holding up. Ann felt a smile try to rise to her lips. Heh, progress at last —

    But that impulse did not last longer than the eyeblink which refocused her on the very real dangers of continuing operations. So the mud hose’s linkage to the swivel was good: so what? The mud was too cold, meaning there were about a dozen other failure points that could be potentially —

    The groan in the standpipe returned as a loud surging wail and the whole tube began shuddering, the oscillations racing up its gantry-ascending length.

    Ann turned to the engine operator, prepared to talk him through the spin-down instructions —

    But Bauernfeld had gone completely pale, discerning in the combination of her desperate motions and the quaking of the standpipe, that he was standing right next to an impending disaster. “Shut it off!” he screamed at the engine operator, “Turn the engine off! Stop the drill string!”

    “NO!” Ann and Ulrich howled together. But it was too late.

    The disaster was already unleashing itself when Bauernfeld shouted his crude, and therefore counterproductive, orders. The standpipe, shaking mightily, now put pressure on a connection which had never been a major point of design concern: that point where it joined to the mud-hose, which hung free between the gantry leg and the swivel atop the drill string. However, since that hose was more rigidly affixed to its point of connection with the standpipe, the excessive pressure in the system now made it shudder violently. At the very fringe of where it met the pipe’s connecting collar, a brass rivet popped, a seam opened —

    “Run!” Ann shouted. “Clear the rig!” And then she felt a blow on her back. The air was driven out of her, and she was flying — but being carried, too. The momentary disorientation became realization: Ulrich had tackled her off the platform. And a powerful emotion rose up to meet that realization. I love him. I do! I know that now. But this is going to hurt. And we could still die. Very easily. And yet, her eyes never left the rig.

    With a screaming pop of suddenly released pressure, the mud hose stripped itself off the top of the standpipe, flinging the attachment collar high into the air. Freed, the hose’s sudden wild writhings resembled the overdose-death throes of a mud-vomiting anaconda. One worker, among the youngest, staring open-mouthed at the sudden spectacle before him, did not move in time. The hose spasmed through a vicious twist and cut him open from chest to navel, viscera flying in all directions. Almost bisected, he was dead before he hit the ground.

    The wild whipping and slashing caught two more persons. Bauernfeld himself managed to dodge the hose, but his left hip and groin were caught in the spray pattern of the mud. Although quickly losing pressure, that viscous jet was still spewing with a force well above one hundred PSI. Bauernfeld went down with a warbling shriek of pain and surprise, white bone showing through a wash of blood and shattered intestines — less than two seconds after he had shouted his final orders.

    Those orders now went into full, monstrous effect. The partially-trained rig operator not only cut the engine, but, hearing Bauernfeld’s “stop” order, had thrown the long lever which engaged a large, counter-weighted arresting gear.

    The effect on the drill-string was dramatic. With many tons of pipe already spinning in the three hundred foot hole, there was simply no way to, as Ann’s mother used to say, “stand on the brakes.” Instead, the arrestor groaned, its cable snapped, and the counterweights were launched sideways, one smashing down a nearby utility shed, the other tracing a ballistic arc into the side of the ravine.

    But, even though it was brief, that sudden, strong resistance at the head of the drill pipe forced a rapid drop in rotational speed of its uppermost lengths. However, the much weightier part of the entire drill string assembly was still turning deep in the ground, its massive inertia being what had quickly shattered the braking mechanism, which had only been designed to gradually slow, not immediately stop, the string.

    Now, the differences in inertia and resistance at the two ends of the drill string simply tore it apart. The threaded ends which joined the top pipe in the hole with length that was still free-spinning above it screeched and gave way in a shower of sparks. The lower length of pipe, grinding shrilly against the sides of the bore-hole, slowed quickly, but its single sweep smashed everything it is path. The upper length, no longer anchored on the bottom, swung wide and fast, ripping free of the kelly and swivel. It spun away like a side-slung baton, clipping the northernmost leg of the derrick, and swatting three workers aside like so many inconsequential — and now quite shattered — flies. The combined kelly-and-swivel assembly swung around like a misshapen bolo, cracked through two gantry struts and spent the rest of its energy by slamming full on into yet another of the derrick’s legs.

    Showered by the mud spewing up from the shattered standpipe, Ann swung to her feet, blinking — when Ulrich retightened his arm around her waist and started running away —

    – Away from the groaning, tilting, unraveling derrick which pushed slowly down through the curtain of mud as it toppled toward them.

