The Atlantic Tunnel

by John Russell Fearn

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Deep beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists and engineers attempt the most daring and audacious scientific project of all time: the construction of an undersea tunnel between Great Britain and Canada; linking Land's End with Labrador. Canadian and British teams work simultaneously at either end, to converge in the middle. Using scientific methods to fight the crushing pressure and geological and marine perils involved, the brave workers face a far greater hazard - the danger within - from saboteurs!

Release date: June 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 267

Sample

Martin Astley sat looking intently at the metal. He was not even aware of the immense physical laboratory around him, or of the men and women technicians hurrying to and fro on their various errands. For Martin Astley time had stopped — for the moment.

Presently he picked up the square of metal in his hands and turned it over and over in the searching rays of the desk lamp. The metal reflected back smoothly as the light caught it — a curious iridescence of colours somewhat reminiscent of shot silk.

‘Amazing!’ Astley breathed to himself. ‘Absolutely amazing! That a thing like this could happen by accident!’

For indeed it had. Due to a mix up in the foundries, this foot-square of gleaming metal had come into being. It ought to have been a refined and highly tempered steel, but instead it was something else — something with the smoothness of satin, the lightness of aluminium, and the hardness of … Well, the hardness of nothing else on earth. It had withstood the maximum pressure of the Lovelace Engineering Works’ mightiest testing machines. It had come out with hardly a discolouration from deliberately planned nuclear impacts. It was the wonder metal — Steel-X — and the toughest thing that had ever been produced.

Astley put the metal down again, and sat back to think. As the chief metallurgic scientist to the huge engineering concern he could take all the time he wanted and nobody would dare bother him — mainly because he was in the unique position that nobody could get along without his genius. But here was something that even he had never bargained for. In working out the formula for a highly tempered steel he had unwittingly produced — or rather the foundries had — this incredible stuff with the phenomenal hardness.

And Astley knew exactly what he was going to do now. He had never been slow to grasp an opportunity, and one like this just yelled out loud for negotiation. So Astley ceased his meditations, picked up the metal square, and headed through the wilderness of laboratory to the executive offices. He knocked on the glass panels of one imposing door in particular, identified with the inscription ‘Douglas Lovelace, Governing Director.’

Quietly, Astley entered the plush office as a gruff baritone bade him come in. He went across to the desk and Douglas Lovelace, financial boss and emperor of the engineering concern, looked at him expectantly — a short, bald man in the sixties with a mouth as sentimental as a steel trap.

‘Well, Martin, what’s on your mind?’

Astley placed the satiny metal square on the desk.

‘This,’ he said, seating himself with the easy familiarity of a trusted employee. ‘I think there’s a fortune in it, but big business isn’t my line. I’m just a scientist. But it’s certainly your line so I’m dropping a ripe plum right in your lap.’

Lovelace picked up the square and examined it. Then he aimed a questioning glance.

‘What is it? Steel with a new polish?’

‘I’d say it’s an entirely new steel. Steel-X if you like. I haven’t had the chance to examine the ingredients involved because it came into being by accident. It’s a fortuity, D.L., the composite result of a new tempered steel mixed up with God knows what.’

Lovelace sat back. ‘You’re the scientist. Where does this get us?’

‘I don’t know, but even I can see that a new metal of such beauty and hardness should have a ready market.’

‘Beauty I grant you: the sheen is remarkable. But where does the hardness come in? What’s its rating?’

‘It doesn’t even show a fracture when placed edgewise and subjected to a strain of a hundred thousand tons.’

Lovelace’s mouth opened, but he did not speak. He sat staring at the lean-faced, fortyish man with untidy hair who had made the pronouncement.

‘Further,’ Astley added, ‘it doesn’t even show discolouration when placed in a nuclear chamber and bombarded with all the violence of an H-bomb explosion. Nothing — absolutely nothing — can make any impression on it!’

‘And it was an accident?’ Lovelace exclaimed.

