“At least for now,” Perry said. He wasn’t joking. He wondered how long he was going to be the boss if the project came to naught.
“All right,” Mark said. He put his cigarette down on the edge of an overflowing ashtray. “Pull the drill bit up to the well head.”
“The boys are already doing that,” the foreman said.
“Get the last diamond drill bit from supply,” Mark said. He reached for his phone. “I’ll have Larry Nelson get the saturation dive system up and running and the submersible in the water. We’ll replace the bit and see if we can get a better sample of what it is we’re drilling into.”
“Aye, aye,” the foreman said. He turned and left while Mark lifted his phone to his ear to call the diving commander.
Perry started to leave himself when Mark held up his hand to motion for him to stay. After finishing his call to Larry Nelson, Mark looked up at Perry.
“There’s something I didn’t bring up last night at the briefing,” he said. “But I think you ought to know about it.”
Perry swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. He didn’t like Mark’s tone of voice. It sounded like more bad news.
“This might be nothing,” Mark continued, “but when we used the ground-penetrating radar to study this layer we’re trying to drill through like I mentioned before, there was an unexpected incidental finding. I got the data here on my desk. Do you want to see it?”
“Just tell me,” Perry said. “I can look at the data later.”
“The radar suggested that the contents of the magma chamber might not be what we thought from the original seismic studies. It might not be liquid.”
“You’re joking!” This new information added to Perry’s misgivings. It was by accident the previous summer that the Benthic Explorer had discovered the seamount they were presently drilling. What was so amazing about the find was that as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the area had been extensively studied by Geosat, the U.S. Navy’s gravity measuring satellite used to create contour maps of the ocean bottom. Yet somehow this particular undersea mountain had evaded Geosat’s radar.