Petrogypsies (14 page)

If there’s one thing a gypsy hates most, it’s taking the hair off his face.

One of the hands, I couldn’t tell who with the mask on, slid down Sprocket’s side and started setting up a sour gas detector. They’d be deposited in various places around the location, especially by the reserve pits. Sometimes sour gas could percolate through the mud undetected until it released there. Also around the pipe joints all over the location.

“Set the low-level screamer to go off at 20 ppm,” I said. “High-level at 50 ppm.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Teach your granny to suck eggs, Henry Lee,” he said. Never hurts to remind somebody in a situation like this. He turned on the detector. It didn’t start screaming.

Mac popped out of a hole on top and tossed me a respirator. I snatched it out of the air and had it loose around my neck when Captain Johnson showed up on the balcony.

“Where’s Mr. Miller?”

“He’s busy,” I said. “I’m in charge right now. You and me need to talk.”

He didn’t look happy at that. He got even less happy shortly.

“Captain, we’ve drilled into a pocket of hydrogen sulfide gas. I don’t know how much of it there is, but until we get it taken care of, I’d like you to keep your hands away from the hole as far as possible, preferably upwind of it.”

“Why?”

I felt like screaming, but I explained patiently. “Because it’s poisonous as hell. A concentration of two hundred parts per million in the air will kill you dead as a mackerel on a mountain top. You can’t see it because it’s transparent, and the first whiff numbs your sense of smell, so you don’t know you’re breathing it until you
drop over
. Then you’re in real trouble, since it’s heavier than air and tends to pool near the ground.”

“My god!”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s scary stuff. Good news is, Sprocket caught it before it did any damage, and we know how to handle it. Give us a day or so, you and your crew can get back to business as usual.”

“Mr. Pickett never said a word about my crew facing this sort of hazard when we made our agreement.”

“It’s not all that common. He probably didn’t think of it.”

One of the sailors on the railing behind us said, loudly. “You gypsies aren’t satisfied with Pegleg, huh? Gonna kill us all!”

Captain Johnson wheeled on him. He looked angry for the first time since I’d seen him. “That’ll be enough, mister!”

The sailor looked at us both stonily and took another drag on his pipe.

The captain turned back to me. “Have Mr. Miller meet me in the radio shack when he’s free,” he said. Then he left.

* * *

The chief patted the derrick strut. “Nice. This little episode is getting us all a twenty-five percent raise.” We both had backpack respirators on, but I’d had enough practice in the last day and a half that I didn’t have any problem understanding his words.

Sprocket still sealed the hole. Right beneath his mouth, I hammered some more on the knocker half that connected the relief line to the riser pipe, tightening it.

“I figured it took something like that to quiet Captain Johnson down,” I said. “Nobody offered us a raise, though.”

“Way I heard it, Doc didn’t ask for one. Said you boys already knew what you were getting into. Mr. Pickett apparently agreed.”

“Everybody is staying?”

“Mr. Pickett offered to send a speedboat out to ferry anybody who wanted it. Nobody’s quit just yet. If this burn-off looks good, I imagine the whole crew will hang on. It’s good money.”

Sprocket blinked beside us, and banged his drillhead against the pipe beside me. He was almost out of the hole. I gave him another few seconds to get completely clear, then pointed at the valve on the other side of the pipe, a few yards above my head.

“How about turning that wheel for me?” I said to the chief. “Clockwise, to shut it.”

“Sure thing.” He leaned over and closed it.

Sprocket backed down the ramp away from the hole. “Make sure it’s snug,” I said. “That’s the blow-out valve. We don’t want no sour gas escaping through it.”

He put a bind on the wheel. “I thought Sprocket was your blow-out preventer.”

“Sometimes he has to be out of the hole even when there’s a kick, like now. That valve has special teflon-lined inserts for sour-gas service. It’ll hold against a twenty thousand psi pressure differential. So will this one.” I touched the wheel on the valve beside me.

