Chapter Fifteen
High Test
The prototype of my engine was ready for its initial test about the time I learned that I was to become an uncle. Fluky called that evening to tell me that the last of the welds looked good. This left me with only two remaining obstacles to hurdle before my engine could run: Acquiring metal for the catalyst and a sufficient quantity of fuel.
The expansion chamber of our hydrogen peroxide driven engine would require a small, but not insignificant, amount of silver. Formed into a mesh, this would catalyze the peroxide, stripping off the extra oxygen, producing water and oxygen along with a whole hell of a lot of heat. Finding a source for silver presented a problem. Luxury items that might have once been manufactured from silver had long ago vanished from the shelves of the Concession Store. They were, after all, unnecessary extravagances for people who were going short on essentials – food, clothing, boots – but they had not totally vanished from the top shelves and the back corners of the closets of America.
It occurred to me that I had access to quite a substantial source of high-grade silver. In the china hutch, in the dining room of my father's home. My mother's silver was still there, untouched for over a decade. The stuff she only ever pulled out for special occasions – Christmas, Easter. My father never used it; he didn't entertain. It was my mother's pride and joy. It had been my mother's mother's. Or my mother's mother's mother's – something like that. It had to be a century old if it was a day, made back when people still ate off china with solid silver flatware. I remember it being quite beautiful, the last time my mother had set the table for guests.
I had a small pang of conscience surreptitiously breaking into the china hutch. My mother had loved that silver so. When things had started to get tough, after the war, it had been her only luxury; a reminder of better times and a world that was now lost to the fog of memory. I wasn't going to need much. A knife and a fork would be plenty. I stole a whole place setting so it wouldn't look so suspicious. There were still seven more, but if my mother had still been alive... well, then I'd never have touched it. But she wasn't, and I did. Perhaps she was looking down from wherever she was and shaking her head in disgust. But then again, perhaps she was smiling.
If we succeeded with Mitty's Plan, if I was able to freight boots across the mountains and came back with enough cash to buy Boot Hill twice over, wouldn't that stand as a better memorial to my mother than an old box of silver hidden away in the back of a china hutch?
I was rationalizing, I know. But still...
The fuel was a slightly trickier problem. Hydrogen peroxide I could find in spades. The Shop was drowning in the stuff. Large, mega-gauge sized tanks sat stored in the freight yard of the factory; vats of the stuff sat stenching up the processing annex. Late one evening, Fluky, Mitty and I drove up to The Shop in the wrecking truck, hopped the fence, and helped ourselves to a number of old, cracked mason jugs full.
But the peroxide used at the factory, I estimated, was only ten to thirty percent in concentration. That would be of no use to us. Hydrogen peroxide as fuel would need to be eighty to ninety percent pure. HTP. High Test Peroxide. That was rocket fuel, the stuff that Nazis had used for their V2 rockets – the rockets the Germans gave to the Japanese, with their foothold on the Baja, to rain down on San Diego and Los Angeles. The act of war that would eventually provoke Truman into the nuclear carpet bombing of the Japanese Islands, effectively wiping them off the map.
It would be simple enough to purify the peroxide through distillation. Water boils at 212 degrees, where hydrogen peroxide boils at 300. It'd be like making moonshine in reverse. But hydrogen peroxide vapor is highly combustible, so Fluky and I set about constructing a vacuum distillation rig. If we could lower the pressure enough, the peroxide would boil without requiring much heat.
Old Man Zimmerman had an electric air compressor in his shop. We salvaged a length of copper piping to use as a condenser and we set one of the old mason jugs on a hot plate to warm slowly. With water pumping through the condenser and the air compressor sucking, we started to get water out of a spigot at one end of our contraption. The process was slow, but we were getting good results. We kept boiling our mason jug slowly, running the compressor and periodically testing the pH of the mixture. When it got really acidic, below a pH of 3, we called it good.
What the actual concentration of our eventual product was, I could only guess: Pushing ninety percent, at least. It sure stank to high heaven. We corked it up and went about melting down the silver knife and fork and pouring them into a crude mold we had fashioned, approximating the size and shape of a grill. It was rough, looking like something that a five-year-old had made in Kindergarten, but that was of no consequence. All it needed to do was react violently with hydrogen peroxide. Looks were the last thing we were concerned with.
