“Oh, sure,” said Jennifer Red Cloud a trifle too quickly.
Forte decided to try another approach. “Look, you play golf, don’t you?”
“I have a six handicap. Want to play?”
“Very much, but not golf… and not right now. Okay, I suppose you hit a slice or a hook once in a while.”
“Seldom.”
“But when you do, it’s because of the Magnus effect. Unless you hit it absolutely squarely, your club puts a spin on the ball. The ball, in spinning, drags some of the air around with it. As this air meets the oncoming air, it piles up and retards the ball. On the opposite side of the ball, the opposite occurs, and a partial vacuum develops. The net effect of the two forces causes the ball to veer with respect to the wind. Hitting it so that it spins one way produces a hook; making it spin the other way results in a slice. Hitting it absolutely squarely–no spin at all– and you have a shot down the fairway and maybe no bogey after all. Got that?”
“I–I think so.”
“Good. Now you recall that a golf ball is dimpled. That magnifies both high- and low-pressure effects. That’s why we have semispherical indentations over the mast’s entire surface. Now you know all there is to know about the Magnus effect and the Flettner sail, except that they are approximately ten times as efficient as traditional sails of the same area.”
She pointed upward to the disc atop the sail. “What’s the little hat brim for?”
“That? Well, that disc increases efficiency by preventing spillage of accumulated pressure and vacuum over the top of the cylinder. If you’re interested in statistics, the sail is 83 meters high, and the maximum load we expect to impose on it is 115 rpms. With full power and a 20-mph wind, the berg should develop a forward speed of 2.1 knots.”
The sail’s rotation was imparted by diesel power applied to a gear train. The sail itself revolved on huge roller bearings resting on a circular steel base embedded in a plug of ice, much like the anchor moorings. Depending on the direction of the wind, the computer program regulating the movement of the sails would make them turn in unison clockwise or counterclockwise. If a turn in the direction of the Alamo was required, this could be effected by rotating certain sails clockwise, others counterclockwise.
“I suppose you’ve tested this system?” asked Jennifer Red Cloud.
“In the lab, yes.”
“Not full scale?”
“Nope. Never had the time.”
“Then how do you know it’s going to work?”
“Because,” he said, “if it doesn’t, I won’t become a billionaire. And if I’m not a billionaire, I won’t be able to marry an expensive woman like you.”
“Oh, now I see,” she said lightly. “You believe in miracles.”
PART IV
SMOKE
26. MINE OVER MATTER
24 JANUARY 2008
THE PRESS BLIMP ORANGE FREE STATE OUT OF CAPE TOWN was filled with reporters, photographers, the best booze Triple Eye could supply, pretty South African hostesses in short skirts, raucous conviviality, and anticipation. The representatives of the world’s press and television had been mightily affronted by Forte’s refusal to allow them aboard the Alamo, but his explanations and alternative arrangements had quickly assuaged their outrage.
He was thinking only of their welfare, he assured them. After all, many fine men had perished aboard the Salvation, and he had too much regard for the media to expose them to similar dangers.
The holdouts became believers when he took them on a tour of the Orange Free State. Its usual mission was to fly tourists at very low altitudes over Kruger National Park and other game reserves, where they could goggle and photograph in comfort and safety the area’s few remaining wild animals. The passenger section had been remodeled to make provision for the usual facilities of a modern media center, providing instant communication with news capitals around the world by satellite. International, Chinese, and French cuisine was available at any hour of the day in the dining room. The bar was open from morning takeoff until 9 P.M., and it was stocked with a gratifying assortment of liquors.
Of the representatives of the press, six stood apart. They didn’t smoke. They drank, but only mineral water or fruit juices. At the breakfast table they ate sparingly. They were all male, young, and hard-muscled and wore their hair short and their trousers long. Among their sport-shirted, sloppy-shorted, sandal-wearing colleagues, they would have been instantly noticeable had it not been for the fact that all eyes, including theirs, were on the Alamo, which came into view off Cape Columbine an hour after takeoff at seven.
