by Shaun Clarke
Masters stared at the new intake, his face firm and uncompromising, his hands on his hips, his long legs outstretched.
‘Another point to remember,’ he continued. ‘Most of these rigs are hired from drilling companies and are indirectly under their supervision. Now although you men are employed by the oil company, you’ll find yourselves dealing with men employed by the drilling company, a geological company, repair and maintenance companies, and a catering company. Don’t mess with any of these people. Avoid all disputes with them. If you’ve any complaints go direct to your foreman and let him investigate the matter. Anyone breaking this rule, whether for good reasons or bad, will end up on the first chopper back to Aberdeen.’
He turned to the wall behind him and picked up the telephone. ‘Hello, Segal? This is Masters. Get yourself down to the canteen. I’ve got some new men here.’ He put the receiver back on its hook and then turned to the men again. ‘You’ll find a guide to the rig on your beds. Study it carefully, have a good look around, then report to the foreman named at the top of the guide. His location will be marked on the scale drawing. He’ll tell you when and where you’ll be starting. Once you’ve started, make sure you do what you’re told and don’t piss around. If you cause any trouble, you’ll be dismissed – and I’m notoriously deaf to excuses.’
A man entered the canteen. He was wearing overalls and boots, his brown hair was dishevelled, and he was covered from top to bottom in mud and oil. He grinned and nodded at Masters, waving a grimy hand, then glanced at the new men.
‘I’ve just completed the briefing,’ Masters said, ‘so you can show them down to their quarters, then tell Delaney you’ve got them.’
‘Right, chief,’ the man said.
The men were led out of the canteen and Masters and Schulman went to the bar. Masters asked for two beers, snapped the lids on both cans, then pushed one of the cans across to the American.
‘There,’ he said, ‘have some vitamins.’
Schulman rolled his eyes and drank some beer. He wiped his lips with the back of his left hand and grunted with pleasure.
‘That was a pretty good speech, Tone,’ he said. ‘I could feel my flesh creeping.’
Masters grinned. ‘I’m glad it got through to someone. It’s a pity you can’t practise what I preach. Why not stay for a fortnight?’
‘No thanks, man. I feel safer in my chopper. The only thing you’ve got to offer is beer and that ain’t enough.’
‘I’d keep you busy,’ Masters promised.
‘I bet you would,’ Schulman replied. ‘You’d run my ass ragged and then send me back home in a pine box. Thanks, but no thanks.’
Masters drank some more beer, then glanced around the almost empty canteen. It wasn’t very different from the canteens in the various SBS bases he had passed through. That was why he felt so at home.
‘What about those guys I’m taking back?’ Schulman asked. ‘Do I go get them now?’
‘No, not yet. I’ve got to check a few things first. Once the men know they’re shore-bound they’re inclined to get careless and leave cock-ups that can cause a lot of damage. I want a quick look round first. I want to check that none of the bastards have fouled up in their urge to take off.’
‘And what if someone has?’
‘Then you’ll be taking him back to Aberdeen and leaving him there. I won’t want him back.’
‘You’re a tough nut, Tone.’
‘Which is why your American friends appreciate me. Now drink up and let’s go.’
They finished their drinks and left the canteen, with Masters leading the way down more steel steps and along narrow corridors, passing storerooms, administration modules, living accommodation and the radio shack. All the corridors were brightly lit, all the ceilings were low, and the many portholes overlooked the heaving sea and its murky horizon. There was a constant bass rumbling that grew louder as they descended more steps. Suddenly it turned into a shocking roar that shattered the senses.
They were on the drilling floor. A massive derrick towered above them. The drilling floor was walled in, but it was open to the sky, and there was a large, square-shaped hole in the deck: the ‘moonpool’. The sea was two hundred feet below it, and enormous lengths of piping plunged down through the hole over twice that distance to the seabed. The central shaft was roaring and spinning. Men worked all around it, wearing overalls and helmets, every one of them filthy with oil. The central shaft kept roaring, making the whole deck vibrate. Other men were balanced on girders directly over the sea, tied securely to the structure with rope.