As the week-long holiday celebrating the Fourth of July approached, we started making plans for a test run of my high test engine. We had, early on, decided it best to wheel the prototype out of Zimmerman's yard and over to Pottersville for the actual test. We planned to take every safety precaution. Fluky wanted to rig up the prototype to a freight car and test the engine in a practical scenario, but I quickly kiboshed the idea. We just needed to test the engine – test its ability to turn chemical energy into mechanical. Its ability to produce power, we could test later.
Besides, running the engine on a track would have required an operator, to start and stop the engine, and I didn't want anyone within a hundred yards of the prototype when it first ran. HTP was powerful stuff. If man ever went into space, like in the picture shows, he'd do it in rockets powered by HTP. If anything went wrong... We were all going to be a long way away when my engine took its first breath of life.
Our physical remoteness to the actual test presented itself as a whole new, different technical hurdle. If we couldn't start and stop the engine manually, just how were we going to get the thing to run? Fluky, true to form, came up with a simple and elegant solution: We'd test run the engine for thirty seconds, about the length of time it took a bedside alarm clock to wind down its spring. We would simply set the alarm clock to ring at a predetermined time, enough time to allow us to escape to a safe distance and observe. Then when the clock started ringing it'd pull a switch with its hammer, completing a circuit, opening a solenoid fuel valve. As the clock ran, it would wind up a string around its key, shortening it, until the string pulled another switch, breaking the circuit, shutting off the valve.
It was an insane, Rube Goldberg sort of jury rig, but in a dry run using a light bulb instead of a solenoid, it worked perfectly.
We spent the Fourth of July watching the fireworks and getting drunk. The next day we nursed our hangovers. By July 6 we were prepared for our test. We hitched the rolling cart to the back of the wrecking truck onto which Fluky had mounted my engine, and we started the truck up, heading out for Pottersville. We got an early start, before 8:00 according to Barry's watch, and we saw barely a soul as we drove through town. It was a holiday morning and no one but us had a reason to be out of bed so early. The heat of the day was already starting in and it was going to be a warm one, I could already tell.
Luckily, Fluky had saved a case of beer from our Fourth of July celebrations, so we'd be well oiled for a day of toil. Mitty and Fluky had already cracked open a couple of cartons as the old wrecking truck smoked up the hill towards Pottersville. I refrained. My drinking had dropped significantly since we'd begun work on the engine – there just hadn't been enough time. Mitty's Plan had that going for it, if nothing else.
We had chosen the Pottersville Town Park for the site of our experiment. It sat directly in the center of town and was the largest expanse of space available to us without driving out into the scrub. Most of the park had gone to seed and become overwhelmed by brambles and desert grass, but the center still boasted a large flagstone square, dominated by a statue of Mr. Potter, the town's founder – a name otherwise lost to history.
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nbsp; We set my prototype engine there, next to Mr. Potter, wheeling the engine in from the street on its cart, taking the strength of all three of us to move it. We were hot and exhausted by the time we had the contraption in place and paused for a Frau for each of us. When our drinks were done, we set about wiring up our test run.
The HTP we left in the mason jug, raised up above the level of the engine, letting the fuel naturally siphon down into the engine. We attached a large wooden fly wheel to the crankshaft, on which Mitty had painted a bright red circle off center. The logic was that from fifty yards away we'd be better able to estimate the RPMs of our engine watching the big dot spin than simply listening to the engine purr. Fluky busied himself setting up the strings and springs of his Rube Goldberg timer, gesticulating away like some mad puppeteer.
Once Fluky had indicated all was ready, I checked over the engine one last time, wiggling the manifold and tubes to make sure everything felt solid. Satisfied, I told Fluky to set the time. Barry's watch told me it was 8:47 in the a.m. I told Fluky to set the alarm for 8:50 exactly. When he'd done so, all three of us rapidly sprinted tangentially away from the engine like it was a ticking bomb. We only returned momentarily to recover the case of beer.
By 8:48, we were standing by the iron railings of the park, looking back at the silent, still nest of tubes, strings and wires that constituted our engine. Fluky handed out the Fraus and we all popped the corners.
“So, if this sucker works,” Fluky began, “what's the next step? Strap it to the rolling stock?”
“Yeah, I guess...” I was watching the engine intensely, not really listening. If I'd been a praying man, I'd have been spending those last moments begging God for a little providence.
“Well, once that dingus is bolted on, I get to drive it, okay?” Fluky said.