As the huge silver airship lifted slowly into the sky, Gary English, Triple Eye’s press officer, shepherded his guests toward the breakfast buffet, pointing out that very shortly the Orange Free State would be arriving over the area of operations. The press, ever hungry, needed no second invitation.
Half an hour later the correspondents, by then replete with food, began to gravitate, as if drawn by an irresistible force, toward the bar. Behind it was a large television screen, and to one side Forte’s press officer had placed his lectern. Fifteen rows of folding chairs faced the bar and screen so that the reporters could combine business with pleasure.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please distribute yourselves evenly along both sides of the ship,” English called. “The Orange Free State does, of course, have trim tanks, but….” He smiled and left the consequences of a sudden disequilibrium of the ship unsaid.
He nodded toward the screen, which showed a medium-distance shot of the iceberg and its escorting vessels. “The Alamo is making rather better progress than we dared hope. In fact, because the current, wind, and Flettner sails brought it nearly ten miles farther north than we anticipated, we will bypass Anchors Nos. 1 and 2.”
From his lectern he manipulated the cursor control. “That little yellow blob at which the arrow is pointing is AN-1. From where we are, at our present altitude of a thousand meters, it lies about six miles away on our port quarter. At about the same distance on our port bow,” he said, shifting the cursor, “is AN-2. Beyond AN-2 you can now make out the Flettner sails silhouetted against the sea, and just off our bow–you can see it on the screen but not from the observation windows–AN-3. Between us and the anchor, getting ready to make contact, is the Sun King.”
A reporter who had been scanning the seas below with high-powered binoculars came back from the angled plateglass observation windows and slumped in a front-row seat.
“Question!” he said, holding up his hand.
“Shoot.”
“Name’s Milbrand. Sydney Morning Herald. What are chances of getting the blue-plate special instead of the full twelve courses?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I can just about make my deadline if I can find out what’s going on down there without listening to an hour-long lecture or plowing through this five-foot shelf your PR flunkies handed us when we came aboard.”
“My briefings range from the terse to the interminable, from words of one syllable to the sesquipedalian,” said English loftily. “Name your poison.”
“Five minutes, basic English.”
Gary English scanned his audience for signs of dissent, saw none, and for a moment busied himself reprogramming his lectern lantern slide.
A still picture appeared on the screen.
“Typical anchor, buried in the continental slope at an average depth of 450 meters, at least 10 kilometers from any point along the continental shelf less than 230 meters deep. This allows for liberal lateral motion without danger of berg’s grounding. The resulting line of anchors is approximately 100 miles offshore.
“The anchor post is a column of prestressed concrete three meters in section, cemented in the slope’s basalt, granite, or reef rock. In the few areas where the slope is not exposed rock, but instead is covered with unconsolidated sediment, as in the alluvial fan of the Congo River, we plant the anchors by propellant-actuated embedment procedures. However embedded, the anchor is attached to a braided nylon lead line, or anchor rode, 244 centimeters in circumference, supported on the ocean surface by a large buoy. Next picture.”
“A 244-centimeter line looks pretty flimsy to drag a five-billion-ton iceberg,” Milbrand observed.
“Page 122, press kit spec list,” said English crisply. “‘Line has a safety factor of 2.76.’ Now, this artist’s rendering shows the Sun King being towed by its tugs to AN-1. Only, of course, the rendering is obsolete, as the Alamo is actually at this moment approaching AN-3.”
He pressed a frame-advance pickle, and a close-up appeared on the screen.
“Here is a diagram in plan, simulating a bird’s eye view from two thousand meters. Two tugs are on either side of the Sun King’s centerline. From above, we see that the tow-line tender, really a converted oceangoing tug, has inserted itself between the four tugs, two on each side. The winch on the tender is lifting the steel eye, to which the tow line is attached, from the Sun King. It will then be secured to a bitt on the tender’s fantail.”