Schulman wanted to cover his ears. Instead he glanced down the moonpool. He saw the linked pipes running down and disappearing into the dark sea. That sight almost made him dizzy. It wasn’t like being in the helicopter. When he saw the men above, tied to the structure with rope, hanging over that terrifying abyss, he had to admire them.
‘What are they doing?’ he asked.
‘Removing the blow-back preventer,’ Masters replied. ‘It’s a twenty-ton cube, but it’s down four hundred feet and that makes it weigh four hundred tons. They’re bringing it up, but they have to do it in forty-five-foot sections. They have to disconnect each pipe as it comes up and it’s a hell of a job.’
The roaring stopped abruptly and the shaft whined to a standstill. On the girders, the men fixed huge clamps to the pipe and then attached thick chains to the clamps. The chains rattled and banged as the clamps made a dreadful screeching sound. The men were fixing large handles to the clamps as Masters walked from the hut.
Schulman followed him out and felt the blast of an icy wind. They were now on the main deck with its network of huge oil tanks and catwalks and thick, silver-painted flow-pipes. The derrick soared above the deck. Low clouds drifted over it. There were three platforms inside the derrick and the highest was the smallest. More men were working up there, looking minute and defenceless. The wind was howling between the girders of the derrick and making their overalls flap ceaselessly. Schulman glanced across the deck and saw more stacked pipes and oil tanks. Like everything else here, they were immense, soaring high above him. He followed Masters across the deck. A crane clanked and whined above them, swinging a stack of large wooden crates out over the sea with men hanging from the chains, giving the crane-driver hand signals.
Nearing the edge of the main deck, Masters waved Schulman forward. They both stopped when they were close to the rim, then Schulman looked down. He sucked in his breath automatically, then grabbed the railing beside him. The wind was beating at him, trying to push him off the edge, making him feel very vulnerable. The sea was very far below and he was looking down at a supply ship which, though immense, looked like a toy. Schulman felt a bit dizzy. It wasn’t like being in the helicopter. The massive legs of the rig, running outwards and down, emphasized that dreadful plunge to the sea and made his head reel.
The crane was lowering the wooden crates, which were swinging to and fro. They swung under the decks and out again, each time dropping lower, with the roustabouts still balanced on them. Looking like ants on the chains, the men were now about a hundred feet down, still shouting and waving.
Schulman had to feel respect. He also felt a childish pride. His gaze fell upon the void between the men and the sea, then he saw the waves washing over the long, bobbing bulk of the loading ship, and that made him feel strange again. He turned away from those frightful depths. There was a sudden, savage roaring from the drilling hut and it gave him a shock. The enormous derrick towered over him.
Having just walked off the deck, Masters was framed by the sea and the sky as the wind howled about him. Then Schulman saw the platform thrusting out from the main deck. It was looming out over the sea and Masters stood on its far edge, at a bottle-shaped metal tank with a diving bell on the top. The diving bell was clamped on to the tank and the tank had round windows. It was a decompression chamber. Masters was at one of the windows. He gestured at someone inside, then put his thumb up. Schulman was loath
to join him. He felt queasy at the very thought of it. He didn’t want to go out there and be picked up by the wind and hurled down a couple of hundred feet to the sea. He was too young to die.
Another man walked past Schulman, off the deck and across the platform to Masters. He was wearing a white helmet and his overalls were smeared with oil. He grinned and shouted at Masters, glanced up and gesticulated. Schulman heard the appalling din of a crane, then saw a chain swinging into view. It stopped above Masters’s head, above the decompression chamber. When the tool-pusher waved, two roustabouts rushed forward and clambered up the sides of the diving bell. There was a huge clamp on the chain, like a monstrous metal claw; it closed around the steel ring at the top of the diving bell and the roustabouts tightened screws all around it. Masters waved, left the platform and walked back up to Schulman. The men on top of the decompression chamber were checking the diving bell as the tool-pusher bellowed his instructions.