“I’m impressed.”

“You should be. They cost about five thousand bucks apiece.”

I looked up at Razer at the top of the derrick. I pumped my fist up and down a couple of times. He looked toward the bow and repeated the motion. A couple of seconds later, he pointed at me and moved his finger in a circle. I twisted the relief valve open and climbed out of the hole.

The sun had gone down a couple of hours ago. I went with the chief to the bow rail and watched along with the rest of the hands.

Just as we arrived, Doc triggered the electric igniter. A couple of hundred feet away from the ship, bright orange suddenly glared into the sky.

We’d coupled lengths of steel hose to make a long boom out over the water. The end of the boom rested squarely across one of
Miz Bellybutton’s
lifeboats. It rose lazily in the gentle swells, slowly shifting the shadows thrown by the billowing, burning sour gas.

The fire burned all night, dangerous and beautiful.

* * *

Sprocket drilled another thousand feet, to make sure that was all the sour gas we were likely to run into for the time being, then we invited Pearl and Big Red out to cement a liner over it all.

After it tested, Sprocket went back to business as usual. He still had to be coaxed into the hole, and I could see a worried look clouding Doc’s face every time it happened. Nobody quit
Miz Bellybutton
, but only the chief thanked us for the pay raise.

* * *

We completed the drilling program fifty-eight days after we first anchored on location. Sprocket TD’ed at twenty thousand feet, exactly as planned.

T-Bone’s drilling venture had got lucky first time out. As far as the well itself was concerned, it went perfect after we disposed of the sour gas. No hole degradation, no more unwanted fluids or gases infiltrating, no thief zones. But we did hit three good zones on the way to TD: producible amounts of light crude at eighty-eight hundred feet and twelve thousand two hundred feet, and, as a bonus, a high-pressure reservoir of clean, non-stinky natural gas at fifteen thousand seven hundred feet.

T-Bone sent out a couple of perf-gun operators on his speedboat. We perforated the casing for the oil zone at twelve-two and ran in a production packer on a string of two inch tubing. Then we sealed off the hole as quickly as we could, pulled the riser pipe up, weighed anchor and steamed for shore. The perf-gun operators and the speedboat driver decided to stay aboard and ride in with us, since the water was getting a little too rough for their preferences.

We were in a hurry because a hurricane had brewed in the Gulf south of Cuba for the last week that we drilled. We had been afraid that we’d have to pull off before setting our production string, but the storm had dithered around instead, gaining strength, until it decided to charge straight at us. Dark clouds scudded high in the atmosphere behind us, looking like torn ribbons, as we turned for shore.

A half an hour after we moved off location, I wandered around the deck and came upon the chief fishing over the rail.

He looked up and gestured me to come over.

“Catching anything?”

“Nope.” He pointed to an area a couple of hundred feet off the bow. “See that?” I looked. After a second I saw half a dozen fins cutting through the still water. “Sharks. Imagine they’re scaring everything off.”

Beside him another pole reposed on the deck. He handed it to me. “Here. The third mate was going to join me, but he decided at the last minute to catch a few winks instead. This may be our last chance to fish for awhile.”

I generally preferred to use live bait, but I realized there wasn’t many worms aboard ship, and no convenient bait houses nearby, so I made do with the spoon he’d already attached. After about fifteen minutes I hadn’t had much luck, either, when I
felt eyes on my back. I twisted around. Sprocket loomed over both of us, green eyes blinking slowly. Jokingly, I held out the rod to him. “Here you go, Sprocket. Maybe you’ll have better luck than us.” I swung the tip back and cast out with the weighted spinner. “See, it ain’t too hard once you get the hang of it.”

His eyes spun for a second, then steadied. He hummed for a minute. His mouth shot open and his drilling tongue arched over the rail and splashed into the water hundreds of feet away. The chief guffawed and slapped his knee.

“Guess he brought his own equipment, Henry Lee. Doubt he’ll catch much using his drillhead for a lure, though.”

