The Rig Tribunal of 1948

• Chapter 1 Iron and Salt
• Chapter 2 The Pressure Rises
• Chapter 3 Midnight Blowout
• Chapter 4 Gathering of the Brass
• Chapter 5 Jurisdiction at Sea
• Chapter 6 The Toolpusher's Silence
• Chapter 7 Opening Statements on the Mess Deck
• Chapter 8 Mud and Steel
• Chapter 9 War Records and Oil Stains
• Chapter 10 Corporate Counsel
• Chapter 11 The Drill Floor Log
• Chapter 12 Cross-Examining the Derrickhand
• Chapter 13 Rising Swell
• Chapter 14 The Metallurgist's Doubt
• Chapter 15 A Rig Divided
• Chapter 16 Night Patrol on the Catwalk
• Chapter 17 Submerged Evidence
• Chapter 18 Orders from Houston
• Chapter 19 The Broken Flange
• Chapter 20 Roughneck Justice
• Chapter 21 The Navy's Secret Cargo
• Chapter 22 High Noon in the Galley
• Chapter 23 Closing Arguments
• Chapter 24 The Fog Rolls In
• Chapter 25 Deliberation and Gale
• Chapter 26 The Verdict of Platform Nine

Platform Nine sat eleven miles off the low, marshy shoulder of Terrebonne Parish, tethered to the sea floor by sixteen steel pilings that groaned whenever the Gulf of Mexico decided to turn over in its sleep. In the autumn of 1948, out here past the brown coastal flats where the shrimp boats gave up and turned around, the world belonged entirely to rust, diesel smoke, and men who had learned their trades either in the oil patches of East Texas or in the engine rooms of the Pacific Fleet.

Sam Callaghan belonged to both. He leaned over the heavy guardrail of the pipe deck, a tin mug of chicory coffee warming his calloused palms against the damp morning breeze. Below him, forty feet down, the water slapped against the cross-braces in long, olive-green swells, frothing white around the barnacles that clung to the steel legs. A gannet dipped low over the grey water, checked the derrick's shadow for refuse, and flapped off toward the Sabine Banks.

Callaghan was thirty-two, though the crow’s feet around his grey eyes made him look forty when the sun hit him sideways. He wore faded chambray trousers, grease-stiffened work boots, and an old khaki undershirt with the stencil of an amphibious construction battalion still visible across the shoulder blades. Three years ago, he had been dredging coral out of the surf at Peleliu under mortar fire; now he made fifty-five cents an hour supervising the night-shift rotary chain on a rig owned by Consolidated Petroleum and leased, under a quiet memorandum of understanding, by the United States Department of the Navy.

Behind him, the rotary table gave a harsh, metallic rattle that set Callaghan’s back teeth on edge. The sound traveled up through the timber decking, vibrating in the soles of his boots. He took a sip of the bitter coffee, made a face at the scalded milk taste, and turned toward the derrick floor.

"Hey, Sam!" shouted Dewey Vance, jogging down the narrow steel walkway from the doghouse. Dewey was twenty-one, fresh out of Port Arthur, with teeth as white as peeled potatoes and hair that smelled perpetually of kerosene. He held an oil-smeared clipboard pressed against his ribs like a stolen football. "The old man wants you in the mud house before the crew change. The barge is already past the sea buoy."

Callaghan glanced over the rail. Out on the slate-colored horizon, a stubby diesel tug was pushing a flat-deck supply barge through the chop. A plume of black exhaust trailed behind it, smeared flat by the southeastern wind.

"What's got his dander up now?" Callaghan asked, tossing the dregs of his cup into the sea. "The weight material, or the pumps?"

"Both, mostly," Dewey said cheerfully, leaning against the stanchion. "And the Navy lieutenant who came out on the mail tender yesterday afternoon is sitting in the mess hall eating all the bacon. Harlan near took the boy's head off with a spatula because he complained the lard was rancid. I told him he should've tried the powdered eggs on Guadalcanal, but the lieutenant didn't seem to think that was funny. Said he was at Annapolis until forty-six."

"He's a kid," Callaghan said, stepping over the six-inch coaming of the deck hatch. "They don't teach you about rancid lard at Annapolis. They teach you how to polish brass and write letters to admirals."

"Well, he’s got an awful lot of brass on his collar for a guy who gets seasick watching pelicans dive," Dewey muttered, following him toward the center of the platform.

