Chapter Ten
Pressure Stages
I sprinted all the way over to Putter's in under ten minutes. I arrived at the front door of the café drenched in sweat. It was a balmy evening, as the real heat of the summer was starting to set in. The restaurant portion of the café was almost deserted, but the bar was humming with activity, as Worker B's and Worker C's from The Shop mixed for an after-work drink.
I spotted Fluky at the bar, talking to a young line seamstress dressed in coveralls. He was drinking draft Frau from a glass and evidently being very charming to the girl. I pushed hurriedly through the crowd that choked the floor of Putter's Café bar and came up behind him.
“Fluky,” I said, resting a hand on one of his shoulders. With the other I was taking the four-boxed form out of my back pocket.
“...And I says to this guy, I says-”
“Fluky!” I said louder, pulling him around. He came about, shot me a dirty look, then bodily shook me free from his shoulder.
“So I says-”
“Fluky, this is important,” I interrupted again. This time the young seamstress shot me the dirty look and Fluky turned fully to face me.
Murder was in his eyes, “Are you deranged?” he asked.
“Look at this,” I ignored him, opening up the folded paper. I moved a few glasses on the bar and began to spread out my schematic.
“Later, Beanie,” he said, turning back to the girl.
“No, now!” I grabbed the scruff of his oily, plaid shirt. He grabbed my hand and for a second we wrestled. By the time he'd gotten my hand removed from his person, the girl had faded back into the crowd.
“Shee-it!” Fluky spun around to me. In one swift motion he had my arm behind my back and was twisting it painfully. Again, Fluky was remarkably strong for his size. Fast too.
“Ouch! Shit!” I cried as I felt the tendons in my arms ripping.
“I'll snap your arm off, I swear to God,” Fluky hissed. But his grip slacked and he eventually released my arm. His point made, he reached to the bar and picked up his beer. The schematic was still spread out on the bar. He paused to look down at it. “What the fuckin' shit is this?” he said, squinting in the poor light of Putter's bar.
“Our engine,” I said triumphantly – well, as triumphantly as I could mange rubbing out the soreness in my arm.
“Our what?” was all Fluky could manage.
“Engine.”
“Yeah, that's what I thought you said...” he looked again at the diagram, not making head or tails of it. “This is what you had to show me? Right this minute? Are you as re-tartared as Mitty?”
“No, you don't understand-” I began.
“No, I don't,” Fluky interrupted, pulling himself up on his toes, looking around for the girl.
“This is the engine that will get us to the Big City,” I continued.
“Uh-huh.”
“With as many as fifty crates of boots...”
“Yeah,” he took a sip from his beer but wasn't listening.
“It's a four-stroke, tandem compound, dual-stage piston steam-”
“Yeah,” Fluky interrupted. He'd spotted the girl. “It looks great. Why don't you show it to Mitty?”
“No!” I exclaimed, loud enough to get most of the bar's attention. I grabbed Fluky's shirt again with my sore arm, risking getting it broken off. I pulled his face close to mine and said in a hushed tone: “It's a steam engine, Fluky, but it uses hydrogen peroxide as fuel.”
Fluky just looked at me in incomprehension.
“Like they use-” I realized I was still speaking too loudly. Our little wrestling match had stalled conversations all around us. I lowered my voice to almost a whisper, “Like they use at The Shop to bleach hemp. Thousands and thousands of gallons of it. Just sitting there. This engine right here,” I said, jabbing a finger down onto the schematic on the bar. “Runs on that. hydrogen peroxide. With no carbon emissions.”
Realization dawned on Fluky's face.
“You're shittin' me.” He smiled, returning his attention to the piece of paper on the bar.
“No,” I said eagerly. Conversations around us were starting up again. I pointed out the pictograph on the schematic that represented the fuel tank, “Hydrogen peroxide. H2O2. When introduced to a catalyst,” I traced a finger to the first chamber connected to the fuel tank. “Here. It produces water, oxygen and plenty of heat. Enough, in fact, to turn the water into steam.” My finger moved over the first of the pair of pistons, “Driving the high pressure stage.” Then the second, “And then the low pressure one. Notice they're in opposition. Here's a camshaft, very much like an internal combustion engine, but here there are two power strokes, forward and back, then...”
