Title: The Engineer
Author: Pohl, Frederik, Kornbluth, C. M. (Cyril M.)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Engineer" ***


                             the engineer

                 By FREDERIK POHL and C. M. KORNBLUTH

                The Big Wheels of tomorrow will be men
                   who can see the big picture. But
                  blowouts have small beginnings....

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It was very simple. Some combination of low temperature and high
pressure had forced something from the seepage at the ocean bottom into
combination with something in the water around them.

And the impregnable armor around Subatlantic Oil's drilling chamber had
discovered a weakness.

On the television screen it looked more serious than it was--so
Muhlenhoff told himself, staring at it grimly. You get down more than
a mile, and you're bound to have little technical problems. That's why
deepsea oil wells were still there.

Still, it did look kind of serious. The water driving in the pitted
faults had the pressure of eighteen hundred meters behind it, and where
it struck it did not splash--it battered and destroyed. As Muhlenhoff
watched, a bulkhead collapsed in an explosion of spray; the remote
camera caught a tiny driblet of the scattering brine, and the picture
in the screen fluttered and shrank, and came back with a wavering
side-wise pulse.

Muhlenhoff flicked off the screen and marched into the room where the
Engineering Board was waiting in attitudes of flabby panic.

As he swept his hand through his snow-white crew cut and called the
board to order a dispatch was handed to him--a preliminary report from
a quickly-dispatched company trouble-shooter team. He read it to the
board, stone-faced.

A veteran heat-transfer man, the first to recover, growled:

"Some vibration thing--and seepage from the oil pool. Sloppy drilling!"
He sneered. "Big deal! So a couple hundred meters of shaft have to be
plugged and pumped. So six or eight compartments go pop. Since when did
we start to believe the cack Research & Development hands out? Armor's
armor. Sure it pops--when something makes it pop. If Atlantic oil was
easy to get at, it wouldn't be here waiting for us now. Put a gang on
the job. Find out what happened, make sure it doesn't happen again. Big
deal!"

Muhlenhoff smiled his attractive smile. "Breck," he said, "thank God
you've got guts. Perhaps we were in a bit of a panic. Gentlemen, I hope
we'll all take heart from Mr. Breck's level-headed--what did you say,
Breck?"

Breck didn't look up. He was pawing through the dispatch Muhlenhoff had
dropped to the table. "_Nine_-inch plate," he read aloud, whitefaced.
"And time of installation, not quite seven weeks ago. If this goes on
in a straight line--" he grabbed for a pocket slide-rule--"we have,
uh--" he swallowed--"less time than the probable error," he finished.

"Breck!" Muhlenhoff yelled. "Where are you going?"

The veteran heat-transfer man said grimly as he sped through the door:
"To find a submarine."

The rest of the Engineering Board was suddenly pulling chairs toward
the trouble-shooting team's dispatch. Muhlenhoff slammed a fist on the
table.

"Stop it," he said evenly. "The next man who leaves the meeting will
have his contract canceled. Is that clear, gentlemen? Good. We will now
proceed to get organized."

He had them; they were listening. He said forcefully: "I want a task
force consisting of a petrochemist, a vibrations man, a hydrostatics
man and a structural engineer. Co-opt mathematicians and computermen
as needed. I will have all machines capable of handling Fourier series
and up cleared for your use. The work of the task force will be divided
into two phases. For Phase One, members will keep their staffs as
small as possible. The objective of Phase One is to find the cause of
the leaks and predict whether similar leaks are likely elsewhere in
the project. On receiving a first approximation from the force I will
proceed to set up Phase Two, to deal with counter-measures."

He paused. "Gentlemen," he said, "we must not lose our nerves. We must
not panic. Possibly the most serious technical crisis in Atlantic's
history lies before us. Your most important job is to maintain--at
all times--a cheerful, courageous attitude. We cannot, repeat cannot,
afford to have the sub-technical staff of the project panicked for lack
of a good example from us." He drilled each of them in turn with a long
glare. "And," he finished, "if I hear of anyone suddenly discovering
emergency business ashore, the man who does it better get fitted for a
sludgemonkey's suit, because that's what he'll be tomorrow. Clear?"

Each of the executives assumed some version of a cheerful, courageous
attitude. They looked ghastly, even to themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Muhlenhoff stalked into his private office, the nerve-center of the
whole bulkheaded works.

