Free Competition Can Be Murder by Connie Shelton Page B

about a quarter mile behind Drake in the Astar as we approached Platform 14. A total of ten rig workers rode with us, all genial fellows as far as I could tell when we’d picked them up at their dockside offices an hour earlier. I didn’t get any sense of the hostility that pervaded the atmosphere on Platform 6 a couple of days ago.
    Drake set his craft down at the far edge of the landing pad, leaving the more sheltered section for me. I guided the JetRanger into its spot and set the skids gently on the concrete pad. My passengers waited expectantly for the thumbs-up before opening any of the doors, and I gave the signal as soon as I’d repeated instructions for correctly releasing the sometimes tricky latches.
    The crew chief for this platform was a short, stocky man with a florid face and a dark fringe of hair showing beneath the rim of his hard hat. Two deep furrows between his black eyebrows testified that he was permanently mad about something. I wondered if the union problems at the other rigs extended to this one as well. I couldn’t see why not. I braced myself as he stomped toward my door, clipboard under one arm, hard hat butting the air as if he were a human battering ram.
    He looked up at the same moment I opened my door. “Girl pilot, eh? All right. Manifest for the return.” His gravelly voice came from somewhere deep inside his compact body, probably about in the region of his navel. Each sentence came out as a short bark, the way a Rottweiler would sound if he spoke English.
    He shoved a sheet of paper into my hands and backed away, his eyes on the rotor blades, which dipped lower as they slowly wound down. I watched him circle at a respectful distance and walk toward Drake’s aircraft with a similar list in hand.
    I pulled gently at the rotor brake and locked down my controls. Stepping out of the aircraft, I looked around at the rig. Everything appeared to be business as usual. No malevolent stares, no brandishing of weapons. None of the crew seemed to give us a second glance. So, was this a non-union rig or had these guys not yet received the word that they were at war with us?
    Nevertheless, Drake and I took turns stepping inside for bathroom breaks while the other stayed outside, puttering around nonchalantly but keeping vigilant. Finally, our returnees were ready and we loaded up for the return trip. We had two more of these crew changes to do today, ferrying men from shore to the rigs and those coming off their shifts back home. A certain number of men rotated in and out each day, to keep continuity, but there were a couple of days of the week when the traffic was extra heavy and required both our aircraft.
    Platform 11 proved equally unthreatening when we landed there in the early afternoon and Platform 6, for once, was quiet too. “Maybe all the troublemakers are on the same shift,” I said to Drake back at the airport after we’d made the last run about five o’clock. “Think they all managed the same days off this week?”
    “Could be. It was peaceful today, anyway.” He supervised the placement of the portable tug under the skids on the Astar, and Fergus, the hangar attendant, slowly backed his machine through the huge doors, guiding the delicate aircraft to its bed for the night.
    Inside the Air-Sea offices there was one message on the answering machine. Drake pressed the button to retrieve it. Static fuzzed through the little speaker for several seconds before anyone spoke.
    “Give up,” a deep voice said. “Stay off the oil rigs.”
    My thoughts went immediately to the stocky crew chief, whose deep gravelly voice had been one of his most noticeable features. “Say something more,” I whispered. Drake and I both bent closer to the machine, but the recording had clicked off.
    “Well, I guess we know what that was about,” Drake said.
    “I just wonder who made the call.”
    “Voice makes me think of that guy today.”
    “My thought exactly.” I twiddled a pencil between my