Sprocket’s hum changed in pitch. I looked and saw the length of his tongue rapidly playing out through his mouth.

“Damn, he’s got a bite! Must be a big ’un!” the chief exclaimed. “Don’t let him get away, boy!” He dropped his pole and started shouting advice to Sprocket. “You got to let him run awhile, then draw in when he slows. Don’t jerk, he might pull loose; just reel him in smoothly. Then let him run some more, only make it harder for him. He’s got to fight the line. After awhile it’ll tire him, and you can pull him aboard.”

Sprocket seemed to be listening. His tongue reeled out for about five minutes, then drew in some, then reeled out some more. This repeated three or four times.

Beside me, the chief stayed excited. “Damn, that’s a big one he’s got. Say, doesn’t this hurt his tongue?”

“Nope,” I said. “That drill tongue’s tougher than steel cable. Stands up to heat and acid and all sorts of horrible conditions downhole.”

Finally Sprocket started to reel his catch in. It took him more than ten minutes. Whatever he had caught still had some fight in it. The chief leaned over the side with a gaff, but Sprocket yanked it right up the side of the ship without any help.

I didn’t know what he had, not being all that familiar with sea fish. But it looked mean as hell. The chief recognized it, though, and motioned for me to back away. “Son of a gun! He’s hooked a white shark.”

The damn thing looked to be fifteen feet long. Finally, Sprocket it pulled it over the rail and flopped it on the deck.

“Sharkfin makes a tasty soup,” the chief said. “If you have a taste for it.”

The shark lay still. One eye stared at me. Most fish, you look them in the eye, all you get back is a fishy look. This white shark was different. It looked seriously pissed off.

Suddenly, its mouth released from Sprocket’s tongue. The flippers spasmed into furious activity, and, before anybody realized what was happening, a whole mouthful of teeth was coming at the chief like a freight train. The jaws were big enough to chomp him in half, and that’s what they intended to do. The mouth was just about to close around the chief’s waist, when it was jerked back like magic. The chief had raised his arm to try to fend it off. The shark’s snout barely touched his elbow as it was whisked away.

Sprocket had whipped his tongue around the shark’s tail and pulled it off just in time. Weakly, we both leaned against the rail and watched. The shark struggled furiously.

I don’t think it realized the truth, even at the end. All its life, everything it had ever run into was dinner. Except Sprocket. Sprocket liked hydrocarbons best of all. But everything else, including sharks, was okay by him.

Sprocket stuffed that shark, fighting all the way, into his eating mouth. Then came a couple of meaty crunches and the show was over. One less white shark. One more tasty treat for Sprocket.

* * *

The chief kissed Sprocket’s hide, then went below, still visibly trembling. Said he needed to change his underwear. I figured he was joking, but I wouldn’t have blamed him if he wasn’t.

Sprocket went back to fishing. The hands that were loose gathered at the rail and encouraged him. A couple of sailors joined us and patted Sprocket’s hide. For the first time since Pegleg’s death, they mixed freely with the crew. None of them scowled when they glanced at me.

But none of them came up and shook my hand, either.

Sprocket’s first couple of casts came back bare, but on his third try, he hooked something again. Something that seemed as big as the deceased shark. As we egged him on again, his tongue ran out smoothly. After five minutes, he took up the tension on it, and his catch started to fight. His eyes gleamed with excitement. And with the anticipation of another snack.

He played his tongue out again, then pulled in. That’s when the program changed.

His tongue abruptly jerked downward so rapidly that he stumbled forward into the rail. He grunted with the effort and reeled on it. His tongue drew taut, then went slack.

As he brought it in, we figured that the fish had pulled itself loose, but we were wrong. His drillhead came up the side of the ship with something still attached to it.

It had been another white shark, a huge one, maybe twenty feet long. It had been torn in half. The jaws were still clenched around Sprocket’s drillhead, but everything a foot past the gills was simply gone.