    Ann got her own feet under her somehow and, with Ulrich now pulling her by the hand, they sprinted away. This time, Ann did not look back.

    She heard the smash, felt the ground shiver a moment before the slight concussive wave of the impact buffeted her back. Splinters, whining like darts, bit into her right thigh and buttock. She only ran harder.

    Which was just as well. More debris, ejected upward, came down in a lethal torrent where she had been running just two seconds before.

    A pulley, rolling on its edge, wheeled past her briskly, lagged when it reached the gravel perimeter of the site, wobbled lazily and fell over. As if that was a signal to Ann and Ulrich that the danger was indeed past, they turned, still holding hands.

    The rig was gone. Except for four feet of the drill pipe which had sheared off while partially in the bore hole and two feet of savaged standpipe that had not gone over with the derrick, nothing was left standing upright on the platform. The steam engine had been ruined by debris, its boiler knocked over and the firebox already flaring dangerously. Mud oozed outward and downward in all directions. Smoke — black, brown, and grey — fanned upward into the sky. The workers that had cleared the rig in time were already being joined by members of the sickly “first crew,” who, wan and haggard, spread out through the wreckage with them, searching for survivors.

    Behind them, brakes screeched, gravel spattered, and a car door opened. A moment later, Dave Willcocks, looking haggard and pale, was standing alongside them, staring at the ruin which had been their grand experiment. “Jesus Christ,” he swore. But he didn’t stare at the wreckage for more than a few seconds before heading toward the disaster to assist in the rescue work, just a few steps behind Ann and Ulrich.

    The time that followed was without a doubt the most gruesome experience in Ann’s life. The scale of the blunt force trauma inflicted on fragile human bodies by the disintegrating oil rig was genuinely incredible. It was as if the gods of the earth, awakened and risen in fury, had just torn people apart.

    She couldn’t even find any flicker of vengeful satisfaction in Bauernfeld’s fate, although he’d been directly responsible for the disaster. The wound that had killed him was… horrible, a perfect illustration of the old saw I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

    Eventually — thankfully — the immediate rescue work was over. Those who’d survived had been stabilized and had been taken away to receive real medical care. Repairing the property damage would take a lot longer, but there was no immediate urgency involved. So, tired and blood-spackled themselves, Ann and Ulrich and Dave Willcocks came back together to discuss the situation.

    “I heard about Bauernfeld coming here,” said Willcocks. “Got the message from your runner, Ulrich, the same moment I heard the rig start. His doing, I take it?”

    Ann looked out of the corner of her eye. Ulrich frowned at David’s Willcock’s question, looked away, clearly trying to fabricate a face-saving story for a man who was now dead. An incompetent, arrogant man whom Ulrich would probably now risk his own good reputation to protect.

    Ann turned and looked Willcocks in the eye. “Yes, this was Bauernfeld’s doing. All so he could make a report to Gerhard Graves without any input or ‘interference’ from us.” She turned her eyes back to the smoking ruins. “I’d say his methods were ill-considered.”

    Another car door opened and closed behind them. Footsteps rasped on the gravel, and then Dennis Grady, head of contractors for the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s Department of Economic Resources, their project’s other fiscal godfather, came to stand beside Ulrich.

    Ann started. “Mr. Grady, what are you doing up here?”

    He looked away from the devastation with a baleful expression. “Why, to check on your progress.”

    Ann — broken-hearted but also quite suddenly aware that not only was she in love with Ulrich, but had been for almost three months now — felt conflicting emotions of joy and loss roil and bash into each other. They came out of her as a burst of laughter. “Our progress! Wow, did you pick the wrong day for a visit, or what?”

    Grady shrugged. “Machines can be rebuilt, if they’re worth rebuilding.”

    Grady’s serious, level tone was like a bucket of cold water in Ann’s face. So this isn’t the end of all our work, maybe? “And what determines if they’re worth rebuilding?”

    “Well, how was the rig doing before this happened?”

    “That is the irony of this disaster, Herr Grady,” Ulrich sighed. “Tomorrow, we were scheduled to get to four hundred feet. And the equipment had been working quite well. We had to be careful not to push the system too much. The mud flow cannot keep up with our top operating speeds.”

    “Why?”