I looked at my watch: 8:49. “What?”
“For the first test run, I wanta drive it.”
“Drive it?” I didn't understand. “It's a train, Fluky. The tracks drive it.”
“I know. Still... handle on the throttle and all. I always wanted to drive a train.”
“There's going to be more than enough chances to play engineer, Fluky, when we're making our ascent.”
“Still... First time. I think it should be me. Hell, I've earned it.”
“Sure, sure, whatever.”
“Will there be a whistle?” Mitty asked. He was watching the prototype as intently as I was. “I think there should be a whistle.”
We stood there in silence, collectively holding our breaths. Any second now...
“A whistle?” I suddenly realized. “What a damn fool-”
Then the alarm sounded.
The ringing echoed through the empty streets of Pottersville. It was a haunting, eerie sound, bouncing back on itself. For a second I thought Fluky's timer had failed us, for the engine just sat there inertly. Then there was a hiss of steam as some seal pressurized, then that large wooden wheel began to move. It mostly jiggled at first, not really turning, but then the red dot started to move. It began to turn clockwise, slowly building its speed. One revolution, then two. I let out my breath and laughed out loud. Fluky slapped me on the back and Mitty put and arm around my neck.
Two revolutions became three, then four, five and then the wheel was turning too fast to keep track of. Steam was pouring out of the exhaust and the whole contraption was rapidly vanishing in the cloud of white. The spinning wheel was creating a vortex, swirling the steam into a funnel. I glanced down at Barry's watch and saw that we were approaching ten seconds. Fluky and Mitty were jumping up and down next to me whooping in joy, when...
Boom.
The engine exploded. No, I can't say it was an explosion, as there were no flames, but the shock wave of the blast knocked the three of us back up against the iron railings. The prototype – or rather where the prototype had been – was enveloped in a mushroom cloud of steam.
I'm not kidding. As I pulled myself up off the flagstones, the explosion still ringing in my ears, I saw a genuine, authentic mushroom cloud rising up into the sky. Just like in the newsreels about the bombers over Japan.
Fluky and Mitty pulled themselves up to sitting positions next to me, groaning in pain. It looked like everyone was okay. Mr. Potter, however, considering his closer proximity to the explosion, lay on his side, smashed into pieces on the flagstones.
I shook my head and tried to pop my ears. I didn't know if the echo was in the streets or in my head, but I could still hear the explosion.
Shock turned to surprise and then turned to fear in the span of moments. We didn't pause to examine the wreckage of our prototype engine. We leapt to our feet, slipping on the flagstones, and sprinted for the wrecking truck. If the explosion had been as loud as it seemed – as the numbness in our ear attested to – and the mushroom cloud as vivid, then there was no doubt that the entire town of Boot Hill would have woken up to it. I could already feel the eyes peering down from the hillside, searching the ruins of Pottersville for the source of the explosion.
We were in the truck and moving before I'd had time to think. Fluky was heading back up the hill, toward Boot Hill on C Street. That was a bad idea. If anyone was coming from Boot Hill, they'd be coming down C, and we'd run right into them. I instructed Fluky to turn around and take the long way back to town, around the rise that split the two towns. We rumbled off into the scrub to vector into Boot Hill from a different angle.
When I'd had a chance to catch my breath and the ringing in my ears had started to fade, I realized that we'd left a whole lot of evidence behind us.
There was nothing we could do about it.
“What the hell happened?” Fluky finally asked, twenty minutes into our drive, when we were well out into the scrub, pulling back onto the highway.
I had nothing to say.
There were a thousand things that could have gone wrong. The engine had been a prototype, little more than a functioning mock up. A weld could have given, a hose could have broken, I could have been woefully inaccurate in my calculations. But later, I would come to learn that the most likely explanation was a BLEVE.
A Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. Basically, the engine didn't explode, the mason jug full of HTP did. And perhaps not for the reason one might think. In fact, the fragile nature of the mason jug might have been a blessing, allowing the engine to run as long as it did.
But, in all honestly, my design was particularly susceptible to this type of catastrophic failure. I still feel the basic design was sound, but the problem came in that final stroke, when the low pressure stage was used to pull fuel into the catalyzing chamber. This technique created a dangerous under pressure in the fuel tank. I had hoped to suck the fuel into the engine, eliminating the need for a fuel pump, but that low pressure stage instead acted on the fuel tank like our air compressor did in our vacuum distillater – lowering the pressure and the boiling point until the hydrogen peroxide evaporated. This created intense pressure in the fuel tank until the container ruptured and... boom.