Platform Nine was an experimental brute. Before the war, men drilled from wooden trestles driven into shallow bays or marshy bayous where a man could wade ashore if the boilers exploded. But the war had drained the inland reservoirs dry, and the new world ran on aviation fuel and bunker oil. Consolidated had taken three surplus Navy drydock pontoons, welded a framework of ten-inch structural pipe over them, and driven the whole contraption into fifty fathoms of open sea. It had a sixty-man galley, two rows of corrugated bunkhouses, three massive Superior diesels that shook the teeth out of your head when they were under full draw, and a derrick that reared a hundred and thirty-six feet into the cloudless Gulf sky like a skeletal finger pointing at God.

Inside the mud house, the air was hot, wet, and thick with the smell of ground barytes and starch. Sacks of drilling chemical were stacked six deep against the bulkheads, their brown paper covers damp and leaking fine white powder over the floorboards. In the middle of the room, standing over the open shaker screen, was Harlan Miller, the toolpusher.

Miller was sixty, with skin like boiled ham and a jaw that looked as though it had been squared off with an adze. He had spent thirty years running wildcats from Spindletop to Maracaibo, and he regarded the Navy, the coastal tide, and the corporate accountants in Houston with an identical, sour contempt.

"Look at this slop, Sam," Miller said without looking up, stabbing a wooden ruler into the trough where the drilling fluid spilled out of the return line. The grey mud swirled around the stick, sluggish and foamy, before draining through the vibrating mesh to catch the rock cuttings. "Nine point four pounds. I told that little clerk in Morgan City we needed twenty tons of barite on this morning's run, and what does he send? Five tons of bentonite and two pallets of dry lime. You can't hold back the salt sand with lime and good intentions."

Callaghan took the stick from Miller's hand and wiped a smear of the mud between his thumb and forefinger. It felt slick, but light—too light for nine thousand feet down, where the ancient seabed was packed under geological pressures that could throw three tons of drill pipe through the crown block like soda straws.

"It's cutting with water," Callaghan said, smelling the paste. "Salty."

"Of course it's salty," Miller growled. He pulled a greasy rag from his hip pocket and wiped his neck. "We're four hundred feet into the caprock. The formation is sweating like a Baptist in a brothel. If we don't weight this muck up to twelve pounds by sundown, that casing is going to start burping gas."

"Did you talk to the lieutenant?"

"The lieutenant?" Miller spat into the mud pit with a wet thunk. "That little snot-nose isn't here to drill for oil, Sam. He's an observer. That's what his papers say. United States Naval Petroleum Reserves, Special Liaison Office. He sits in the radio room reading mystery novels and counting how many gallons of fresh water we use for showers. I asked him if he could sign a priority slip for the supply boat out of Harvey to bring us six tons of heavy mud by midnight, and he told me all non-standard requisitions have to clear the district commandant in New Orleans."

"He doesn't know what a blowout looks like," Callaghan said quietly.

"Nobody knows what a blowout looks like until they're flying through the air with their trousers on fire," Miller replied. "Get up on the floor. Take the morning tour. Dewey says you had the night shift running smooth, but Mac's boys are getting sloppy on the tongs. They dropped a set of slips down the cellar hole at four bells."

"Nobody got hurt?"

"Nobody except the slip-lifter, and he's only got three toes on his left foot anyway from an accident in Kilgore back in thirty-eight, so he didn't miss much," Miller said, turning back to the mud tanks. "Go on, get moving. I want forty stands of pipe racked before the swell gets over six feet. That tug's bringing more than supplies; she’s got a couple of suits on board from the head office in Houston. Company men don't like to see men standing around leaning on their brooms."

Callaghan climbed the narrow ladder to the drill floor, stepping out into the full blast of the morning sun. The glare off the Gulf was blinding, reflecting white from the water and turning the grease-stained steel decking into an open skillet.

The floor was the heart of the beast. In the center, the great forged-steel rotary table spun with a low, menacing grind, turning the Kelly—a square, forty-foot shaft of polished iron that drove the drill string down through the water and deep into the earth. Three roughnecks, stripped to the waist and black with grease from their wrists to their armpits, worked the massive tongs with rhythmic, practiced violence. When a new joint of pipe was brought up from the catwalk, they threw their weight against the counterweighted levers, the heavy iron jaws biting into the steel tubing with a screech that could be heard two miles to windward.

MacIntyre, the daylight driller, stood at the brake console. He was a red-headed Scot from Nova Scotia who had spent the war years running repair barges in the Aleutians. His hands on the polished wood levers were as delicate as a watchmaker's, feeling the vibration of the bit three miles down through the tension of the wire rope.

