Arctic shore of northern Alaska: its latter-day counterpart, the surface mining of oil, is to be found ? and, indeed, it is the only place in the world where it can be found ? in the tar sands of Athabasca.
One
'This,' said George Dermott, 'is no place for us.' He eased his considerable bulk back from the dining table and regarded the remains of several enormous lamb chops with disfavor. 'Jim Brady expects/his field operatives to be lean, fit and athletic. Are we lean, fit and athletic?'
'There are desserts,' Donald Mackenzie said. Like Dermott he was a large and comfortable man ? a little larger and a little less comfortable than his partner ? with a rugged, weatherbeaten face. Observers often took him and his partner for a pair of retired heavyweight boxers. 'I can see cakes, cookies and a wide variety of pastries,' he went on. 'You read their food brochure? Says that the average man requires at least five thousand calories a day to cope with Arctic conditions. But we, George, are not average men. Six thousand would do better in a pinch. Nearer seven would be safer, I'd say. Chocolate mousse and double cream?'
'He had a notice about it on the staff bulletin board,' Dermott said wryly. 'Heavy black border, for some reason. Signed, too.'
'Senior operatives don't look at staff boards.'
Mackenzie heaved his 220 pounds erect and headed purposefully for the food counter. There was no doubt that BP/Sohio did extremely well by their staff. Here at Prudhoe Bay, on the bitter rim of the Arctic Ocean in midwinter, the spacious, light and airy dining room, with multicolored pastel walls backdropping the recurrent five- pointed-star motif, was maintained at a pleasantly fresh 72? F. by the air-conditioned central heating. The temperature difference between the dining room and the outside world was 105 degrees. The range of excellently cooked food was also astonishing.
'Don't exactly starve themselves up here,' he said as he returned with a mousse for each of them and a pitcher of heavy cream. 'I wonder what the old Alaskan sour-doughs would have made of it.'
The first reaction of a prospector or trapper of yesteryear would have been that he was suffering from hallucinations. All in all, it was hard to say what feature he would have found the most astonishing. Eighty per cent of the items on the menu would have been unknown to him. But he would have been still more amazed by the forty-foot swimming pool and the glassed-in garden, with its pine trees, birches, plants and profusion of flowers, that abutted on the dining room.
'God knows what the old boys would have thought,' said Dermott. 'You might ask him, though.' He indicated a man heading in their direction. 'Jack London would have recognized this one right away.'
Mackenzie said, 'More the Robert Service type, I'd say.'
The newcomer certainly wasn't of current vintage. He wore heavy felt boots, moleskin trousers and an incredibly faded mackinaw which went well enough with the equally faded patches on the sleeves. A pair of sealskin gloves were suspended from his neck, and he carried a coonskin cap in his right hand. His hair was long and white and parted in the middle. He had a slightly hooked nose and clear blue eyes with deeply entrenched crow's feet, which could have been caused by too much sun, too much snow or a too highly developed sense of humor. The rest of his face was obscured by a magnificent, grizzled beard and mustache, both of which were at that moment rimed by droplets of ice. The yellow hard hat swinging from his left hand struck a jarring note. He stopped at their table, and from the momentary flash of white teeth it could be assumed that he was smiling.
'Mr. Dermott? Mr. Mackenzie?' He offered his hand. 'Finlayson. John Finlayson.'
Dermott said, 'Mr. Finlayson. Field operations manager's office?'
'I am the field operations manager.' He pulled out a chair, sat, sighed and removed some ice particles from his beard. 'Yes, yes, I know. Hard to believe.' He smiled again, gestured at his clothing. 'Most people think I've been riding the rods. You know, hobo on the boxcars. God knows why. Nearest railroad track's a long, long way from Prudhoe Bay. Like Tahiti and grass skirts. You know, gone native. Too many years on the North Slope.' His oddly staccato manner of speech was indeed suggestive of a person whose contact with civilization was, at best, intermittent. 'Sorry I couldn't make it. Meet you, I mean. Deadhorse.'