    Ann thought Dave Willcocks might explain, but instead he nodded at her to continue, smiling like a proud uncle. She shrugged, answered, “The rate that we get fresh mud in the hole determines how much we can cool the system. It bathes the hot drill bit, removes extra friction by carrying away the cuttings. But the mud hose is the bottleneck. We can’t push the pressure in the hose over two hundred fifty psi without risking a rupture. That reduces how much we can cool the system, and how fast we can clear cuttings out of the hole. And that determines our upper operating limit.”

    “But if you stay beneath that limit­ — ?”

    “We were making good progress, and this design was holding up pretty well.”

    “We still have challenges,” Willcocks put in. “We’ve got to have better weld joints between the separate sections of drill pipe. And I’m not sure that we’ve got enough horsepower from the current steam engine do really do the job when we get under six hundred feet.”

    “But in principle, this design is functional?”

    “Functional, yes. Ready to drill, no.”

    Grady shook his head. “But I didn’t ask you about readiness.”

    David frowned. “Two months ago you did.”

    Grady shrugged. “That was two months ago. Things change.”

    “Like what?”

    “Like never you mind. Look, it was always a long-shot that you’d have a rotary drill ready for the New World survey expedition, anyhow. And as things are developing, we won’t need it until next year, probably. By which time, I expect it will be ready.” Grady glanced at the smoldering ruin, through which rescuers were picking their careful ways. “Well, this one won’t be ready, but you get what I mean.”

    Ann almost smiled, but it felt wrong, somehow. “Thanks, Dennis. I wish I could be happier. But we’ve lost so much: so many people, so much hard work, and a chance to set foot in North America again.”

    “Oh, now hold on,” said Grady. “Just because you won’t have a rotary drill, doesn’t mean you’re not still going along for the ride to the New World. We need your scientific and technical skills on site, and there are drills beside your rotary wonder, you know.”

    Ann shrugged. “I ought to know. We were working cable rigs at Wietze for the better part of two years.”

    “And you’ll be working them again, half a world away.”

    Ulrich looked flustered, possibly heart-broken. “So then, if Ms. Koudsi is — is gone, who shall resume building the rotary drill?”

    David kicked at the gravel. “I guess that would be me and the technical assistants that have been helping you out here. And I could bring up Glen Sterling from Grantville. And actually, we did learn something important about the drill design today: that the weak point is no longer at the juncture of the swivel and the mud hose, but at the juncture of the mud-hose and the standpipe.”

    “So how much time do I have to help David with the improved model before I leave?” Ann asked Dennis, while looking at Ulrich.

    “None, I’m afraid,” answered Grady. “We’ve got to get you up north for special training and equipment familiarization. Besides, there’s not going to be much breakthrough engineering going on for a few months. I figure it will take that long just to get all the drill pipe and casing out of the ground.” He looked at David for confirmation.

    Willcocks nodded. “Gonna be a bitch of a job. But it will be our golden opportunity to own the next rig outright, without worrying about financiers.”

    Grady frowned. “Oh? How’s that?”

    “Herr Graves’ representative caused this failure. Every surviving witness will testify to that. And from what Herr Bauernfeld told me on the way down here, he had papers in his bags indicating that he has a ‘clear mandate from his employer’ to ensure that he saw the rig in operation without me or any of my supervisors around to meddle with it. I told him that wasn’t permissible. Sent a letter to his boss on the topic, too.

    “But he disregarded multiple direct orders from the lawful site operators and majority owners, and went ahead with his ‘private test.’ So he and his employer are directly culpable for all this — the loss of life, the loss of the rig, and the expense of recovering all that pipe and casing, since it’s too rare and costly to leave sitting in the ground.” David’s grin was one of savage revenge, not mirth. “It’s going to cost that bastard Graves his stake in this whole operation to be able to walk away from this disaster without getting roasted alive by the courts.”

    Grady nodded. “Yep. Sounds about right.” He turned to Ann. “Now, are you ready to pack your bags and head north to the Baltic?”

    “I am,” answered Ann, “But on one condition.”

    Grady raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

    “That I get to choose my crew chief.” She turned to Ulrich and smiled. “That would be Ulrich Rohrbach. If he doesn’t go, it’s no deal.”

    Ulrich stared at Ann, smiling back, his mouth open a little, jaw working futilely to find words — but not very hard. He was too busy looking at her, Ann was delighted to see, like an infatuated puppy.

    Grady cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Rohrbach, how about it? Are you also willing to go to the New World and drill for oil without a rotary rig?”

    Ulrich did not look away from Ann or even blink. “Where do I sign up?” he said.