Night Of Error

Campbell poked at it with one finger. 'It sure doesn't look like much, does it, Geordie?'

'Just like any other bit of rock we've been dredging up the last couple of weeks,' Geordie said offhandedly.

'It contains nearly ten per cent cobalt. We don't know much about anything else that's in it because Mike's only checked for cobalt, but we know there should be a fair amount of copper and vanadium and a lot of iron – and manganese too of course. Now, I'm telling you and I speak from experience, that the gross recoverable value will run to about four hundred dollars a ton.'

Geordie was still not convinced. 'That doesn't seem too valuable to me. I thought it was really valuable – like gold or platinum.'

Campbell grinned delightedly and took a little slide rule from his pocket. 'You'd say the density would be pretty consistent over a wide area, wouldn't you, Mike?'

'Oh yes. In the centre of the concentration you can fairly well rely on that.'

'And what would you call a wide area?'

I shrugged. 'Oh, several square miles.'

Campbell looked at Geordie under his brows, then bent over the slide rule. 'Now, let's see. At ten pounds a square foot – that makes it – run to about, say, fifty-six million dollars a square mile.'

Geordie, who was in the act of swallowing whisky, suddenly coughed and spluttered.

We all shouted with surprised laughter. I said, 'There are a lot of square feet in a square mile, Geordie!'

He recovered his breath. 'Man, that's money! How many square miles of this stuff will there be?'

'That's what we find out next,' I said. I saw the two girls looking at Campbell with astonishment and something occurred to me. I said to Paula, 'You're in on this too, you know.'

She gaped at me. 'But I've – I'm not'

Campbell said. 'Why, yes, Paula. You're one of the crew. Everybody on this ship gets in on the deal.'

Her astonishment must have been too great for her to contain, for she burst suddenly into tears and ran blindly from the saloon. Clare cast us a quick happy smile and went after her.

I could see that Geordie was trying to work out the fifteenth part of five percent of 56 million dollars – and failing in the attempt. I said, 'That four hundred dollars a ton is a gross value. We have to deduct the costs of dredging and processing, distribution and all sorts of extras. Got any ideas on that?'

'I have,' Campbell said. 'When Mark first came to me with this idea I went into it pretty deeply. The main problem is the dredging – a drag line dredge like the one we're using, but bigger, isn't much use at this depth. You waste too much time pulling it up. So I put some of my bright boys on to the problem and they decided it would be best to use a hydraulic dredge. They did a preliminary study and reckoned they could suck nodules to the surface from 14,000 feet for ten dollars a ton or less. Then you have to add all sorts of factors -processing; marketing, transport and other technical overheads – the cost of hiring ships and crews and maintaining them. We'd want to develop and build our own dredges, we'd need survey ships, and we'd have to build a processing plant.

That would happen on one of the islands and we'd get a lot of help there, as it'll mean a huge income in many ways for them, but all in all I would have to float a company capable of digging into its pocket to the tune of some forty million dollars.'

He said this in a serious and businesslike tone. Clare was apparently used to these flights of executive rhetoric but Geordie and I gaped at him. It was Geordie's first excursion into high finance, as it was mine, but I was slightly better prepared for it. 'Good God! Have you got that much – I mean can you lay your hands on it?'

'Not before this. But I can get it with what we have to show here. We'd clear a net profit of forty million in the first couple of years of operation – the rest should be pure cream. There's going to be a lot of guys on Wall Street eager to jump into a thing like this – or even take it over.'

He mused a bit, then added, 'But they're not going to. When Suarez-Navarro jumped my mines I swore I'd never hang on to another solid proposition ever again – not if they were as easy to steal as that. So I went back to being a wild-catter; in and out to take a fast profit. But this – somehow this is different. I'm sticking here. I know a couple of good joes back home, men I can trust. Between them and me, and perhaps persuading a couple of governments to take an interest, I want to tie this thing up so tight that neither Suarez-Navarro nor anyone else of their type can horn in and spoil it.'

He got up and went to a port to look out over the sea. Tonga's back there. They'll probably come in on the act. They'll benefit by being the ones most likely to get the processing plant built in their territory – it will be highly automated so it won't mean much steady labour, once it's built, but they'll get the taxes and the spin-off, so I should think they will be happy to cooperate. There's another thing on my mind too; nodules are still forming out there, and from what Mike says they'll go on doing so – at what he always calls an explosively fast rate. Maybe for once we'll be able to do a mining operation without raping the goddam planet.' He came back to the table and picked up his glass. 'And that's an achievement that any bunch of guys can be proud of. Let's drink to it.'

So we drank, very solemnly. I for one was full of awe at what we were doing, and I thought the others felt the same. Campbell had come up with a couple of shattering thoughts.

We stayed in the area for another week, quartering the submarine valley and dredging at selected spots. The material poured in and I was kept busy. A much more detailed survey would be done later – all I was aiming at was to put limits on the area and to find out roughly how rich, and how consistent it was.

Esmerelda was a happy ship in those days. Not that she hadn't been before, but the depression caused by a fruitless search had lifted and everyone was keen and cheerful. There was a lot of skylarking among the crew, although it always stopped when there was serious work to be done.

Once, when I was having a breather on deck, Paula joined me.

'I don't know what came over me the other day, Mike – you know, when Mr Campbell said I had a share in all this.'

'It is a bit of a shock when you find yourself suddenly on the verge of riches. I went through it too.'

'I never thought of being rich,' she said. 'I never had the time, I guess. I've always been on the move – the States, Mexico, Australia, Tahiti, Hawaii, Panama. Guess I was a bit of a hobo.' She looked up. 'That's what you British call a tramp, isn't it?'

'That's right.'

'I guess I was that too – in the American sense, I mean,' she said sombrely.

'You're all right, Paula,' I said warmly. 'Don't worry about it. Enjoy the idea instead. What will you do with all your new-gotten wealth?'

'Gee, I don't know, Mike. I'm not like Clare – she's used to money, but I'm not. And the way her pop talks sometimes makes my head spin, the way he juggles his millions.'

'Maybe you can go on a cruise ship to sunny Tahiti,' I said jokingly.

But she shook her head violently. 'No. I'll never go there again – I never want to see Papeete again.' She was silent for a while and we stood together companionably, and then she said, 'I think I'll go home first. Yes, I think I'll go home.'

'Where's home?'

'In Oregon. Just a small town – there aren't many big ones in Oregon. It's called Medford. I haven't been there for years – and I should never have left it.'

'Why did you leave, Paula?'

She laughed. 'Oh, it's a bromide – a cliche, you'd say. My whole life's been a cliche. I got movie-crazy when I was a kid, and when I was sixteen I won a local beauty competition. That gave me a swelled head and a big mouth – you should have heard me talk about what I was going to do in Hollywood. I was going to knock 'em cold. So I went to Hollywood and it knocked me cold! There are too many girls like me in Hollywood. I told you the story was a cliche.'