In this, Volume I of
The Golden Lane Trilogy
, we begin the career of Clive Colin O'Reith, International Oil man. He is haunted by a dream that recurs. This is the dream: In the night, O'Reith dreamed again that Holly No.1 burned out of control. The billowing flames, roiling and angry, drove the doomed derrick man ever higher into the skeletal structure of the steel derrick. Like a man mesmerized, rigid and unable to move, he watched the frantic silhouette stiffen and quiver.
For a moment the smoking man flailed helplessly in the incandescent air. Then he pitched forward like an awkward diver, cart wheeling into first one, then another, of the glowing gifts. Finally he plummeted, head first, into the inferno.