The whale song drifted away as he ascended.Īt five meters, he paused for a decompression stop-nothing but the click and puff of his own breathing to keep him company. Lucky we caught it early.” He pictured Marge up there in her blue coveralls, pen clutched in her paint-stained fingers, adding to her list of things to keep her team busy. “Looks like the problem is with the connection to the first. I’ll check the other three, see if there’s any deterioration there.”
Or the connection to the legs is failing. “If the block of sacrificial metal has failed, it’s earlier than usual. Then the whales had started to sing, drawing him deeper into the water where the music compelled him to stay. A bit of scraping and painting would get them up to snuff. He’d already inspected the lower docks that floated around the rig like tentacles. Might be time to replace the magnesium.” He spoke into his headset.Ĭrackling static came back as Marge from maintenance replied. “Good thing I didn’t wait ’til the scheduled check. A few taps with his dive knife made a dull thud, rather than the cheerful ping of healthy steel. Bits of metal sloughed from the surface and drifted off in ashy motes. Humpback calves, perhaps, learning to sing like their fathers.ĭan ran his hand along one of the steel legs that anchored the rig to the ocean floor. Then, the soft groan of settling into freshly laundered sheets for a long, long sleep.īright chirps punctuated the song today. A stuttering creak swept through-the slow rocking of a porch swing, a patio door caught in a summer draft. The deeper notes resonated in his tissue and filled him with sweet nostalgia. Whale music had a weight to it, a ponderous, profound theme. With no active orders, it was a good time for Dan to do a round of maintenance.
And sharks only circled in when the cowboys harvested a whale to process and package for transport. Some orcas had been acting up, but that was in a distant feeding ground. If the whales came within eyesight, their song would give him one bitch of an earache. No hulking shadows drifted along the edges of visibility. A slight chill filtered through his wet suit and he tucked his gloved hands into his armpits to keep them warm.īeyond the steel lattice that supported the oil rig-repurposed and renamed SeaRanch 18-ranged the twilight murk of open sea. A pod calling to one another, repeating the same refrain.ĭan paused in his inspection of the pier and floated at the ten-meter mark. Whale song echoed through the water in long, wistful moans. A powerful near future story about two people on a whale-processing rig: one a researcher, the other a worker-and the discovery they make by listening to whale song.
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