In Muhlenhoff's private office, you would never know you were 1800
meters below the surface of the sea. It looked like any oilman's
brass-hat office anywhere, complete to the beautiful blonde outside the
door (but whitefaced and trembling), the potted palm (though the ends
of its fronds vibrated gently), and the typical section chief bursting
in in the typical flap. "Sir," he whined, frenzied, "Section Six has
pinholed! The corrosion--"

"Handle it!" barked Muhlenhoff, and slammed the door. Section Six be
damned! What did it matter if a few of the old bulkheads pinholed and
filled? The central chambers were safe, until they could lick whatever
it was that was corroding. The point was, you had to stay with it and
get out the oil; because if you didn't prove your lease, PetroMex
would. Mexican oil wanted those reserves mighty badly.

Muhlenhoff knew how to handle an emergency. Back away from it. Get a
fresh slant. Above all, _don't panic_.

He slapped a button that guaranteed no interruption and irritably,
seeking distraction, picked up his latest copy of the _New New
Review_--for he was, among other things, an intellectual as time
allowed.

Under the magazine was the latest of several confidential
communications from the home office. Muhlenhoff growled and tossed the
magazine aside. He reread what Priestley had had to say:

"I know you understand the importance of beating our Spic friends to
the Atlantic deep reserves, so I won't give you a hard time about it.
I'll just pass it on the way Lundstrom gave it to me: 'Tell Muhlenhoff
he'll come back on the Board or on a board, and no alibis or excuses.'
Get it? Well--"

Hell. Muhlenhoff threw the sheet down and tried to think about the
damned corrosion-leakage situation.

But he didn't try for long. There was, he realized, no point at all in
him thinking about the problem. For one thing, he no longer had the
equipment.

Muhlenhoff realized, wonderingly, that he hadn't opened a table
of integrals for ten years; he doubted that he could find his way
around the pages well enough to run down a tricky form. He had come
up pretty fast through the huge technical staff of Atlantic. First
he had been a geologist in the procurement section, one of those
boots-and-leather-jacket guys who spent his days in rough, tough
blasting and drilling and his nights in rarefied scientific air,
correlating and integrating the findings of the day. Next he had
been a Chief Geologist, chairborne director of youngsters, now and
then tackling a muddled report with Theory of Least Squares and
Gibbs Phase Rule that magically separated dross from limpid fact ...
or, he admitted wryly, at least turning the muddled reports over to
mathematicians who specialized in those disciplines.

Next he had been a Raw Materials Committee member who knew that
drilling and figuring weren't the almighty things he had supposed them
when he was a kid, who began to see the Big Picture of off-shore leases
and depreciation allowances; of power and fusible rocks and steel for
the machines, butane for the drills, plastics for the pipelines, metals
for the circuits, the computers, the doors, windows, walls, tools,
utilities. A committeeman who began to see that a friendly beer poured
for the right resources-commission man was really more important than
Least Squares or Phase Rule, because a resources commissioner who
didn't get along with you might get along, for instance, with somebody
from Coastwide, and allot to Coastwide the next available block of
leases--thus working grievous harm to Atlantic and the billions it
served. A committeeman who began to see that the Big Picture meant
government and science leaning chummily against each other, government
setting science new and challenging tasks like the billion-barrel
procurement program, science backing government with all its tremendous
prestige. You consume my waste hydrocarbons, Muhlenhoff thought
comfortably, and I'll consume yours.

Thus mined, smelted and milled, Muhlenhoff was tempered for higher
things. For the first, the technical directorate of an entire
Atlantic Sub-Sea Petroleum Corporation district, and all wells,
fields, pipelines, stills, storage fields, transport, fabrication and
maintenance appertaining thereto. Honors piled upon honors. And then--

He glanced around him at the comfortable office. The top. Nothing to
be added but voting stock and Board membership--and those within his
grasp, if only he weathered this last crisis. And then the rarefied
height he occupied alone.

And, by God, he thought, I do a damn good job of it! Pleasurably he
reviewed his conduct at the meeting; he had already forgotten his
panic. Those shaking fools would have brought the roof down on us, he
thought savagely. A few gallons of water in an unimportant shaft, and
they're set to message the home office, run for the surface, abandon
the whole project. The Big Picture! They didn't see it, and they never
would. He might, he admitted, not be able to chase an integral form
through a table, but by God he could give the orders to those who
would. The thing was organized now; the project was rolling; the task
force had its job mapped out; and somehow, although he would not do a
jot of the brainwearing, eyestraining, actual work, it would be _his_
job, because he had initiated it. He thought of the flat, dark square
miles of calcareous ooze outside, under which lay the biggest proved
untapped petroleum reserve in the world. Sector Fortyone, it was called
on the hydrographic charts.

Perhaps, some day, the charts would say: _Muhlenhoff Basin_.

Well, why not?

       *       *       *       *       *

The emergency intercom was flickering its red call light
pusillanimously. Muhlenhoff calmly lifted the handset off its cradle
and ignored the tinny bleat. When you gave an order, you had to leave
the men alone to carry it out.