If anything, the mason jug's inability to hold a tight seal acted as a release valve on this process. If I'd chosen a more substantial fuel tank – steel, for example – the pressure would have been many times greater at the point of rupture. Even fifty yards' distance between us and the explosion might not have been enough to save us.
We sneaked successfully back into town from almost exactly the opposite direction than Pottersville. Fluky, off on an early morning trip in his truck, was nothing unusual, and little was said about our absence at the time of the explosion.
But a lot of speculation abounded about the source of the bang and the subsequent steam cloud that could be seen from town. Many suspected that there'd been an accident at one of the nuclear reactors over in the tri-towns of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, but the cloud was south of the city, not west – in the wrong direction.
By and by, the town Deputy, Aesop, and his ancient white pony were sent over to Pottersvi
lle to investigate. He was in no rush to do so, being almost as ancient as his mount, but Aesop constituted the whole extent of the law in Boot Hill (apart from Fluky, there was very little need for any) and the task fell to him.
That evening, just before dark, he rode back into town and stopped in at Putter's. We happened to be at the bar, washing out our wounds with round after round of McTavish. The Deputy reported on the fallen statue, but could not rightly say what had caused the explosion. He found some shrapnel and deduced that it had been an unexploded Japanese bomb.
That was a good enough explanation for most everyone in town, and it gave them all plenty to talk about over the long Fourth of July week. It was a lucky break for us. If there had been anything even faintly recognizable left of our engine, or the town had sent anyone competent over to Pottersville to investigate, there might have been trouble.
But as it was, the testing of The Cordwainer's prototype engine, despite being a total and complete failure, drew very little extra attention to exactly what we were attempting to do in Old Man Zimmerman's garage.
We had been knocked down, but we weren't knocked out.
“What the hell we gonna do?” Fluky said, despondently, after we'd listen to Deputy Aesop's report to the whole of Putter's Bar. Everyone was chattering away and we were huddled up in a booth at the back, drinking our whiskey.
“Surely, this is a minor setback,” Mitty added cheerily.
“No,” I interrupted. “No, the more I think it over. The design... There was something systemic. A fatal flaw.” I didn't know about BLEVE at that time, but I suspected. My instincts were good.
“Then we're sunk,” Fluky pouted, finishing off his glass.
“No, we...” Mitty tried.
“All that work for nothin'. What a fuckin' waste. You two tartarheads. Getting me excited.”
“Yeah, I can't build us an engine,” I admitted into my glass.
“But, but-” Mitty stammered. The look on his face was like someone had told him Santa Claus wasn't real.
“And what am I gonna do with them five Stephenson gauge rail cars?” Fluky laughed, though he blatantly didn't think it was funny.
“Oh, we're going to use them,” I said.
“Huh?” Mitty perked up.
“What? Push 'em?” Fluky raised an eyebrow.
“I said I can't build us an engine,” I smiled. “But I think I know someone who can.”
“Who? What?” Fluky looked at Mitty like he might have answers. “Who?”
“Sophie,” I replied.
“Li'l Bean?!” Fluky exclaimed, with a look on his face halfway between surprise and lasciviousness. Fluky had always had an inappropriate fascination with my sister, ever since she'd blossomed at twelve and Fluky had developed an unhealthy fascination with girls. I guess she was attractive, in a librarian-takes-off-her-glasses-and-shakes-down-her-hair-and-suddenly-she's-Rita-Hayworth sort of way. But Fluky idolized her. Sophie, for her part, found Fluky a disgusting mess.
“What the deuce? Sophie?” Mitty added.
“Yeah,” I nodded, “Sophie. She can build us our engine.”
“Seriously?” Fluky raised an eyebrow. “Ain't she got a day job?”
“Not anymore. The Shop laid her off.”
“And you think she'll help us?”
“Yes, I think she will...” I replied. I think I knew my sister, knew what motivated her. A challenge like this, it was exactly the kind of thing she loved. Tell her something couldn't be done and she'd go out of her way to show you exactly how to do it. All I had to do was tell her I couldn't build an HTP powered engine and she'd be hooked.
Of course, if I'd known it was she who'd ultimately betray us, I never would have suggested getting her involved.