“Wait a minute,” Fluky interrupted, turning away from the bar. “You really think you can build this?”
“No,” I answered, “I think you can.”
Fluky nodded, took a sip of his beer, and returned his attention to the drawing.
I continued, “Then the down stroke of the high pressure stage is the exhaust stroke for the lower pressure stage, then the values change thusly,” I pointed to a few spots on the diagram, “and the final stroke of the low pressure stage is pulling fuel into the catalyzing chamber via the vacuum created. The peroxide reacts with the catalyst, creating pressure, and the whole process begins again.”
Fluky was quiet for a long time, studying the drawing. He finished off his beer and, when the barmaid came by, ordered another. I ordered one too.
With his fresh beer, Fluky looked up from the schematic and said to me: “I don't get it.”
“It's an engine, Fluky,” I said with frustration, starting my monologue all over again.
“No, no, I get that,” Fluky conceded. “But this here thing is going to get us over the mountains? Without diesel? Without coal?”
“Yes.”
Fluky shook his head – not in disagreement, but it disbelief, “But carbon...”
“It doesn't produce carbon, Fluky. Just water and oxygen. That's the chemical reaction: H2O2 to H2O and O2. Get it? No carbon. No carbon in, no carbon out.”
“Hell...” Fluky scratched his head under his hat.
I was staring at him, staring at him hard. God, Fluky understand what I am saying, I thought. Please understand. If I can't explain it to you, then you can't build it. I just didn't have the mechanical expertise. An engine like I was planning, like the one I had down on paper, would require a first-class welder to construct. And there was only one person in town with the talent or equipment to weld anything, and that was Fluky. Please, Fluky, please understand...
“And you say this hydrogen pryrockside...”
“Peroxide,” I corrected.
“Is just goin' spare, up there at The Shop?”
“Thousands of gallons of it,” I embellished.
“Then why don't the Concession run their trains off the stuff? If it's so plentiful?”
I laughed, folding my schematic back in halves, “Well, it's basically rocket fuel...”
“It's what?!” Fluky almost screamed, jumping to his feet.
“Rocket fuel. In the concentrations we'd need to us it. During the war, the Nazis used it to fuel their V2 rockets. Ask Mitty.”
“You wanta build a rocket-powered train?!” Fluky yelled, overcome with disbelief.
“Not rocket powered, steam powered.” I began to unfold the four-boxed form again.
“Ah!” Fluky let out a sigh of disgust. “You had me for a second, you son-of-a-bitch!” He slammed his beer down on the bar, threw up his hands and stormed off across the crowded barroom floor.
“Fluky?” I called after. “Fluky?” I hurriedly took a large gulp of my beer and returned my schematic to my pocket. I pushed through the crowd, trying to keep pace with Fluky. I lost sight of him as he cut across the restaurant and out the front door.
“Fluky!” I yelled as I broke out into the early evening air. Fluky was already beside his truck, the only vehicle in the parking lot, opening t
he door. “Wait up!” I hollered. “What's wrong?”
“You're just as bad as the tartarhead! You and Mitty, you make a fine pair,” He said through gritted teeth, over the driver's door.
“What?” I had legitimately missed the cause of his sudden anger.
“Rocket-powered trains,” he said fumbling with his keys and the ignition. “You know, for a minute there, I was thinkin' we might actually be able to get this sucker off the ground. Then you show me that dingus,” he pointed dismissively at my pocket, “and I'm right back down on the ground. Lower than the ground.” He hit the starter and the truck grumbled to life. He continued, yelling over the idling engine, “You're just as bad as that dummy, with his maps and his battles of Izpegi Passes!” he bellowed. He said something that was drowned out by the revving engine. “Pig in poke!” I understood as he slammed the truck in gear, rooster tailing in the gravel of the old, unused parking lot, accelerating back on to Main Street.