Valhalla

 

Concerned passengers lined the deck of the ferry, peering darkly over the railing into the grey metallic gloom as the agitated elements of cloud, sea and rain came together in a tangled turmoil. The storm wasn't an issue.  These ferries were big enough to cope with anything Neptune could throw at them. The trouble lay with a giant wave-powered turbine; perched like a juggernaut on top of a land docked, floating breach-rig, it had come adrift of its moorings and was threatening the approach to the harbour.  A massive gun-grey and silver swinging cradle, hanging from two arms reaching 500 feet up into the boiling leaden sky, and thrusting forty feet down below the surface of the sea, was swinging off-kilter and fit to bust.  Normally the surge and scend of the sea drove the scooped cradle landwards and upwards, turning the massive turbines anchored to a pivot three quarters of the way up the arms. The scend of the sea is slow. The cradle swings too slowly to spin the turbines fast enough, so the turbines had to be geared up to a ratio of 200 to one to generate the electricity needed for the harbour complex housing some 10 thousand sea craft, from car ferries to sea cities and two-mile-long tanker transports.  The big problem came  not in the weight of such a huge structure, which floated on hyper-inflated hammer buoys, but in the  massive force of the waves impacting on the tight gearing of the turbine. The steel from which the structure was made had to be flawless. Any hint of carbon in between the crystals of the steel could cause a fatal crack, so the entire rig had to be grown from one single steel crystal in a minuscule pipette, upwards into a super silicon mould that was strong enough to withstand the soaring temperatures of such a process. It took five years to grow such a crystal to the necessary size.

     The design was god made. No mere mortal was capable of such grand thought. And then the gods sent the blueprints of the plan down to the 19 year old Joshua Mitke in a dream one night. His fortune was made and his place in Valhalla assured. This night however, on the night of the races, as Joshua and his newfound love headed back home on the shuttle ferry between the mainland and Paradise island, the gods had also sent a force-nine gale howling up the coast, tearing loose one of the anchor chains of the rig, which now slewed dangerously left and right while the cradle continued to swing to its storm driven maximum. All shipping in the area was desperately trying to claw itself out of harms way. Nuclear engines were driven to the utmost of their power and many a prayer was being said over a multitude of steering wheels for the seven remaining anchors to hold until they had all cleared the vicinity.

All traffic was diverted to.........be continued in my third book of The Broken Moon series, 'The Dead At The Door'

The first two books are, 'The Boy At The Gate' and 'The Girl In The Cellar'.