"How's she biting, Mac?" Callaghan yelled over the roar of the diesels.

MacIntyre didn't take his eyes off the Martin-Decker weight indicator mounted on the derrick leg. The dial's needle was quivering like an aspen leaf in a squall.

"She’s hard as the devil’s heart, Sam," MacIntyre called back, shouting through a mouthful of plug tobacco. "We hit a shell reef forty minutes ago. Chattering like an old woman's false teeth. Look at that line."

He pointed a blackened finger at the heavy wire cable that ran up to the crown block high above. It was humming, a low-pitched thrum-thrum-thrum that set the guardrails buzzing.

Callaghan stepped onto the derrick floor, keeping his feet clear of the spinning chains. The deck under his boots felt different than it had at midnight. It wasn't just the roll of the Gulf swells against the pilings; there was an internal pulse to the rig now, a sharp, irregular kick that pushed back against the weight of the bit.

"You got the choke cracked?" Callaghan asked, leaning in close to MacInt

"I’ve got the choke pinched down to a quarter inch," MacIntyre called over the thrum of the rotary table. He leaned his elbow against the brake lever, his freckled skin gleaming under a layer of sweat and pulverized rock dust. "It isn’t slowing the returns, Sam. We’re getting gas cut through the flowline, and the shakers are frothing like a tub of soapy laundry."

Callaghan moved closer to the cellar hatch, peering down into the gloomy belly of the platform where the ocean slapped against the lower cross-braces. The blowout preventer—a massive, seven-ton stack of forged steel rams painted lead-grey—sat suspended above the wellhead like an unexploded bomb. Around its broad, bolted flanges, thin trails of oily froth were bubbling from the annular seal.

"That's not just gas cut," Callaghan said, stepping back into the open sun. "The pressure's building up in the annulus. If we don't dump ten sacks of barite into the hopper right now, the gas is going to displace the mud column."

Before MacIntyre could answer, the air was split by the sharp, three-blast horn of the diesel tug m.v. Iron City, which had maneuvered its nose into the rubber fender bumpers alongside Platform Nine’s south leg. The deck hands below threw heavy manila spring lines over the bollards, their shouts echoing up through the grating of the pipe rack.

A steel landing wicker was swung down from the derrick hoist, and three men stepped off the barge’s swaying bridge deck and into the cage. Two were dressed in tailored light grey tropical wool suits, complete with brimmed fedoras held tightly against the breeze; the third was Lieutenant Arthur Ellis, USN, wearing a starched khaki uniform that looked as though it had never seen the inside of an engine room.

The wicker cage swung up over the guardrail and settled on the catwalk with a wet, heavy thud.

The first man out of the cage was Julian Vance—no relation to young Dewey, though he possessed the same narrow nose and quick, predatory eyes. Vance was senior counsel for Consolidated Petroleum’s Gulf Division, brought in straight from the firm's air-conditioned offices on Travis Street in Houston. Following him was Donald Croft, an executive vice-president whose family held a fifteen-percent stake in the offshore lease.

"Callaghan!" Miller called out, stepping out of the doghouse with a grease-stained clipboard tucked under his arm. He spat another dark stream of tobacco juice onto the deck, missing Croft's polished oxfords by less than six inches. "Get down here and help these navy-yard admirals clear their gear."

Lieutenant Ellis smoothed his tie, his face slightly green from the six-mile crossing from Terrebonne Bay. "Mr. Miller," Ellis said, his voice clipped and thin against the wind. "I trust the radio log was updated at eight hundred hours as requested by Fifth Naval District headquarters?"

"The radio log is sitting right where it always sits, Lieutenant," Miller snapped. "In the doghouse next to the coffee pot. But unless you brought eight tons of heavy mud on that barge, your radio log isn't going to keep this hole from spitting iron."

Croft stepped forward, unbuttoning his double-breasted coat to expose a heavy gold watch chain anchored to his waistcoat. He was a plump man in his late forties, with thin silver hair plastered across his skull by the sea damp.

"Let’s temper the language, Miller," Croft said smoothly. "We have clear directives from the Board of Directors in Houston. The Navy’s Bureau of Ships has contracted for three core samples from the deeper Cretaceous bed before the end of the month. We’re paying twelve hundred dollars a day just to keep this barge moored alongside. We aren't stopping the rotary table every time the mud weight slips half a pound."

