He stared at her with absolutely no idea of what to say or do. She was younger than him, smarter than him, and driven so hard that she was almost shaking. It was in her eyes and on her lips, in their swift movements as if she were ready to argue her point or at the very least spring into some sort of a defensive posture. And he thought that her being here like this was the worst thing that could happen, especially with the sort of memories he’d been dredging up.
But then he supposed she really did need him, and he reached out for her and she came into his arms, shivering at first until she slowly began to come down, and he could feel her tears on the side of his face.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“This will work out,” McGarvey told her. “You’ll see.”
FIFTY-FOUR
Late the next afternoon Eve and Don went down to the main deck to inspect the work Defloria’s crew had completed on the first of the four massive steel tripods that would support the 150-millimeter titanium and carbon nanofiber cable holding the huge impeller in place. They were well out into the Gulf now, completely out of sight of land, and the weather had turned nasty with a light drizzle from low overhanging clouds that scudded to the east on an increasing wind, but the weather didn’t seem to be slowing down the work.
“I’ve been in much worse conditions on the North Sea,” Defloria told them, and he introduced his construction foreman, Herb Stefanato, a short, bulldog tough guy from Queens who’d paid his way through engineering school by working as a roustabout on oil rigs.
“We’ve engineered a safety factor of five above what you and the other eggheads at GE told us we’d need,” Stefanato said. “No offense, Doc.”
“None taken, I’ve been called worse,” Eve said. Each tripod, standing nearly the height of a five-story building from base to apex with a spread of forty feet, was a geometric maze of intersecting girders of impressive proportions. The entire rig was bolted through the deck to what Stefanato explained were a series of two-inch-thick stainless-steel backing plates, that were in turn reinforced by a series of girders interlaced like a spiderweb with the platform’s main beams.
The cable, attached to the impeller’s pivot point located at the center of mass, would be led up and over roller bearings at the top of the pyramid, and back down to a winch powered by a donkey engine reeling out cable from a spool.
In addition to the structural purpose of the umbilical cord, the cable also contained the data links from the impeller to the measurement and control devices up in the science room. Once the impeller was up and spinning, and its generator switched on, the electrical energy the apparatus produced would be sent ashore via a heavily sheathed power line lying on the ocean floor.
All four of the impellers would be led from the down-current side of the platform, lowered to a depth of seventy-five feet at the central shaft, which would put the top edge of the blades a little more than sixty feet beneath the surface, plenty deep to avoid even the deepest draft commercial ships.
She’d thought of everything, they’d thought of everything and except for the accident aboard the
“There’ll be a considerable drag,” Don said. “We can’t get energy for nothing.”
“This will handle the stress,” Stefanato said.
“What about the stress on the platform with all four impellers on the same side? The rig’s going to heel over.”
“Seventeen degrees at full load,” Stefanato said. “We’ll pump water into the two up-current legs, which’ll even things up a bit.”
“Have you worked out the torsional loads something like that will put on the main deck?” Don pushed.
Eve realized that he had become just as big of a worrier as she was. She’d never noticed it before, maybe because she’d been so wrapped up in her own world, but now she could see that he was actually tense. Maybe even a little frightened that they had come so close, that so much was at stake, that if anything went wrong, the slightest thing, the entire project would go down the drain.
Stefanato smiled tightly. “Listen to me, son. You’re a scientist and I’m an engineer. You stick to your lab upstairs and let me take care of the engineering on my rig down here, and it’ll all work out.”
Don took a shuffling step forward, his aggressive don’t-give-me-any-shit expression on his face, but before Eve could put out a hand to stop him, Defloria broke in.
“Herb is one of the company’s best construction engineers, and he knows oil platforms top to bottom. There’s no one better. I’m trusting my life and the lives of my crew to his judgment.”
“This is our rig now, and let’s just say that I’m a skeptic,” Don said.
“And let’s just say that Vanessa is the company’s rig until we reach Florida and turn it over to your team,” Defloria said mildly. “But if you have a problem with that, Doctors, I suggest that you call the company.”
Don started to say something else, he clearly wanted to press the argument — no simple mechanical engineer was going to tell a man who held two Ph.D.s anything — but this time Eve was able to hold him off.
“Accept my apologies Mr. Stefanato,” she said. “We’ve been working on this project for a long time and there’s a lot at stake for us, including the careers of everyone upstairs who’ve stuck with me despite the nearly universal criticisms we’ve gotten from just about every direction. We’re all a little touchy.”
And Stefanato came down and he nodded out toward the flotilla. “And that crap isn’t helping anyone’s nerves,” he said. “But trust me, when we’re finished Vanessa will hold up to the stresses — torsional as well as traverse, compressional, and repetitive. If you want to stop by my office I’ll show you the CAD programs I used, and the communications I had with GE’s chief engineer on your impeller project, plus with the guy who designed the things, and with my boss, the VP of the company’s engineering division.”
Don actually grinned. “I guess I can be a shit sometimes,” he said. “Sorry.”
Eve almost wanted to reach out and hug him. He had pressed his charm button, and even shook Stefanato’s hand, and yet a little part of her was slightly disappointed because his charm was fake. She didn’t think the engineer could see it, but Defloria had and he remained cool.
“Is there anything else?” he asked Eve.
“Will this be finished by the time we get to Hutchinson Island?” she asked.
“In plenty of time,” Defloria said. “Actually the work is going faster than we thought it would. No accidents yet.”
“Do you expect something like that?”
“This is an inherently dangerous environment. Things happen.”
And all of a sudden Eve’s remembrance of that day on the
“We’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible,” she said.
Defloria looked at her critically. “When’s the last time you got any sleep?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Not much since we came aboard,” Don answered for her.
“Accidents happen to tired people. Maybe you should get some rest. Our work will go at its own pace, and there’s not much for you to do until we get to Hutchinson Island.”
Eve wanted to protest, yet she knew that Defloria was right, and she finally nodded. “Let’s take tonight off,” she told Don.
“I’ll let them know,” he said. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your room.”
And Eve was even more exhausted than she’d realized until this moment, so tired she couldn’t object to what she knew was a chauvinistic gesture on Don’s part, and she went with him, hand in hand almost as if they were schoolkids or lovers, almost meekly.
Back inside, out of the wind and noise from the flotilla, she shivered. Krantz and everyone else she’d ever