Mackenzie said, 'Deadhorse?'
'Airstrip. A little trouble at one of the gathering centers. Happens all the time. Sub-zero temperatures play hell with the molecular structure of steel. Being well taken care of, I hope?'
'No complaints.' Dermott smiled. 'Not that we require much care. There the food counter, here Mackenzie. The wateringhole and the camel.' Dermott checked himself. He was beginning to talk like Finlayson. 'Well, one little complaint, perhaps. Too many items on the lunch menu, too large a helping of any item. My colleague's waistline ? '
'Your colleague's waistline can take care of itself,' Mackenzie said comfortably. 'But I do have a complaint, Mr. Finlayson.'
'I can imagine.' Another momentary flash of teeth, and Finlayson was on his feet. 'Let's hear it in my office. Just a few steps.' He walked across the dining hall, stopped outside a door and indicated another door to the left. 'Master Operations Control Center. The heart of Prudhoe Bay ? or the western half of it, at least. All the computerized process control facilities for the supervision of the field's operations.'
Dermott said, 'An enterprising lad with a satchelful of grenades could have himself quite a time in there.'
'Five seconds and he could close down the entire oil field. Come all the way from Houston just to cheer me up? This way.'
He led them through the outer door, then through an inner one to a small office. Desks, chairs and filing cabinets, all in metal, all in battleship gray. He gestured them to sit and smiled at Mackenzie. 'As the French say, a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.'
'It's this Texas dust,' Mackenzie said. 'Sticks in the gullet like no other dust. Laughs at water.'
Finlayson made a sweeping motion with his hand. 'Some big rigs out there. Damned expensive and damned difficult to handle. It's pitch dark, say, forty below and you're tired ? you're always tired up here. Don't forget we work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. A couple of scotches on top of all that, and you've written off a million dollars' worth of equipment. Or you damage the pipeline. Or you kill yourself. Or, worst of all, you kill some of your mates. Comparatively, they had it easy in the old prohibition days ? bulk smuggling from Canada, bathtub gin, illicit stills by the thousand. Rather different on the North Slope here ? get caught smuggling in a teaspoonful of liquor, and that's it. No argument, no court of appeal. Out. But there's no problem ? no one is going to risk eight hundred dollars a week for ten cents' worth of bourbon.'
Mackenzie said, 'When's the next flight out to Anchorage?'
Finlayson smiled. 'All is not lost, Mr. Mackenzie.' He unlocked a filing cabinet, produced a bottle of scotch and two glasses and poured with a generous hand. 'Welcome to the North Slope, gentlemen.'
'I was having visions,' said Mackenzie, 'of travelers stranded in an Alpine blizzard and a St. Bernard lolloping toward them with the usual restorative. You're not a drinking man?'
'Certainly. One week in five when I rejoin my family in Anchorage. This is strictly for visiting VIPs. One would assume you qualify under that heading?' Thoughtfully, he mopped melting ice from his beard. 'Though frankly, I never heard of your organization until a couple of days ago.'
'Think of us as desert roses,' Mackenzie said. 'Born to blush and bloom unseen. I think I've got that wrong, but the desert bit is appropriate enough. That's where we seem to spend most of our time.' He nodded toward the window. 'A desert doesn't have to be made of sand. I suppose this qualifies as an Arctic desert.'
'I think of it that way myself. But what do you do in those deserts? Your function, I mean.'
'Our function?' Dermott considered. 'Oddly enough, I'd say our function is to reduce our worthy employer, Jim Brady, to a state of bankruptcy.'
'Jim Brady? I thought his initial was A.'
'His mother was English. She christened him Algernon. Wouldn't you object? He's always known as Jim. Anyway, there are only three people in the world any good at extinguishing oil-field fires, particularly gusher fires, and all three are Texas-based. Jim Brady's one of the three.
'It used to be commonly accepted that there are just three causes of such oil fires: spontaneous combustion,
