The silence on the derrick floor was more terrifying than the roar of the engines.
Ten thousand gallons of thick bentonite slurry had disappeared into the underground dark in less than thirty seconds. Without the weight of that column of heavy fluid pressing down against the formation, the water-pressure balance of the two-mile drilled shaft was fully broken.
Giles stood at the edge of the empty mud pits, his eyes fixed on the open casing head down in the derrick cellar.
The wind sweeping through the spruce roof beams carried the sharp smell of cold granite and wet river clay.
Down in the pit, the massive box-shaped timber tanks sat bone-dry, their spruce floorboards slick with grey residue.
A single iron suction strainer lay exposed at the bottom. It whistled softly as cold air was sucked down the empty pipe.
Behind Giles’s eyes, red warning banners flashed across his test model HUD with urgent, pulsing borders.
“The mud is gone,” Corbin Cross said, his voice raspy with disbelief.
