Исай Лукодьянов - The Black Pillar

Then the Presidium of the IGY decided to discontinue the work. The round rig was deserted. The Babel of many languages was no longer heard; transports no longer came alongside with haematite, clay, and surface-active substances for the drilling fluid. The scientists flew out, and the core depository was emptied, as the samples were taken away for final analysis.

The IGY Geological Commission maintained three-month watches on the rig. At first the watch consisted of two drilling crews; but as time passed, it was gradually reduced to two men- drilling engineers.

So it had continued for nearly six years. Every morning the engineers on watch started the winch in an attempt to hoist the pipes. Every morning they checked the tension of the cables. And invariably the same entry appeared in the log-it meant the same in every language-"The string does not move".

The "Karabakh ass" remained stubborn.

Sasha Kravtsov was still a student when the drilling of the ultra-deep borehole began. His cropped head was stuffed with a mass of facts about this fantastic operation, gleaned from specialist journals and eye-witness accounts. Kravtsov dreamed of being sent to the circular rig in the ocean, but instead, when he left the Institute, he was appointed to a post at Neftyaniye Kamni-the off-shore oilfield in the Caspian. There he worked for a number of years, until one fine day, when everybody had almost forgotten the abandoned borehole, he was appointed to a three-months' watch on the ocean.

Kravtsov was very pleased when he heard his partner would be Will McPherson, a veteran of the borehole, and at first it was very interesting indeed, the Scotsman, puffing away at his pipe, and mixing English and Russian words, told stories of the "ultra-boiling" water of the twelfth kilometre and of the black sands of the eighteenth-sands that resisted the core drill and "ate up" the diamond bit within two hours. Laughing, Will recalled how the excitable Chilean geologist Bramulla raved and stormed as he demanded that not less than eight tons of black sand be extracted at all costs from the borehole, and how he even prayed, asking God for immediate help.

Will also talked of the terrible vibration and the enormous pressures, of strange bacteria living in methane-rich strata around the thirty-seventh kilometre, of terrifying blowouts of gas, and of a fire that was only put out after desperate efforts.

The Scotsman did not like repeating himself, and when he had exhausted his stock of stories, Kravtsov began to feel bored. Their attitudes, it soon appeared, were diametrically opposed in everything except marine drilling. That made life much more difficult. They argued politely about everything on earth-from methods of determining the viscosity of mud fluids to the comparative psychoanalysis of the Russian and English souls.

"You don't understand a thing about the English," said Will imperturbably. "For you an Englishman is a mixture of Pickwick, Col. Lawrence, and Soames Forsyte."

"That's not true!" cried Kravtsov. "It's you who don't understand the Russians. You look on us as a cross between the brothers Karamazov and Ali-Ovsad the driller!"

Kravtsov would get furious when Will held forth on the qualities of the enigmatic Russian soul where good and evil alternate in parallel strata, like clay and sand in oil-bearing suites- all of which he had got from reading Dostoyevsky. But when Will recalled Ali-Ovsad and his marvellous feel for the depths of the earth, Kravtsov would grin. Once the Scotsman told how there had been a break in the string at the twenty-second kilometre, which had still not been explained. A camera had been lowered into the borehole in order to ascertain the nature of the break, but the film proved to be spoiled in spite of strong protection against radioactivity. Then Ali-Ovsad had remembered old times. He lowered a "seal"-a lump of lead into the well on the end of the drill string, gingerly let it down onto the broken end of the drill rod and pressed it against the fracture. When the seal had been raised and hung over the mouth of the borehole, Ali-Ovsad, his head thrown back, examined the impression in the lead at great length. Then, using this cast, he forged a "lucky fishhook" of intricate shape with his own hands, fished the drill rod out from the wall of the well to the centre with this hook, and finally grabbed it with a powerful claw-a deep-sea overshot.

"Your Ali-Ovsad is a real oil-driller," said Will. "He can see right under the ground. I've never met a better master at dealing with accidents."

The Scotsman's Russian was quite good, but he spoke with an Azerbaijan accent, the result of his close acquaintance with Ali-Ovsad and he would intersperse his conversation with Russian doggerel, like "Take it easy, have a rest-are words that I do not know; to your drill, to your work, that the way to go." He would recall the Russian-as he thought-national dish, that Ali-Ovsad used to cook himself on rest days out of lamb's fry, and called "jiz-biz".

Kravtsov knew Ali-Ovsad from his Neftyaniye Kamni days, and was well acquainted with his stock phrases like "Take it easy, have a rest."

Love of off-shore drilling and esteem for Ali-Ovsad were possibly the only points of contact between Kravtsov and Will.

Another day passed. The instruments showed that both strings of pipes-drill rods and casing- had risen another twenty millimetres, but it was still impossible to budge the drill string with the winch. It looked as though the earth were stealthily pushing the pipes out of its bowels, but would not let man do so.

Will was noticeably more cheerful. Humming Scottish tunes, he spent hours by the preventers under the floor of the derrick, busying himself with a magnetograph and making notes.

"Look, Will," said Kravtsov while they were having supper, "I think we ought to radio the Centre."

"I understand, laddie," replied Will, putting rum into his tea. "You want to order some new Esperanto magazines."

"Chuck the joking."

"Chuck the joking," repeated the Scotsman slowly. "That's a strange expression-you don't say it like that in English."

"All right, I'll repeat it in English-stop joking," said Kravtsov, suppressing a mounting irritation. "We've got to radio the Centre. Something's happening in the well."

In the morning they put out an urgent call and informed the Geological Commission of the strange ascent of the drill pipes.

"Continue observations," replied the distant voice of the vice-chairman of the Commission. "You're not in need of immediate help, are you, Will?"

"Not just yet."

"That's good. You see, we're having real trouble with the drilling off the Peruvian coast. Give my regards to Kravtsov. All the best, Will."

The engineers left the radio cabin. A clammy, oppressive heat of midday gripped them as they came out. Kravtsov scratched his beard and said, "Another military junta, I suppose, damn it all."

"What's it matter?" Will wiped his neck with his handkerchief. "So long as they don't prevent scientists and engineers doing their work."

"The world isn't just made up of scientists and engineers."

"That's not my concern-I'm not interested in politics. It makes me laugh to see you dashing to the radio to listen to the latest news."

"You needn't watch," Kravtsov advised him. "I don't watch you when you model nude females and smile lasciviously to yourself as you do it."

"H'm… My smiles are none of your business."

"Quite so. And my dashing to the radio is none of yours."

"Have you checked the cable?"

"Yes, I winched in the slack. Tell me, Will, what the devil made you agree to keep watch here? With your experience you could have been drilling now…"

'"The pay's good here." the Scotsman replied curtly, and climbed down the hatchway.