‘It’s the divers,’ Masters explained. ‘They’re on saturation diving. We’re going to lower them down there again, to check out the drilling point. They go down in the bell.’
‘How deep?’ Schulman asked.
‘Four hundred feet.’
‘Jesus,’ Schulman hissed. ‘How do they stand it?’
‘It’s a tough job,’ Masters replied, meaning it, having himself gone down in a decompression chamber as part of his SBS training. ‘That chamber’s only ten foot long and there’s six men inside it.’
‘How long have they been in there?’
‘Two weeks,’ Masters told him. ‘There’s six bunks in there. The men go down, the bell’s hauled up when they’re finished, it’s attached to the top of the decompression chamber again, and then they go straight into the chamber.’
‘You mean they live in that fucking thing for two weeks?’
‘That’s right. In the old days they would dive, undergo decompression, have a long break and then go down again. It was known as bounce diving. But now we can’t afford that. We just don’t have the time. Now we do saturation diving, which is what these men specialize in. The diver comes up and stays in the chamber until he needs to go down again. Since he doesn’t step out into normal pressure at all, he doesn’t have to be completely decompressed before he goes down again. He eats and sleeps in there. Food is sent in through the airlock. The pressure turns his voice girlish and the helium destroys his sense of taste. He lives and works there for a fortnight, then spends another week there decompressing. It’s a hell of a life.’
Schulman looked back at the platform. The roustabouts were still on top of the decompression chamber, surrounding the diving bell. One of them put his thumb up. Masters waved them down, and they slid off the side of the metal chamber and hurried back to the main deck. The tool-pusher looked through a window, then grinned and jerked his own thumb up. He walked away from the platform and glanced up, then waved his right hand.
The crane whined into life, its winch clattering noisily. The chain went taut as it picked up the diving bell, which swung from side to side over the decompression chamber, dangling in the grey void of the sky with the sea far below. It dropped towards the water, bouncing gently against the platform. It had half disappeared when the sea started roaring.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Masters whispered.
The roaring started far below, then spread out and reverberated. The men all rushed automatically to the platform and grabbed hold of the railing. Suddenly, the whole deck tilted. The roar of the sea became much louder. They saw the waves leaping up and curving back down, to smash again and again over the loading ship. Then the roaring became an explosion, with water geysering up and outward. It was exploding out from under a pontoon leg and turning the sea wild.
Schulman couldn’t believe it. The deck tilted to the left. The whole rig shook and he heard the exploding sea and saw a white wall of water. The water exploded upwards, a hundred feet high. It spread out like a great fan and crashed down on top of the loading ship, completely submerging it. Schulman glanced around at Masters and saw his wide eyes, his knuckles white on the railing, which slanted down alarmingly to the left. The whole deck was slipping. Then it jumped up and fell again. It was a quarter of a mile long and yet it was tilting and screeching insanely. Schulman saw the diving bell swinging out and in again. It crashed into the platform with a dreadful bang. Then Schulman saw the sea and the sky and found himself on his back.
‘The diving bell! Get it in!’
Schulman felt himself sliding, heading feet first towards the edge. He couldn’t breathe and his heart was racing wildly as he clawed at thin air. His hand found something solid, his fist closed around a chain. His head was spinning and the roaring was in his ears, though he could hear Masters shouting. Schulman swallowed hard and blinked, then gazed down at his own body. His feet were dangling over the edge of the deck and beyond the narrow platform tilted downwards. There the decompression chamber was nearly on its side, hanging out over the sea. He heard the shriek of tortured metal, the snapping of bolts, and saw the chamber’s clamps splitting open. Men were shouting on all sides. He glanced down at the bell, which was swinging out from the tilting side. Masters was looking back up over his shoulder, bawling instructions at someone. The crane was winching up, but the bell swung out and in again and smashed against the deck.
‘Jesus Christ! The crane’s going!’ Schulman yelled.