Callaghan stepped between Miller and the corporate executive. He stood a full head taller than Croft, his shoulders broad and thick from years of hauling timber on the beaches of Palau.

"It isn't half a pound, Mr. Croft," Callaghan said quietly, his voice low enough that only the men on the drill floor could hear him over the diesels. "The formation is pushing back. We hit a high-pressure gas pocket in the caprock at eight thousand nine hundred feet. We need to weight up the drilling fluid and let the hole settle before we trip out any more pipe."

Croft pulled a linen handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his brow. "Mr. Callaghan, isn't it? I recall your file. Navy Seabees, correct? Excellent operational record. But you’re an employee of Consolidated Petroleum now, not an officer in the Pacific theater. The technical directors in Houston have analyzed the seismic charts. This is a localized pocket of marsh gas. It will bleed off in two or three hours."

"Seismic charts don't tell you what's happening under three miles of pipe, sir," Callaghan replied, staring directly into Croft's pale eyes. "The mud is cutting with salt water. That means the head of hydrostatic pressure inside the casing is lower than the pressure in the rock. If the gas takes over, the whole mud column comes up the pipe like a soda bottle that's been shaken up."

Julian Vance, the lawyer, stepped into the conversation, pulling a slim leather notebook from his pocket. "Callaghan, the contract between Consolidated and the Navy Department contains a strict timeline clause regarding Lease 408. Under Title 34 of the Naval Petroleum Reserves Act, failure to reach the target depth by October fifteenth allows the government to rescind the offshore drilling rights and revert the rig to federal custody. We are three days behind schedule."

"And if the rig blows, you won't have a schedule to worry about," Miller interjected, his red face darkening to the color of a fresh bruise. "You'll be fishing pipe out of fifty fathoms of water with a magnet."

Lieutenant Ellis straightened his necktie again, looking uncomfortable under the gaze of the roughnecks who had gathered around the cathead to watch the argument. "The Navy's interest here, Mr. Miller, is purely regulatory," Ellis said. "We are monitoring compliance with the War Materials Lease and the structural security of the platform. If Mr. Croft and the company engineers state that drilling can proceed safely, the Navy will not intervene to halt operations."

"You won't intervene because you don't know a drill pipe from a broom handle," Miller growled, turning his back on the group and walking toward the mud hopper. "Sam, get the day crew together. We’re going to mix what little barite we have left. If these bastards want to keep drilling, we’ll do it with our eyes open and the fire hoses laid out on the deck."

By noon, the sun sat directly overhead, baking the platform’s steel deck until the air above the pipe racks shimmered like liquid glass. The wind had dropped to a faint, greasy breeze that smelled of dry salt and hot crankcase oil.

In the mess hall, the atmosphere was suffocating. The room was thirty feet square, lined with zinc-topped tables bolted to the deck plates. A heavy iron stove sat in the corner, where Harlan’s cook was frying thick slabs of salt pork in a black skillet.

Croft and Vance sat at the far end of the room near the open doorway, eating off porcelain plates brought up from the tug. Ellis sat two spaces down, meticulously paring an apple with a small silver pocketknife, while Callaghan and Dewey Vance sat with the day-shift roughnecks over tin trays of pinto beans and hard biscuits.

"He's full of it," Dewey whispered to Callaghan, leaning over his tray. "My cousin works in the payroll office in Morgan City. He told me Consolidated is flat broke on this lease. They spent two hundred thousand dollars just driving those steel pilings into the mud, and if they don't strike deep oil before the contract expires, the bank in Dallas is taking the company's towboats."

"Keep your mouth shut and your ears open, Dewey," Callaghan said quietly, breaking off a piece of hard bread. "It's not the bank we need to worry about. Look at the pressure gauge on the mud line near the bulkhead."

Dewey glanced up at the small Brass-cased gauge mounted above the galley door. The needle was hovering at six hundred pounds per square inch—nearly fifty pounds higher than it had been when they sat down for noon chow. The brass casing was vibrating faintly, clicking against the steel bulkhead with the steady rhythm of a pocket watch.

Across the room, Julian Vance set his coffee cup down with a sharp clatter. "Mr. Callaghan, I notice your men are not wearing their standard company safety helmets on the pipe deck."

Callaghan looked up slowly. "It’s ninety-five degrees in the shade, Mr. Vance. A steel helmet out there acts like a oven on a man's skull. The men wear them when we're slinging pipe, but not when they're working the mud ditch."

