“Nothing very hopeful, but we’ll know for sure shortly. This does look like oil land, I must say.”
“We’ve been fooled before,” Amalfi grunted. “Start boring; I’ll be right down.”
He had barely hung up the phone when the burring roar of the molar drill violated the still summer night, echoing calamitously among the buildings of the city. It was almost certainly the first time any planet in the Greater Magellanic had heard the protest of collapsing molecules, though the technique had been a century out of date back in the Milky Way.
Amalfi was delayed by one demand and another all the way to the field, so that it was already dawn when he arrived. The test bore had been sunk and the drill was being pulled up again; the team had put up a second derrick, from the top of which Hazleton waved to him. Amalfi waved back and went up in the lift.
There was a strong, warm wind blowing at the top, which had completely tangled Hazleton’s hair under the earphone clips. To Amalfi, who was bald, it could make no such difference, but after years of the city’s precise air-conditioning it did obscure things to his emotions.
“Anything yet, Mark?”
“You’re just in time. Here she comes.”
The first derrick rocked as the long core sprang from the earth and slammed into its side girders. There was no answering black fountain. Amalfi leaned over the rail and watched the sampling crew rope in the cartridge and guide it back down to the ground. The winch rattled and choked off, its motor panting.
“No soap,” Hazleton said disgustedly. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the Proctors.”
“There’s oil under here somewhere all the same,” Amalfi said. “We’ll get it out. Let’s go down.”