The Courtney Series - 07 - Golden Fox by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781785765803
Published: 2018-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Two years’ study and deliberation had gone into choosing the site for the test. The prime consideration had been that of contamination by radioactive fallout.

South Africa maintained a weather station at Gough Island in the Antarctic. They had considered an Antarctic site, but had swiftly rejected that idea. Not only would contamination be difficult to control, but also detection before or after the test would be a foregone conclusion. There were too many others, notably the Australians, who were interested in that bleak and beautiful continent at the foot of the world.

For security, then, the test must be conducted on national soil or within South African air-space. The idea of an aerial test was soon abandoned. Again, detection would be a serious threat and the risk of contamination from fallout would be suicidal.

It had come down at the end to an underground test. The South African gold mines are the deepest underground workings in the world. For sixty years the South Africans have been the leaders in deep-mining techniques, and associated with the mines is the art and science of deep drilling.

Courtney Enterprises owned Orion Explorations, a specialist drilling company. The gnarled old magicians at Orion were able to sink a borehole two miles below the surface of the earth and bring up cores of rock from that depth. They could drive a straight hole or incline it at any angle they chose, or they could go straight down a mile and a half and then kick the bit off at an angle of forty-five degrees.

It was this incredible skill that filled Shasa Courtney with a sense of awe and deep respect as he stood at the test site in the middle of a bright sunlit day and looked around him at the gargantuan machines that between them comprised the drilling rig.

The entire rig was self-propelled. One truck the size of a modern fire-engine carried the power plant. It was a diesel engine that could have driven an ocean liner. Another truck housed the control-room and electronic monitoring equipment. A third incorporated the actual drill and baseplate for the shot-hole. A fourth was the hydraulic lift and crane for the steel bore-rods.

The drill site was surrounded by a community of residential caravans and supply-trucks. The rods were piled in a storage area many acres in extent. At night the entire area was lit by the brutal blue-white glare of the arc lamps, for the work continued around the clock. When completed, the hole would have cost almost three hundred thousand US dollars to sink.

Shasa lifted his hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. It was hot.

This was the fringe of the Kalahari desert, which the little yellow Bushmen call ‘The Great Dry Place’.

The low undulating red dunes rolled like the waves of a turbulent ocean into the monotonous distance. The desert grasses were sparse and silver dry. In the troughs between the dunes stood isolated desert camel-thorn trees. The foliage was dark green, and the bark was rough as a crocodile’s back.

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