Исай Лукодьянов - The Black Pillar

The drill string continued to creep upwards. On the morning of the sixth day Kravtsov glanced at the window of the recorder and could not believe his eyes: one and a half metres in twenty-four hours.

"If this goes on," he said, "the casing will soon jam on the rotary table."

"Very likely." Will, freshly shaven, came out of his cabin in blue swimming trunks.

"Are you going swimming?" asked Kravtsov moodily.

"Indeed aye!" And Will pulled on his swimming cap and went over to the outboard lift.

Kravtsov went below. The preventers were rising before his very eyes. "The plugs will have to be taken out of the table to let the preventers through," he thought to himself and began to disconnect the hydraulic control tubes.

Will appeared just then, bringing a fresh sea smell with him.

"The water's very warm today," he said. "Well, and what are you doing here, laddie?"

They disconnected the preventers from their feed pipes and removed all parts that stuck out from them, and then went up on deck.

"I don't understand a thing," said Kravtsov. "All right-the pipes are rising of their own accord. It sounds impossible, but it's a fact. But the bottom of the casing is locked tight in the ground. And it's coming up as well. Some devilry's going on here, and before we know where we are the top of the casing and the preventers will pop through here."

"We'll have to cut off the upper pipes," said Will. '

Kravtsov peered through his sunglasses at the crown block, beard thrust up. During the last few days they had winched in the slack" on the cable many times, and now the travelling block had been hoisted almost up to the crows nest of the derrick. Kravtsov went over to the control panel and glanced at the pointer.

"Only nine metres in reserve," he said. "Yes, they'll have to be cut."

Will took his stand at the controls. The main engine whined as it started and the reducting gears of the powerful winch began to hum gently. Will put strain on drill string, then pressed two keys with his fingers one after the other. The long bracket of a plasma cutter rose from its bed and pressed against the pipe. A stream of electron-nuclear gas hissed behind the protective blue glass of the tungsten nozzle. The machine rapidly ran the cutter round the pipe, the flame went out with a slight puff, and the bracket withdrew.

A "candle"-the severed eighty-metre length of drill pipe-swayed gently on the hook, another machine, seized it from above, swung it to one side, and lowered it into its "candlestick"-it might have been putting a testtube into a rack.

Relieved of its load, the hook with its automatic claws-the "spider"-descended rapidly. High up in the air it had not seemed much larger than a fishhook; but now it took up nearly the whole space between the metal legs of the derrick.

The spider closed its steel jaws on the end of the drill string. Will switched on the hoist and "tugged"-just in case. But no-the well refused to release the string, as before, and it did not budge.

There was nothing more to be done. Kravtsov stretched himself out in a deckchair under the awning and buried himself in an Esperanto magazine. A gentle breeze fanned his body pleasantly. Will removed the tape from the magnetograph and, whistling to himself, examined the recording.

Kravtsov raised his head.

"What can it be, Will? The borehole seems to have gone mad."

"Well, what do we know, anyway, about the interior of the earth?" The tone of Will's voice was unusually sharp. "All we know, and little enough about that, in all conscience, is a thin sheet of paper stuck over the globe."

"That's well put," thought Kravtsov. "If mankind didn't spend so much money and effort on armaments…"

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. I was only talking to myself," answered Kravtsov in a tired voice. "We could achieve a lot if we all got 'together, if the whole world…"

"That'll never be," interrupted Will. "Oh, yes it will. It certainly will." "The mankind, you like to talk so much about, is more prone to fighting than to scientific research."

"Not mankind, Will, but individuals…" "I know, I know. You've explained it all to me before-the monopolists. It's none of my business, damn it."

It was the first time Kravtsov had seen the Scotsman so excited.

"Alright, let's change the subject," he said, stretching out his long sunburnt legs. "But why are the pipes coming up? Is the sea-bottom rising, perhaps? Submarine tremors of some sort…"

Will threw his tape aside and jotted something in his notebook.

"I'd rather you told me why the pipes are becoming magnetized," he growled.

"Magnetized?" Kravtsov raised his eyebrows in a puzzled look. "Are you sure?"

Will did not reply.

"But this alloy can't be magnetized…"

"I know. But facts are facts. Here's the graph of daily measurements over two months." He handed Kravtsov his open notebook.

Kravtsov had considered the Scotsman's preoccupation with the magnetograph nothing but a whim. But now, looking at the neat graph, he was astounded. Magnetization of the pipes, which had not previously manifested itself, had begun suddenly a fortnight before and was increasing noticeably every day. It was still very weak, but then it had no business to exist at all…

"Do you mean, Will…"

"I mean it's time to go and eat."

Kravtsov was awakened by a howling of the wind. It was still very early, and dawn was only just beginning to break through the murky darkness of the night. The wind burst through the open portholes into the cabin, flapping the curtains and rustling the pages of the magazines on the table. It was cool and moist and smelt of faraway autumn in Moscow, and Kravtsov thrilled with trepidation and delight.

"Our watch'll soon be over," he thought to himself, and then suddenly remembered what had been happening these last few days on the rig. His mellow, drowsy mood was gone in a flash. He dressed and left his cabin. The derrick was lit up. What was Will doing there so early? Kravtsov hastened towards it. He heard the wind whistling in the metal girders, and the rumbling of the ocean, stirred by the approaching storm. Neither moon nor stars were to be seen in the dark sky.

Kravtsov ran to the gangway of the derrick. The Scotsman stood near the well mouth. "What's going on, Will?"

But he had already seen what was happening. The preventers were slowly rising through the octagonal opening of the rotary table, which had been freed of its plugs. They were coming up before their very eyes, carried up by the casing – a wild, incomprehensible, fantastic sight.

"We'll have to remove the preventers," said Will.

"Won't that be dangerous, Will? What if there's a sudden blow-out of gas?"

"They've got to be taken off while they're still here. It'll be harder to do it when they've been carried right up."

They set to work with power screwdrivers, removed the massive flange, and took off a preventer, hitching it on to the hook of the auxiliary winch. The second and third were removed in the same way, but the last preventer was already breast-high when they started on it; the casing continued to rise, ejected by some mysterious force. True, it was not rising as fast as the drill string, which had already attained a considerable height-about forty metres above the well mouth-but what was going to happen next? What would happen when the casing came up higher still and covered up the drill pipes? Should they cut it? But the automatic plasma cutter was only meant for an eight-inch pipe: it would be unable to grip the twenty-inch casing. In any case, who ever would have thought the casing would take it into its head to come out of the well?

Kravtsov scratched his beard and said: "What would AH-Ovsad do in our place?"