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'.