He relaxed in his chair and picked up a book from the desk. He was,
among other things, a student of Old American History, as time
permitted.

Fifteen minutes now, he promised himself, with the heroic past. And
then back to work refreshed!

Muhlenhoff plunged into the book. He had schooled himself to
concentration; he hardly noticed when the pleading noise from the
intercom finally gave up trying to attract his attention. The book was
a study of that Mexican War in which the United States had been so
astonishingly deprived of Texas, Oklahoma and points west under the
infamous Peace of Galveston. The story was well told; Muhlenhoff was
lost in its story from the first page.

Good thumbnail sketch of Presidente Lopez, artistically contrasted
with the United States' Whitmore. More-in-sorrow-than-in-anger
off-the-cuff psychoanalysis of the crackpot Texan Byerly, derisively
known to Mexicans as "El Cacafuego." Byerly's raid at the head of
his screwball irredentists, their prompt annihilation by the Mexican
Third Armored Regiment, Byerly's impeccably legal trial and execution
at Tehuantepec. Stiff diplomatic note from the United States. Bland
answer: Please mind your business, Senores, and we will mind ours.
Stiffer diplomatic note. We said _please_, Senores, and can we not let
it go at that? _Very_ stiff diplomatic note; and Latin temper flares at
last: Mexico severs relations.

Bad to worse. Worse to worst.

Massacre of Mexican nationals at San Antonio. Bland refusal of the
United States federal government to interfere in "local police problem"
of punishing the guilty. Mexican Third Armored raids San Antone,
arrests the murderers (feted for weeks, their faces in the papers,
their proud boasts of butchery retold everywhere), and hangs them
before recrossing the border.

United States declares war. United States loses war--outmaneuvered,
outgeneraled, out-logisticated, outgunned, outmanned.

And outfought.

Said the author:

"The colossal blow this cold military fact delivered to the United
States collective ego is inconceivable to us today. Only a study of
contemporary comment can make it real to the historian: The choked
hysteria of the newspapers, the raging tides of suicides, Whitmore's
impeachment and trial, the forced resignations of the entire General
Staff--all these serve only to sketch in the national mood.

"Clearly something had happened to the military power which, within
less than five decades previous, had annihilated the war machines of
the Cominform and the Third Reich.

"We have the words of the contemporary military analyst, Osgood
Ferguson, to explain it:

    "The rise of the so-called 'political general' means a decline in
    the efficiency of the army. Other things being equal, an
    undistracted professional beats an officer who is half soldier and
    half politician. A general who makes it his sole job to win a war
    will infallibly defeat an opponent who, by choice or constraint,
    must offend no voters of enemy ancestry, destroy no cultural or
    religious shrines highly regarded by the press, show leniency when
    leniency is fashionable at home, display condign firmness when the
    voters demand it (though it cause his zone of communications to
    blaze up into a fury of guerrilla clashes), choose his invasion
    routes to please a state department apprehensive of potential
    future ententes.

"It is unfortunate that most of Ferguson's documentation was lost when
his home was burned during the unsettled years after the war. But we
know that what Mexico's Presidente Lopez said to his staff was: 'My
generals, win me this war.' And this entire volume does not have enough
space to record what the United States generals were told by the White
House, the Congress as a whole, the Committees on Military Affairs,
the Special Committees on Conduct of the War, the State Department,
the Commerce Department, the Interior Department, the Director of the
Budget, the War Manpower Commission, the Republican National Committee,
the Democratic National Committee, the Steel lobby, the Oil lobby,
the Labor lobby, the political journals, the daily newspapers, the
broadcasters, the ministry, the Granges, the Chambers of Commerce.
However, we do know--unhappily--that the United States generals obeyed
their orders. This sorry fact was inscribed indelibly on the record at
the Peace of Galveston."

       *       *       *       *       *

Muhlenhoff yawned and closed the book. An amusing theory, he thought,
but thin. Political generals? Nonsense.

He was glad to see that his subordinates had given up their attempt
to pass responsibility for the immediate problem to his shoulders;
the intercom had been silent for many minutes now. It only showed, he
thought comfortably, that they had absorbed his leading better than
they knew.

He glanced regretfully at the door that had sheltered him, for
this precious refreshing interlude, from the shocks of the project
outside. Well, the interlude was over; now to see about this leakage
thing. Muhlenhoff made a note, in his tidy card-catalog mind, to have
Maintenance on the carpet. The door was bulging out of true. Incredible
sloppiness! And some damned fool had shut the locks in the ventilating
system. The air was becoming stuffy.

Aggressive and confident, the political engineer pressed the release
that opened the door to the greatest shock of all.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Engineer" ***

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