The Scientific Alchemist

The deep desert of the Far Southern Ridge was a place where light went to die.

For three thousand years, the Obsidian Basin had been known as the Dead Man’s Mirror, a thousand square miles of jet-black, vitrified sand that reflected the brutal desert sun like a scorched mirror. According to the ancient scrolls of the southern nomads, the basin was formed when a battle between two primordial mages turned the stone to glass, cursing the soil so that no seed would ever sprout, no water would ever pool, and no creature would ever make its den beneath the dark surface.

They had been half right, no water ran beneath the black glass.

Instead, three thousand feet below the fractured crust, under pressures that would flatten a iron diving bell, rested a sea of liquid dark that had never seen the light of day.

THUMP.

The sound was not loud, but it carried across the black glass plain like a rifle shot in an empty cathedral.

A ninety-foot steel derrick, a web of triangular girders held together by thousands of heavy rivets, stood at the center of the Basin like a solitary iron tower. At its peak, a thick steel cable ran over a grooved crown wheel, dropping straight down into a hollow casing pipe that plunged three thousand three hundred feet into the earth.

At the base of the derrick, two forty-horsepower stationary steam engines chugged rhythmically, their heavy flywheels spinning in a blur of cast iron and grease. Every three seconds, the walking beam nodded downward, driving a two-ton solid steel drill bit into the subterranean bedrock.

THUMP.

Elias stood on the wooden rig platform, his dark wool coat replaced by a heavy canvas work jacket stained with grey limestone mud and mineral oil. He held a brass pocket chronometer in one hand and a slate tablet in the other, tracking the drill bit’s rate of penetration per minute.

Lira sat atop the rig’s central Samson post, her white fur blowing in the hot desert wind. Her emerald forehead crystal glowed with a intense, focused radiance, sending fine sonic pulses down the length of the drill string to map the density of the rock layers beneath their feet.

Jacob stepped out from the rig’s engine shed, wiping a mixture of sweat and coal dust from his forehead with a ragged grease-rag. He squinted up at the scorching sun, then looked down at the mud pressure gauge mounted on the casing head.

"We’re through the basalt cap, Master Elias," Jacob called out, his deep voice competing with the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the steam pumps. "Three thousand two hundred feet. The rotary bit is grinding through soft shale now, but the return mud is coming back dry as bone."

"It won’t stay dry," Elias replied smoothly, his eyes never leaving the slate tablet. "The seismic reflection data Lira processed yesterday showed a massive structural dome beneath the shale. The rock above it is non-porous siltstone, an ideal cap rock. Whatever is trapped underneath has been pressurized for thirty million years."

Marcus walked along the elevated wooden catwalk connecting the drill rig to the field laboratory, holding a bundle of freshly decoded telegraph tapes sent down from the coastal station at Maras. He wore a broad-brimmed linen hat to block the sun, though his spectacles were constantly slipping down his sweat-slick nose.

"The Assembly’s mineral commission in Sol-Aethel sent another inquiry this morning," Marcus said, stepping carefully over the pulsing hydraulic hoses on the platform. "They are questioning why we’ve diverted forty percent of the northern steel foundry output and twelve heavy locomotives to transport casing pipe into a uninhabited salt desert. They want to know why we are hunting for ’black sludge’ when the coal mines in the Western Baronies have two hundred years of proved reserves."

"Coal is heavy, Marcus," Elias said, handing the slate tablet to Jacob and stepping to the edge of the platform. "To move a thousand tons of coal, you need fifty rail cars, three coal tenders, and a dozen men shoveling fuel until their lungs turn black. Coal is a solid, it must be mined by hand, loaded by hand, and burned in a giant box."

He pointed down at the thin six-inch steel casing pipe rising from the black glass floor.

"A hydrocarbon liquid moves itself," Elias explained, his golden eyes cold and razor-sharp with absolute conviction. "You lay a pipe, you build a mechanical pump, and you can move ten thousand tons of energy across a continent without a single human back being bent. Coal powered the first age. Liquid fuel will power the world."

Before Marcus could respond, the rhythmic THUMP of the walking beam suddenly stopped.

The heavy steel cable went instantly slack.

The two stationary steam engines groaned as their governors opened wide, their flywheels spinning out of control as the resistance on the drill string vanished.

"Hold the throttle!" Jacob roared, lunging for the engine brake levers and pulling them back with all his weight. The flywheels screeched to a halt under the friction belts.

Silence descended over the derrick, a heavy, suffocating silence broken only by the hiss of steam escaping from the relief valves and the hot wind whistling through the steel

"What happened?" Marcus whispered, backing toward the catwalk ladder. "Did the bit snap?"

"No," Elias said, stepping to the edge of the cellar pit. "The bit didn’t snap. It dropped."

From deep within the casing pipe, three thousand feet down in the dark came a sound that none of them had ever heard before.

It started as a low, wet gurgle, like water rushing through a narrow cave. Within five seconds, the gurgle turned into a deep, earth-shaking roar. The wooden platform beneath their boots began to vibrate, sending fine cracks rippling through the black glass floor around the derrick footings.

"PRESSURE RISING!" Jacob screamed, staring at the brass pressure gauge on the wellhead. The needle had pinned itself past five hundred pounds per square inch and was vibrating violently against the stop pin. "SHE’S BLOWING THE MUD OUT!"

"Clear the rig deck!" Elias commanded, grabbing Marcus by the shoulder and shoving him toward the catwalk. "Jacob, kill the boiler fires! Now!"

Jacob didn’t ask questions. He leaped off the platform into the lower pit, grabbing the emergency water valve and flooding the steam engine fireboxes with three hundred gallons of water. A giant cloud of white steam erupted from the engine shed as the red-hot coals were extinguished.