Astley smiled. ‘The really great discoveries usually are.’

‘Who else knows about this? They must know something at the foundries, surely?’

‘I don’t think they do.’ Astley meditated over it. ‘No; I’m pretty sure they don’t. They used the ores for my original formula of a new highly tempered steel, then due to some mistake in the moulds another lot of ore got thrown in. I’m investigating it, tracing every scrap of metal back to its source. When I have everything I’ll know what happened — and then only. There isn’t another man in this organization clever enough to put Humpty Dumpty together again outside me.’

Lovelace began to grin. ‘Good man! Which leaves it as your own pigeon — which you are handing on to me?’

‘We trust each other, D.L., and always have done. I know you’ll do the right thing financially by me when you work something out. I have the formula: you have the money and business sense. Between us we ought to hatch something pretty startling.’

Lovelace got up restlessly from the desk and began to rove around his office — his custom when absorbed in thought. Astley waited, an acid-stained finger tracing along his lower lip, his untidy brown hair straggling across his wide forehead.

Presently Lovelace said, ‘There’s one thing bothering me. If this metal is so damned tough how are we going to fashion it? Mould it? Isn’t that a drawback?’

‘Not at all. It only gets like this when cool and withdrawn from the furnace. In the original state it’s as malleable as anything else. Something happens when it gets into the high temperatures. Obviously it will be cast into the required mould before the final heating takes place.’

‘Mmmm … Have you anything in mind for the stuff?’

‘Offhand, quite a multitude of things. For instance, it would make marvellous shelters against bomb attack in any future nuclear war. Or it would look just as fantastically beautiful forming the inner wall of a lounge. Think of that stuff in your own lounge, D.L. — it would catch the lights and gleam like a million diamonds.’

‘It’s an angle,’ Lovelace admitted. ‘But we want something big, to draw the attention of the whole world to the stuff …’

‘Better let me find out first what the stuff really is. I don’t anticipate trouble, but I’d prefer to know what I’m doing.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Steel-X may be an unstable element,’ Astley said. ‘If Steel-X is unstable, we shan’t dare to use it.’

‘Why?’ Lovelace demanded bluntly.

‘Because at any moment it might change its atomic build-up and collapse. However —’ Astley got to his feet. ‘I don’t anticipate anything like that. But just content yourself with ideas until I have given the metal a complete analysis. Then we’ll know what we’re doing.’

Lovelace nodded his bald head but did not say anything. He seemed to be dreaming of things far away …

For a week, whilst Douglas Lovelace mulled over all kinds of uses to which Steel-X could be put, Martin Astley conducted an investigation as to how the stuff had come to be made in the first place. For the time being he dropped his normal work as the company’s chief metallurgical scientist and concentrated solely on the problem of the wonder metal. He paid innumerable visits to the firm’s foundry master, made endless calculations in his laboratory, and finally performed a variety of tests on the metal that had been created. When at last he was satisfied he took the results to Lovelace — and, as usual, because it was Astley speaking, Lovelace listened carefully to all that was said.

‘Firstly,’ Astley said, ‘you can disabuse your mind of any ideas about Steel-X being unstable. It isn’t. The main thing is that it’s solid, very unlikely to change its state, and has a life of thousands of years.’

Lovelace heaved a sigh of relief, and waited.

‘As to how it came into being,’ Astley continued. ‘I’ve found it was the outcome of a catalyst.’

‘I may be dumb,’ Lovelace admitted, ‘but what in hell is a catalyst?’

‘A catalyst, scientifically, may be said to be a property which affects another property in an unpredictable manner, whilst itself it remains unaltered.’

‘Stop the high-flown language, Mart, and give it to me straight!’

‘I’m trying to,’ Astley said patiently. ‘To put it another way — the ores for my new tempered steel went into the furnace in the usual way, in a mould. During that process another mould got upset into ours. It did not actually mingle with our substance but it affected it in an odd way, giving it a strength, sheen, and lightness beyond anything known before. On examination, under the electron microscope, Steel-X reveals places when the catalyst has been absorbed into the general pattern, but they’re distinct spots, as clear under the microscope as currants in a cake.’