"The company rulebook explicitly states that hard hats are to be worn at all times outside the living quarters," Vance said, his tone dry and legalistic. "If there were to be an accident, non-compliance with published safety regulations could severely prejudice any subsequent maritime inquiry or insurance settlement."

"Is that what you're thinking about?" Callaghan asked, leaning back against the wooden bench. "Insurance settlements?"

"A prudent corporation considers all eventualities, Callaghan," Vance replied smoothly. "Particularly when operating under a joint military-industrial contract in international waters. Jurisdiction out here is... complicated. The Admiralty courts in New Orleans take a very strict view of negligence if safety rules are neglected."

"If this well blows out," Callaghan said, "you won't have to worry about Admiralty courts. You'll be swimming eleven miles to shore through shark water."

Croft laughed, a dry, coughing sound that ended in a throat clear. "You're overly dramatic, Callaghan. These modern rigs are engineered to withstand ten thousand pounds of bottom-hole pressure. We have the blowout preventers, we have the Navy's oversight, and we have the best drilling engineers in Texas overseeing the project from the mainland."

"The engineers in Texas aren't standing over the cellar hole when the rams slip," Miller said, walking into the mess hall through the screen door. He was holding an brass hydrometer tube filled with murky grey liquid. He walked straight to Croft's table and set the tube down next to the executive's plate.

"Look at that," Miller said.

Croft frowned, staring at the grey liquid. Thin, glass-like bubbles were rising to the surface, popping with a faint hiss that smelled strongly of rotten eggs and raw kerosene.

"That's gas," Miller said simply. "The mud weight is down to eight point eight pounds. The bottom of the hole is boiling. We need to shut down the rotary table right now and circulate the well for four hours until we can get fresh mud from the barge."

Croft looked at Vance, then turned back to Miller. "How long will that take?"

"Four hours to circulate, maybe six to mix the batch—if the barge crew can get the weight material across in this swell," Miller said.

"That's ten hours of dead time," Croft said firmly. "At fifty dollars an hour in platform overhead. No, Miller. Keep the bit turning. You can add the barite through the hopper while the drill string is working. We need another hundred feet of core before we reach the main shale marker."

Miller looked at Croft for a long, silent moment. His old, weathered face seemed to harden into granite. "I'm the toolpusher on this rig, Croft. Maritime law gives me the authority to suspend operations if I judge the rig or the crew to be in immediate danger."

"And the company lease contract gives me the authority to replace you on the spot for insubordination," Croft snapped back, his smooth posture finally cracking. "If you refuse to operate the floor, I will instruct MacIntyre to take over the brake, and I will have Lieutenant Ellis note your removal in the official log."

Miller turned his eyes to Lieutenant Ellis. "You got anything to say about this, Lieutenant? You're the military authority out here."

Ellis looked down at his pared apple, adjusting his collar with two fingers. "The Naval Petroleum Reserves liaison office does not possess operational command over corporate personnel, Mr. Miller. Unless there is a direct violation of federal maritime statutes, I must defer to the leaseholder's representative."

"In other words," Miller said bitterly, "you're covering your own tail."

"That will be all, Miller," Croft said, waving a hand toward the door as if dismissing a waiter. "Get back to the floor and keep that bit moving."

Miller didn't answer. He picked up his hydrometer tube, turned on his heel, and walked out onto the sun-blinded deck. Callaghan got up from his seat, motioning for Dewey to follow him.

"What are we going to do, Sam?" Dewey asked in a low voice as they stepped out onto the iron catwalk. The heat off the decking struck them like a physical blow.

"We keep our eyes open," Callaghan said, looking up at the high crown block where the steel cables were vibrating with an intense, high-pitched whine. "And check the escape lines on the derrick. Make sure the brass sheaves are greased."

By four o'clock in the afternoon, the sky had turned a strange, bruised yellow along the southern horizon. The southeastern swell was building, long olive-green rollers five feet high sweeping under the platform's legs and crashing against the timber cross-braces with a rhythmic, thunderous boom.

On the drill floor, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. The rotary table was turning at sixty revolutions per minute, but the engine noise had changed. The three Superior diesels were laboring, their exhaust stacks belching thick clouds of black soot that drifted across the pipe deck and settled over everything like fine charcoal.

Callaghan stood on the catwalk, watching the Martin-Decker gauge. The needle was bouncing wildly between twelve thousand and eighteen thousand pounds of weight on the bit.

