“A cheer goes up from a million throats on both sides of the channel as the U.S.S. Texas, its engines responding to a full head of steam, squats stern down in the water and races away at thirty knots, headed for the open sea. …” Forte paused.
There was silence.
“Aw, come on, Will,” somebody said.
“I’ve discussed it with the scientists of my research staff. They assure me it can be done. It will need hard work, high standards of performance, dedication, time, money-but it can be done. In six years. If I can get the men . . .”
Again, silence.
Ski Modeljewski looked around the room at the faces of his friends and shipmates. He shrugged. “Well,” he said, “I always was a sucker for lost causes.”
JUNE 1994
The subterranean workshops of sunshine industries had been built in the scary days of the early 1980s. At the time, it seemed that the Russians had solved the American missile defense equation, that they could drop their ICBMs with assurance that they would atomize everything American right out to the horizon. Russia itself, thanks to an efficient antiballistic missile system that had been extended from mere point defense of major cities ever farther into the hinterland, had less and less to fear from America’s nuclear might.
By 1984, Gwillam Forte’s men had been digging in for four years. Not having mountains that they could hollow out, as the Swiss and Swedes had done to protect themselves, their stores, and industry, Forte determined to burrow underground. At first it seemed an impossible goal to excavate millions of cubic meters of rock and earth far enough beneath the surface to be invulnerable to megaton bombs. A team of economists and scientists said the costs would bankrupt Sunshine Industries before he installed even a tenth of SII’s manufacturing capacity twelve hundred meters down, considered the minimum depth necessary to dissipate anticipated shock blasts. Forte didn’t argue with his experts: he paid them to be right.
But one night while gargling with the salt-and-soda mixture he favored over over-the-counter frauds, a balloon blossomed in the bathroom mirror. Inside was a glaring light bulb. He paused, and looked thoughtfully at the gargle water.
The next day he called in his geologists and told them what he was looking for. Poring over geological maps of the area, they soon found it. Encouraged, Forte instructed his mechanical engineers to conduct an energy survey of the mainly petroleum-related industries along the Houston Ship Channel, with special attention to flared gas and other waste heat. Some weeks later they returned with an exhaustive two-volume study. On their heels came Forte’s chief civil engineer, who listened with skepticism as Forte outlined his plan.
“Stifle your doubts, and talk to the men who will do the work,” Forte told him. “Determine whether they can do it. If they can, bring back two figures: the cost, and the completion date.”
“Right.”
Twenty-two days later, a weary chief engineer brought to Forte the required two figures. Forte studied them with a frown. The sum was large-even by Forte’s standards $78.8 million was a lot of money. And the date was a lot further in the future than he had anticipated. Nevertheless, he nodded and said: “You’re in complete charge. Bring it in under budget before this date, and you’ll get a bonus of double the savings. Exceed the target date or go over budget, and you’re fired.”
Forte kept his word. He usually did. The project came in $1.2 million over budget and twelve days late. The chief engineer was fired. Still, he had been on the payroll longer than the experts who said the subterranean workshops were an economic impossibility: they had all been kicked out the day work began, and from that day on Forte never allowed an economist on the premises.
Forte’s solution had been just that-a solution. Observing the salt and soda dissolving in the glass of warm water, he reasoned that the same process might work on a larger scale. His geologists confirmed the presence of a suitable site 1,450 meters below his El Caballejo ranch property beside the Houston Ship Channel. There, seismic surveys of oil exploratory companies in the 1920s had turned up a number of salt domes, although precious few of them sat atop the hoped-for reservoirs of crude. Forte’s mechanical engineers had likewise discovered promising energy sources in the millions of BTUs flared off in petrochemical plants and refineries that extended some thirty miles along the channel.
At a modest investment, Forte was able to buy up the flare gas and pipe it to a steam-generation plant constructed above the salt dome under the ranch property. Superheated water was forced down a drill pipe into the dome, where it liquified the halite deposit, which was then forced up by the same pressure through a second pipe to the surface. The hot brine was evaporated and purified in stills and sold to chemical, glass, and agricultural industries in which Forte had interests. Had the brine recovery been planned as a strictly money-making proposition, the project probably would have lost money. But speed was Forte’s purpose, and the fact that the excavation was made close to the breakeven point was considered a financial success.
Into the enormous chambers excavated nearly a mile underground, Sunshine Industries installed almost its entire manufacturing capacity, its offices, research center, library, fuel supplies, raw-material stockpiles, warehouses, electric generators, leisure and sporting facilities, air conditioning machinery, food and water reserves to last the entire work force for three years, and dormitories extensive enough to house the workers and their families twice over. The transportation system alone was equivalent to that of a town of twenty thousand, with electric buses running on regular schedules, a small electric railroad for heavy equipment and supplies, and even a radio-taxi service for executives. According to defense experts, it was the ultimate in bomb shelters, invulnerable even to zero-error hits by megaton-yield nuclear missiles. To be sure, it was impossible to forecast casualties from blast effects, but the facilities themselves would survive, even should everything else in the United States be destroyed.
So would its secrets, which ranged from gaseous storage batteries, lasers, ion-drive vehicles and other high-tech products being tested in its laboratories, to arcane theories of submarine and satellite warfare developed by SII researchers, along with designs for hardware to carry them out, for SII was a prime U.S. defense contractor. As such, security was virtually absolute. Admission to the underground offices and workshops was via one of two entry shafts after a thorough security check of the individual, who typically spent an entire week at work below the surface, followed by a week of total freedom at home. Those who talked about their work outside quickly discovered they had no work to talk about. Thus, over the years, a work force was built up that was relatively small, efficient, healthy, and very well paid. Working conditions in the cavernous factories below ground were excellent: no air pollution, very little noise, absolute temperature and illumination control, and performance goals that kept workers, who were shifted around from one job to another to counteract boredom, constantly challenged to produce. It was a tough shop, but a happy ship. The loyalty of the workers to Forte was correspondingly fierce and possessive.
He depended on it now as he assembled the engineering chiefs who would be responsible for the rehabilitation of the U.S.S. Texas. One would take charge of propulsion, another of instrumentation, a third of armament, a fourth of paintwork, and so on.
“Keep always in mind,” Forte warned them, “the purposes of this job. They are to regenerate the U.S.S. Texas-make it the fastest, leanest, cleanest, most exciting ship afloat, while preserving its outside appearance unchanged, and to ration the work so as to stretch it out for five and a half years, to coincide with the Texas Millenary Celebrations in January 2000. You will schedule the work to produce a crescendo of excitement, a tempo that will pick up as the TMC draws to a close. That’s vital. These war veterans must feel that they’ve got to keep humping to get the work done on time. That feeling of urgency will keep them alive and productive. To me, that’s more important than getting the old ship rebuilt. Anybody who lets slip that the work can easily be done in two years will hear from me. The words he will hear are ‘good’ and ‘bye.’ ” His blue eyes rested on each of his engineers in turn.
“These men will have direct responsibility for getting the work done, and you’ll devise work schedules so they can handle it. But there’ll be no free rides. See that they have plenty to do.”
“Seems to me like this is about three parts ego-building and one part ship-building,” one of the engineers grumbled.
“Your proportions are correct,” agreed Forte. “Now get cracking.”
The U.S.S. Texas, as a state monument, was open to the public seven days a week. Enough tourists still came to make impossible any overt work on the ship if secrecy was to be preserved. A major overhaul on a 34,000-ton vessel under the very noses of the visitors without them suspecting it was obviously impossible- until Gwillam Forte thought of a way.