The sharp salt breeze blew steadily over a glittering azure sea, catching the billowing orange flames of the Devil's head roaring on the flare stack high above, drawing feathering streamers of fire and black curling smoke across the heated sky and up into a moody, purple vault. All around in the shimmering haze two, maybe three miles and a radio signal apart, similar columns of fire belched and burned and rose into the air of a late Autumn morning. Drifting with the lazy blue swell the distant clang of metal, the thud of pile-drivers, the hollow Tannoy voices insisting and swirling and echoing over the watery top of the world.

The giant oil platform trembled as the Ruston generators blue-puffed end barked and roared into life, lurched as the red-ochre, spinning drill-string reached stealthily for the sea bed and took the first diamond-toothed bite of the day. Screeched as the towering Manitowocs fired and swirled and spiralled their claws into the Orwellian depths, whined as the casings scraped from the pipe-deck and lumbered and lifted and climbed up the derrick, grumbled and fretted end fussed into yet another day of pig-launching and perforation and gas-sweetening and water injection and mud-logging and bombing and maybe even, maybe by teatime, a little black, black oil.

Dave Seaton leaned over the rainbow-painted rails of the skid deck, deep in thought. No matter how much he hated the damn job, the weeks away from home and civilisation and life, the North Sea, like some great steel end salt water magnet, had always drawn him back. The vast blue curve of the horizon, dotted with isolated blazing iron townships, sailed by fantastic steel monsters, its skies alive with clattering, multi-coloured metal dragonflies, had never failed to frighten and fascinate him.

The sunrises, the sunsets, the nights. The nights ... shooting stars blazing dawn from the canopy of the heavens, cascading through the Aurora Borealis into cloud formations glowing with burning gas, the twinkling silver lights, the hissing columns of fire criss-crossing the dark waters like some ancient Aztec ritual of flame and ebony and glass, the night air whispering with the moans and machinery and strivings of yet another century.

He held on to his hard hat and squinted over the side. Far below, wallowing heavily red and white in the swell, its thrusters foaming, the diving ship Star Canopus. The bell was already down, the saturation divers flippering and muttering and drifting their cold, murky way through the depths. Donald Duck and decoders and hot water umbilical and no Mum on the phone. Bugger that for a laugh, thought Dave, shivering as he turned from the rail. He took off his gloves, stretched and executed a little jig before climbing the iron stairway and slipping through the airlock into the recreation room. Today, home, however humble and temporary home might be.

The room was packed, alive with excited, relieved voices. His grubby, oil-stained, boiler-suited crewmates, two weeks of hard graft over, had changed into leather - and - denim peacocks glittering in gold and Rolex and Henri Lloyd and, reeking of a myriad duty-free and suspect aftershaves, were already planning that night's assault on the bars of Aberdeen and the world. At the snooker tables the resident hustlers, the poker faces wrapped in Raybans and alert to the carefree mood, were playing their last sober and retribution-free game for a fortnight.

"Guess that's four hundred dollars, man," drawled the Texan toolpusher, chalking his cue and his kill and staring absently through the porthole.

"Ah, right," said Big John, the deck foreman, watching crest-fallen as a large chunk of his leave flapped away on tiny but determined wings. Big John, six foot four and eighteen stone, tangle-bearded and hair down to his ass, a veritable ... a veritable big soft puppy of a man, magnet to every dockside floosie and fisherman's wife and ageing disco queen in Aberdeen and happily and hopefully supporting them all.

And Eddie the night cook, a wiry bearded Cornishman who snorted the nights away from a little something lined up amongst the drifts of flour, and who once inadvertently rolled the whole lot up into pasties and gave the bears the best picnic they'd ever had ...

Or the Dolly Sisters, two inseparable cabin boys ... he a grim-faced ex-Marine in his forties, she a callow acne-cursed youth of nineteen, caught flagrante delicto indulging in a spot of S&M in the well-equipped rigging loft, and the hoot of the North Sea for volunteering for the time-honoured punishment of ten lashes.

And feeding the tropical fish his latest concoction Donald from Skye, the lab technician, a wizard of strange smells and bubbling brews, credited with the invention of a completely new psychedelic mind-bender entirely from oil samples, it taking the entire deck crew and scaffolding team twelve hours to get him down and share his secret with mankind ...

Clustered around the flickering video screen a motley group of bears roared and whistled their approval as the stars of the latest educational offering from Denmark went through their paces.

"Wildlife on One," grinned a giant roughneck, shouldering his way to the front seats amid howls of protest. The Tannoy crackled into life, stilling the babble.

"Flight Four for the beach. Up to Admin. Right now." Loud whoops. A clatter of plastic cups and ashtrays, a good-natured jostling at the door and in seconds the room had emptied.

Dave wandered to the porthole. In the distance a speck in the sky. Closer, slipping left to right in the haze, the speck dissolved into colours ... red, blue, white. The air began to vibrate as the machine whirled closer, the gulls scattering in alarm, the waves flattening in wide circles, until the great red underbelly of the Chinook hung almost motionless above, twin rotors stroboscopic against the sky, landing lights ablaze. He caught a glimpse of a bearded face at the cockpit window, then the giant craft edged forward and out of sight above him.

The platform thundered and shook as he zipped up his survival suit. The usual struggle with the cowboy boots. This time he gave up and padded to the door in his socks, flight bag in one hand, boots in the other. The Tannoy crackled again.

"Seaton, if ye don't get yer arse up here, ye'll no see Aberdeen the night," came the rich North East brogue. Then, after a pause, "Ah'm tellin' ya!"

Dave stubbed out his cigarette, flip-flopped up the stairs, grabbed the POB ticket from the grinning crewman and stepped outside. The helideck crew, struggling under the gale of the rotors, impatiently waved him on and he ran forward over the safety nets, dropped his bag by the hatch and clambered into the rear of the roaring machine. He turned, safe.

"See you in a fortnight, Kenny."

His words were lost in the wind, but the crewman lifted a gloved thumb and smiled before closing the hatch. He had barely tied on his life-jacket and strapped himself in when the craft roared, then lifted shuddering into the sky until, turning slowly in a crackle of radio bursts, it began to tilt and edge forwards. Within seconds the platform had spiralled far below and the Chinook was heading its blue, sunlit course for the mainland.