"She's kicking, Sam!" MacIntyre shouted from the brake console. He was leaning his full weight against the wooden lever, his arms trembling from the exertion. "The pipe's coming up on its own! The pressure in the hole is trying to push the drill string right out of the floor!"

"Drop the slips!" Callaghan yelled, springing up the wooden steps to the derrick floor. "Dewey! Get the tongs on that top joint!"

Dewey leaped forward, grabbing the forty-pound steel tongs suspended from the counterweight cable. He swung the massive jaws around the drill pipe, trying to drop the hardened steel wedges—the slips—into the rotary table to lock the pipe in place.

But the pipe was moving. It wasn't dropping down as it drilled; it was inching upward, pushed by thousands of pounds of gas pressure building six thousand feet below the sea floor.

"It won't hold!" Dewey screamed over the roar of the engines. "The slips are spitting teeth!"

A spray of grey mud, thick with oil and smelling powerfully of sulfur, shot thirty feet into the air through the open rotary table, drenching Callaghan, Dewey, and MacIntyre in a filthy, slippery deluge. The mud slammed against the derrick legs, dripping down onto the light fixtures and coating the electrical junction boxes in wet slag.

"Shut down the pumps!" Callaghan bellowed, lunging across the floor to the emergency fuel cutoff valve on the main diesel manifold. He pulled the iron handle down with both hands.

The roar of the diesels died away, replaced by a terrifying sound—a low, deep-throated whistling that seemed to come from the very ocean floor beneath them. It was the sound of high-pressure gas forcing its way through thousands of feet of steel tubing, screaming through the narrow gaps in the casing like steam escaping a cracked boiler.

From the doghouse door, Donald Croft and Julian Vance emerged, their grey wool suits instantly spotted with black mud. Croft's face was white with terror, his hand clutching his fedora to his head.

"What's happening?" Croft shouted, his voice squeaking with panic. "Why did you stop the engines?"

"The well's taking a kick!" Callaghan yelled back, pulling Dewey back by his belt as the drill string gave a sudden, violence jump of two feet inside the table. "Get off the floor! Get to the mess hall or the crane deck!"

"No!" Croft screamed, running toward MacIntyre at the brake. "You can't leave the well open! Put the brake on! Lock it down!"

"You touch that brake lever, Croft, and the cable's going to snap and cut you in half!" MacIntyre shouted, backing away from the console as the wire rope on the draw-works drum began to hum like a tuning fork.

Harlan Miller came charging up the ladder from the lower deck, his hands black with mud, a heavy pipe wrench clutched in his right fist. "Callaghan! The pressure on the manifold just passed eight hundred pounds! The relief valve on the mud pump is stuck wide open!"

"Can we close the master ram?" Callaghan asked, wiping a thick smear of mud from his eyes with his sleeve.

"The hydraulic lines are leaking!" Miller shouted. "The pressure drop killed the hydraulic pump! We have to close the blowout preventer manually with the handwheels in the cellar!"

Callaghan looked down through the open hatch into the cellar deck. Below them, forty feet down, the grey blowout preventer stack was obscured by a cloud of white, misty gas and spraying salt water. The lower deck was swaying violently with every wave that hit the pilings, and the smell of hydrogen sulfide—rotten eggs, thick and heavy—was so dense it made his eyes burn and his lungs ache.

"I'll go down," Callaghan said.

"You can't go down there without a breathing mask, Sam!" Miller yelled, catching Callaghan by the arm. "The gas'll drop you in thirty seconds!"

"We don't have thirty seconds!" Callaghan spat out, wrenching his arm free. "If that gas hits the open hot-water heater in the galley, the whole platform goes up!"

He turned to Dewey, who was shivering despite the sweltering heat, his eyes wide with horror as he stared at the dancing drill pipe.

"Dewey!" Callaghan commanded, grabbing the young man by the shoulders. "Get these corporate bastards and the lieutenant down to the lifeboats on the south gantry. Tell the tug captain to cast off his spring lines and drop back two hundred yards before the gas envelope reaches his engine intakes!"

"Sam—" Dewey stammered.

"Move!" Callaghan barked.

Dewey grabbed Croft by the coat lapels and dragged him back toward the catwalk ladder, Vance trailing behind them with his leather briefcase clutched against his stomach like a shield.

Callaghan turned back to the cellar hatch. He took a deep breath of the greasy, sun-baked air above the floor, gripped the steel rungs of the vertical ladder, and began his descent into the iron dark below.