16
CIVIL WAR POSTPONED
The moaner went on for thirty seconds, like a banshee mourning itsnearest and dearest. It was everywhere, Main City Level and the fourlevels below. What we have in Port Sandor is a volunteer fireorganization--or disorganization, rather--of six independentcompanies, each of which cherishes enmity for all the rest. It's thebest we can do, though; if we depended on the city government, we'dhave no fire protection at all. They do have a central alarm system,though, and the _Times_ is connected with that.
Then the moaner stopped, and there were four deep whistle blasts forFourth Ward, and four more shrill ones for Bottom Level. There was aninstant's silence, and then a bedlam of shouts from the hunter-boatcaptains. That was where the tallow-wax that was being held out fromthe Co-operative was stored.
"Shut up!" Dad roared, the loudest I'd ever heard him speak. "Shut upand listen!"
"Fourth Ward, Bottom Level," a voice from the fire-alarm speaker said."This is a tallow-wax fire. It is not the Co-op wax; it is wax storedin an otherwise disused area. It is dangerously close to stored 50-mmcannon ammunition, and it is directly under the pulpwood lumber plant,on the Third Level Down, and if the fire spreads up to that, it willendanger some of the growing vats at the carniculture plant on theSecond Level Down. I repeat, this is a tallow-wax fire. Do not usewater or chemical extinguishers."
About half of the Vigilantes, businessmen who belonged to one oranother of the volunteer companies had bugged out for their firestations already. The Buddhist priest and a couple of doctors werealso leaving. The rest, mostly hunter-ship men, were standing aroundlooking at one another.
Oscar Fujisawa gave a sour laugh. "That diversion idea of mine was allright," he said. "The only trouble was that Steve Ravick thought of itfirst."
"You think he started the fire?" Dad began, and then gave a sourerlaugh than Oscar's. "Am I dumb enough to ask that?"
I had started assembling equipment as soon as the feint on theMunicipal Building and the attack on Hunters' Hall had gotten into thediscussion stage. I would use a jeep that had a heavy-duty audiovisualrecording and transmitting outfit on it, and for situations where I'dhave to leave the jeep and go on foot, I had a lighter outfit like theone Oscar had brought with him in the Pequod's boat. Then I had myradio for two-way conversation with the office. And, because thiswasn't likely to be the sort of war in which the rights ofnoncombatants like war correspondents would be taken very seriously,I had gotten out my Sterberg 7.7-mm.
Dad saw me buckling it on, and seemed rather distressed.
"Better leave that, Walt," he said. "You don't want to get into anyshooting."
Logical, I thought. If you aren't prepared for something, it justwon't happen. There's an awful lot of that sort of thinking going on.As I remember my Old Terran history, it was even indulged in bygovernments, at one time. None of them exists now.
"You know what all crawls into the Bottom Level," I reminded him. "Ifyou don't, ask Mr. Murell, here. One sent him to the hospital."
Dad nodded; I had a point there. The abandoned sections of BottomLevel are full of tread-snails and other assorted little nasties, andthe heat of the fire would stir them all up and start them movingaround. Even aside from the possibility that, having started the fire,Steve Ravick's gang would try to take steps to keep it from being putout too soon, a gun was going to be a comforting companion, downthere.
"Well, stay out of any fighting. Your job's to get the news, not playhero in gun fights. I'm no hero; that's why I'm sixty years old. Inever knew many heroes that got that old."
It was my turn to nod. On that, Dad had a point. I said somethingabout getting the news, not making it, and checked the chamber andmagazine of the Sterberg, and then slung my radio and picked up theaudiovisual outfit.
Tom and Joe Kivelson had left already, to round up the scatteredJavelin crew for fire fighting. The attack on the Municipal Buildingand on Hunters' Hall had been postponed, but it wasn't going to beabandoned. Oscar and Professor Hartzenbosch and Dad and a couple ofothers were planning some sort of an observation force of a few menfor each place, until the fire had been gotten out or under control.Glenn Murell decided he'd go out with me, at least as far as the fire,so we went down to the vehicle port and got the jeep out. Main CityLevel Broadway was almost deserted; everybody had gone down belowwhere the excitement was. We started down the nearest vehicle shaftand immediately got into a jam, above a lot of stuff that was goinginto the shaft from the First Level Down, mostly manipulators and thatsort of thing. There were no police around, natch, and a lot ofvolunteers were trying to direct traffic and getting in each other'sway. I got some views with the jeep camera, just to remind any of thepublic who needed reminding what our city administration wasn't doingin an emergency. A couple of pieces of apparatus, a chemical tank anda pumper marked SALAMANDER VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY NO. 3 came along,veered out of the jam, and continued uptown.
"If they know another way down, maybe we'd better follow them," Murellsuggested.
"They're not going down. They're going to the lumber plant, in casethe fire spreads upward," I said. "They wouldn't be taking that sortof equipment to a wax fire."
"Why not?"
I looked at him. "I thought you were in the wax business," I said.
"I am, but I'm no chemist. I don't know anything about how wax burns.All I know is what it's used for, roughly, and who's in the market forit."
"Well, you know about those jumbo molecules, don't you?" I asked."They have everything but the kitchen sink in them, including enoughoxygen to sustain combustion even under water or in a vacuum. Notenough oxygen to make wax explode, like powder, but enough to keep itburning. Chemical extinguishers are all smothering agents, and youjust can't smother a wax fire. And water's worse than useless."
He wanted to know why.
"Burning wax is a liquid. The melting point is around 250 degreesCentigrade. Wax ignites at 750. It has no boiling point, unless that'sthe burning point. Throw water on a wax fire and you get a steamexplosion, just as you would if you threw it on molten metal, and thatthrows the fire around and spreads it."