Hanging down the tilting side, the American rolled on to his belly. He pulled himself toward the crates piled high above him and heard the shriek of bending metal and the heavy rattling of chains. He pulled himself to his feet, and saw men running in all directions. Looking up, he saw the crane way above, slowly turning and tilting. It was making a fearsome sound, being torn from its support. The huge support was leaning far to the right with the crane sliding off it. Schulman couldn’t believe it. The crane was fifty feet up. It was monstrous, a huge contraption and its jib, about to crash to the deck. Men bellowed and scattered. Metal shrieked as the crane broke loose. It seemed to hang in the air, the jib buckled and broke apart, then the whole mass of metal and chains exploded over the deck.
Someone screamed and Schulman blinked and saw the spinning bell. The chain snapped and the bell disappeared as it plunged to the sea. Then the noise became overpowering. The falling crane had smashed through the deck. A huge chain whipped through the air and the jib fell apart and enormous, jagged pieces of steel pipe started bouncing and clattering. These rolled off the edge of the deck and plunged towards the sea, smashing on their way down into wooden crates, which exploded and were torn from their moorings and crushed men as they plummeted into the water.
Schulman heard the dreadful screams. The deck shuddered beneath him. He looked up and heard the derrick groaning and saw its frame bending. ‘Oh, my God!’ he cried out.
‘Schulman, move!’ Masters bawled. Something grabbed Schulman, tearing him from the crates and pushing him forcefully forward. He knew it wasn’t Masters, but he didn’t stop to look back. Racing away from the derrick, he ran straight for the landing pad, hearing bawling and fearsome metallic screeching, and seeing chaos on all sides.
Something heavy crashed into the American, almost making his head explode. Recovering, he looked about him and saw enormous metal pipes breaking loose and rolling over the deck. They made a dreadful din, sweeping men and crates aside. Then Schulman glanced up and saw the towering derrick breaking apart and collapsing.
It was a terrible sight. The webbed beams were snapping free, bending and flying out and falling down and crashing into the drilling room. Schulman heard the demoniac noise, punctuated by the screams of the dying men. The derrick platforms fell apart and dropped down between the legs, then the legs themselves buckled and broke as the massive structure collapsed. Schulman looked up in awe. The spectacle froze him where he stood. There was an inferno of clanging steel and splintering wood and screaming men. Then the roof of the drilling room caved in and the noise grew even louder.
‘On your
feet! Get going!’
Galvanized by Masters’s voice, Schulman started running, heading for the helicopter pad now sloping towards the sea. A sudden panic seized him. The helicopter had started moving. It was sliding towards the edge of the landing pad while slowly turning around. Schulman sobbed, but kept running. He didn’t look back for Masters. He heard screams and passed other fleeing men, then saw a huge tank collapsing. It smashed through its supports and hit the deck with a fearsome sound. Though forty feet wide, the tank rolled rapidly across the deck to crush two men and crash into the modules and sweep the structures over the side.
Schulman didn’t stop to help. He saw the helicopter slipping. A large wooden crate was racing towards him, shaking and screeching. It hit a tank and fell apart, the wood exploding in all directions. The yellow fork-lift inside it spun round and crashed into a catwalk, tearing it from its moorings. The catwalk buckled down the middle, bounced up in the air, rolled shrieking across the careering fork-lift and was finally dragged along with it. Schulman glimpsed waving arms and heard a terrible, dying scream. A decapitated body was mangled up in the spinning catwalk, limbs flailing in a gruesome dance as it went over the side.
But Schulman kept running up the sloping deck. Seeing the helicopter slipping towards the sea, he wanted to scream. Another roar, another crash. More explosions and colliding pipes. He heard bawling and saw shadowy, running figures as he reached the catwalk. The landing pad was tilting badly, its nearside swinging upwards, tearing the catwalk out of the deck and making its bolts snap. Without thinking, Schulman leapt forward to grab hold of the railing. Glancing down, he saw the sickening drop to the sea. Then Masters slapped his back and bawled something. The catwalk shuddered and its steel frame shrieked and bent as Schulman started his climb.