‘Meaning what, then? That they’ll be flaws?’

‘Not at all. They’re only in an infinitesimal percentage compared to the whole mass of metal. No — because of their presence at the time of maximum heat they became fused into Steel-X and produced their catalytic effect. Without them, we’d have tempered steel as planned originally. With them, we have Steel-X.’

Lovelace reflected. ‘And can the ‘ingredients’ of this what-you-call-it, this catalyst, be duplicated for future use?’

‘Endlessly!’ Astley smiled. ‘Several elements were involved and were mainly waste products being smelted down for the cheap commercial market, but I know what they were and the quantities used in comparison with Steel-X in the raw state. I can duplicate the effect any time it’s needed … Now you know. I’ve done my part. What ideas have you got?’

Lovelace spread his hands. ‘The greatest idea of the age, Mart! When you were here before I said we needed something that would draw the attention of the whole world to Steel-X. I think I’ve got the answer … We’re going to bore our way to Labrador!’

‘We’re going to — what?’ Astley stared fixedly; at which Lovelace gave a broad grin.

‘I thought it would shake you — but I’m serious. We’re going to construct a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean — the greatest engineering project that any organization ever envisaged. If that doesn’t bring Steel-X into prominence nothing will.’

Completely caught off his guard the scientist still stared in amazement. Lovelace went on talking with the assurance of a man who has paid infinite thought to his plans.

‘I’ve had two weeks to think this out,’ he explained. ‘Two weeks in which to think of something that advertises Steel-X, uses it to the full, benefits everybody, and provides a colossal commercial return. Also something that will at last link two parts of the British Commonwealth in everyday unity, more solidly than ’phone, air, sea.’

Astley found his voice. ‘Look, D.L., I know you have a strong patriotic streak, but — isn’t this going a bit far?’

‘I don’t see why,’ Lovelace argued. ‘I don’t claim that the idea of an Atlantic Tunnel is original: it’s been mooted several times by big engineering concerns, but an estimate of expense has killed the idea. But this time, with this new metal, it’s a practical possibility. Steel-X for the Tunnel itself, a metal that will withstand the immense pressures, and look good at the same time. Steel-X for the drills that will gnaw their way through the rock …’ Lovelace stopped and drew a deep breath. ‘It’s the greatest dream ever, Mart, and you and I are the ones to make it a reality. In five years — ten at the outside — we can link England with Canada and thereby start the unification of the British Commonwealth of nations.’

Astley was silent again. He had expected something big to come from Steel-X but he had never anticipated this. He knew too that in a thousand and one things Douglas Lovelace betrayed his enormous patriotism in political and commercial affairs. He believed, and always had, in the vast potentialities of the British Commonwealth.

‘You’re wondering — why Labrador?’ Lovelace asked presently, and Astley nodded.

‘Frankly, yes. Why not London-New York, and link America with Britain?’

‘For two reasons. Firstly, Canada has all the potentialities of the United States, and is also of British root; and secondly, from the engineering aspect, it will be easier to drive a Tunnel under the so-called Telegraphic Plateau between the British Isles and Labrador than it will under the vast deeps of the Atlantic proper. Either way the job will be gargantuan, but I can visualise that it will succeed. I want geologists and engineers to report on the possibilities and let me study them. And I want you to sketch out drafts of drills and tunnels, made of Steel-X, and calculated to stand the ultimate of pressure and strain.’

Astley smiled rather wryly. ‘And what of my other work?’

‘Other work?’

‘I’m chief metallurgist and scientist of this organization, and I have plenty on my plate at the moment due to the time I’ve lost.’

‘You’ve lost no time at all, man: you’ve produced results in that you’ve satisfactorily analysed Steel-X. As for your other jobs, give them to . . .