"If it melts that far below the ignition point, wouldn't it run awaybefore it caught fire?"
"Normally, it would. That's why I'm sure this fire was a touch-off. Ithink somebody planted a thermoconcentrate bomb. A thermoconcentrateflame is around 850 Centigrade; the wax would start melting andburning almost instantaneously. In any case, the fire will be at thebottom of the stacks. If it started there, melted wax would run downfrom above and keep the fire going, and if it started at the top,burning wax would run down and ignite what's below."
"Well, how in blazes do you put a wax fire out?" he wanted to know.
"You don't. You just pull away all the wax that hasn't caught fireyet, and then try to scatter the fire and let it burn itself out....Here's our chance!"
All this conversation we had been screaming into each other's ears, inthe midst of a pandemonium of yelling, cursing, siren howling and bellclanging; just then I saw a hole in the vertical traffic jam and edgedthe jeep into it, at the same time remembering that the jeep carried,and I was entitled to use, a fire siren. I added its howls to thegeneral uproar and dropped down one level. Here a string of bigmanipulators were trying to get in from below, sprouting claw hooksand grapples and pusher arms in all directions. I made my sirenimitate a tail-tramped tomcat a couple of times, and got in amongthem.
Bottom Level Broadway was a frightful mess, and I realized that we hadcome down right between two units of the city power plant, bigmass-energy converters. The street was narrower than above, and ranfor a thousand yards between ceiling-high walls, and everything wasbottlenecked together. I took the jeep up till we were almost scrapingthe ceiling, and Murell, who had seen how the audiovisual was used,took over with it while I concentrated on inching forward. The noisewas even worse down here than it had been above; we didn't attempt totalk.
Finally, by impudence and plain foolhardiness, I got the jeep forw
arda few hundred yards, and found myself looking down on a big derrickwith a fifty-foot steel boom tipped with a four-clawed grapple,shielded in front with sheet steel like a gun shield. It was paintedwith the emblem of the Hunters' Co-operative, but the three men on itlooked like shipyard workers. I didn't get that, at all. The thing hadbeen built to handle burning wax, and was one of three kept on theSecond Level Down under Hunters' Hall. I wondered if Bish Ware hadfound a way for a gang to get in at the bottom of Hunters' Hall. Isimply couldn't see Steve Ravick releasing equipment to fight the firehis goons had started for him in the first place.
I let down a few feet, gave a polite little scream with my siren, andthen yelled down to the men on it:
"Where'd that thing come from?"
"Hunters' Hall; Steve Ravick sent it. The other two are up at the firealready, and if this mess ahead doesn't get straightened out...." Fromthere on, his remarks were not suitable for publication in a familyjournal like the _Times_.
I looked up ahead, rising to the ceiling again, and saw what was thematter. It was one of the dredgers from the waterfront, really asubmarine scoop shovel, that they used to keep the pools and the innerchannel from sanding up. I wasn't surprised it was jammed; I couldn'tsee how they'd gotten this far uptown with it. I got a few shots ofthat, and then unhooked the handphone of my radio. Julio Kubanoffanswered.
"You getting everything I'm sending in?" I asked.
"Yes. What's that two-em-dashed thing up ahead, one of the harbordredgers?"
"That's right. Hey, look at this, once." I turned the audiovisual downon the claw derrick. "The men on it look like Rodriguez &Oughourlian's people, but they say Steve Ravick sent it. What do youknow about it?"
"Hey, Ralph! What's this Walt's picked up about Ravick sendingequipment to fight the fire?" he yelled.
Dad came over, and nodded. "It wasn't Ravick, it was Mort Hallstock.He commandeered the Co-op equipment and sent it up," he said. "Hecalled me and wanted to know whom to send for it that Ravick's gangwouldn't start shooting at right away. Casmir Oughourlian sent some ofhis men."
Up front, something seemed to have given way. The dredger wentlurching forward, and everything moved off after it.
"I get it," I said. "Hallstock's getting ready to dump Ravick out theairlock. He sees, now, that Ravick's a dead turkey; he doesn't want togo into the oven along with him."
"Walt, can't you ever give anybody credit with trying to do somethingdecent, once in a while?" Dad asked.
"Sure I can. Decent people. There are a lot of them around, but MortHallstock isn't one of them. There was an Old Terran politician namedAl Smith, once. He had a little saying he used in that kind of case:'Let's look at the record.'"
"Well, Mort's record isn't very impressive, I'll give you that," Dadadmitted. "I understand Mort's up at the fire now. Don't spit in hiseye if you run into him."
"I won't," I promised. "I'm kind of particular where I spit."
Things must be looking pretty rough around Municipal Building, Ithought. Maybe Mort's afraid the people will start running Fenrisagain, after this. He might even be afraid there'd be an election.
By this time, I'd gotten the jeep around the dredger--we'd come to theend of the nuclear-power plant buildings--and cut off into opencountry. That is to say, nothing but pillar-buildings two hundredyards apart and piles of bagged mineral nutrients for the hydroponicfarms. We could see a blaze of electric lights ahead where the firemust be, and after a while we began to run into lorries andlifter-skids hauling ammunition away from the area. Then I could see abig mushroom of greasy black smoke spreading out close to the ceiling.The electric lights were brighter ahead, and there was a confused roarof voices and sirens and machines.
And there was a stink.
There are a lot of stinks around Port Sandor, though the ventilationsystem carries most of them off before they can spread out of theirown areas. The plant that reprocesses sewage to get organic nutrientsfor the hydroponic farms, and the plant that digests hydroponicvegetation to make nutrients for the carniculture vats. Thecarniculture vats themselves aren't any flower gardens. And the pulpplant where our synthetic lumber is made. But the worst stink there ison Fenris is a tallow-wax fire. Fortunately, they don't happen often.