Four-Day Planet

by H. Beam Piper

  17

  TALLOW-WAX FIRE

  Now that we were out of the traffic jam, I could poke along and usethe camera myself. The wax was stacked in piles twenty feet high,which gave thirty feet of clear space above them, but the sectionwhere they had been piled was badly cut up by walls and full of smallextra columns to support the weight of the pulp plant above and thecarniculture vats on the level over that. However, the pilesthemselves weren't separated by any walls, and the fire could spreadto the whole stock of wax. There were more men and vehicles on the jobthan room for them to work. I passed over the heads of the crowdaround the edges and got onto a comparatively unobstructed side whereI could watch and get views of the fire fighters pulling down the bigskins of wax and loading them onto contragravity skids to be hauledaway. It still wasn't too hot to work unshielded, and they weren'tanywhere near the burning stacks, but the fire seemed to be spreadingrapidly. The dredger and the three shielded derricks hadn't gotteninto action yet.

  I circled around clockwise, dodging over, under and around the skidsand lorries hauling wax out of danger. They were taking them into thesection through which I had brought the jeep a few minutes before, andjust dumping them on top of the piles of mineral nutrients.

  The operation seemed to be directed from an improvised headquarters inthe area that had been cleared of ammunition. There were a couple ofview screens and a radio, operated by women. I saw one of the teachersI'd gone to school to a few years ago, and Joe Kivelson's wife, andOscar Fujisawa's current girl friend, and Sigurd Ngozori's secretary,and farther off there was an equally improvised coffee-and-sandwichstand. I grounded the jeep, and Murell and I got out and went over tothe headquarters. Joe Kivelson seemed to be in charge.

  I have, I believe, indicated here and there that Joe isn't one of ourmightier intellects. There are a lot of better heads, but Joe can berelied upon to keep his, no matter what is happening or how bad itgets. He was sitting on an empty box, his arm in a now-filthy sling,and one of Mohandas Feinberg's crooked black cigars in his mouth.Usually, Joe smokes a pipe, but a cigar's less bother for atemporarily one-armed man. Standing in front of him, like a schoolboyin front of the teacher, was Mayor Morton Hallstock.

  "But, Joe, they simply won't!" His Honor was wailing. "I did talk toMr. Fieschi; he says he knows this is an emergency, but there's astrict company directive against using the spaceport area for storageof anything but cargo that has either just come in or is being shippedout on the next ship."

  "What's this all about?" Murell asked.

  "Fieschi, at the spaceport, won't let us store this wax in thespaceport area," Joe said. "We got to get it stored somewhere; we needa lot of floor space to spread this fire out on, once we get into it.We have to knock the burning wax cylinders apart, and get themseparated enough so that burning wax won't run from one to another."

  "Well, why can't we store it in the spaceport area?" Murell wanted toknow. "It is going out on the next ship. I'm consigning it to ExoticOrganics, in Buenos Aires." He turned to Joe. "Are those skins allmarked to indicate who owns them?"

  "That's right. And any we gather up loose, from busted skins, we canfigure some way of settling how much anybody's entitled to from them."

  "All right. Get me a car and run me to the spaceport. Call them andtell them I'm on the way. I'll talk to Fieschi myself."

  "Martha!" Joe yelled to his wife. "Car and driver, quick. And thencall the spaceport for me; get Mr. Fieschi or Mr. Mansour on screen."

  Inside two minutes, a car came in and picked Murell up. By that time,Joe was talking to somebody at the spaceport. I called the paper, andtold Dad that Murell was buying the wax for his company as fast as itwas being pulled off the fire, at eighty centisols a pound. He saidthat would go out as a special bulletin right away. Then I talked toMorton Hallstock, and this time he wasn't giving me any of therun-along-sonny routine. I told him, rather hypocritically, what afine thing he'd done, getting that equipment from Hunters' Hall. Isuspect I sounded as though I were mayor of Port Sandor and Hallstock,just seventeen years old, had done something the grownups thought wasreal smart for a kid. If so, he didn't seem to notice. Somebodyconnected with the press was being nice to him. I asked him whereSteve Ravick was.

  "Mr. Ravick is at Hunters' Hall," he said. "He thought it would beunwise to make a public appearance just now." Oh, brother, what anunderstatement! "There seems to be a lot of public feeling againsthim, due to some misconception that he was responsible for whathappened to Captain Kivelson's ship. Of course, that is absolutelyfalse. Mr. Ravick had absolutely nothing to do with that. He wasn'tanywhere near the _Javelin_."

  "Where's Al Devis?" I asked.

  "Who? I don't believe I know him."

  After Hallstock got into his big black air-limousine and took off, JoeKivelson gave a short laugh.

  "I could have told him where Al Devis is," he said. "No, I couldn't,either," he corrected himself. "That's a religious question, and Idon't discuss religion."

  I shut off my radio in a hurry. "Who got him?" I asked.

  Joe named a couple of men from one of the hunter-ships.

  "Here's what happened. There were six men on guard here; they had ajeep with a 7-mm machine gun. About an hour ago, a lorry pulled in,with two men in boat-clothes on it. They said that Pierre Karolyi's_Corinne_ had just come in with a hold full of wax, and they werebringing it up from the docks, and where should they put it? Well, themen on guard believed that; Pierre'd gone off into the twilight zoneafter the _Helldiver_ contacted us, and he could have gotten a monsterin the meantime.

  "Well, they told these fellows that there was more room over on theother side of the stacks, and the lorry went up above the stacks andstarted across, and when they were about the middle, one of the men init threw out a thermoconcentrate bomb. The lorry took off, right away.The only thing was that there were two men in the jeep, and one ofthem was at the machine gun. They'd lifted to follow the lorry overand show them where to put this wax, and as soon as the bomb went off,the man at the gun grabbed it and caught the lorry in his sights andlet go. This fellow hadn't been covering for cutting-up work for yearsfor nothing. He got one burst right in the control cabin, and thelorry slammed into the next column foundation. After they called in analarm on the fire the bomb had started, a couple of them went to seewho'd been in the lorry. The two men in it were both dead, and one ofthem was Al Devis."

  "Pity," I said. "I'd been looking forward to putting a recording ofhis confession on the air. Where is this lorry now?"

  Joe pointed toward the burning wax piles. "Almost directly on theother side. We have a couple of men guarding it. The bodies are stillin it. We don't want any tampering with it till it can be properlyexamined; we want to have the facts straight, in case Hallstock triesto make trouble for the men who did the shooting."

  I didn't know how he could. Under any kind of Federation law at all, aman killed committing a felony--and bombing and arson ought toqualify for that--is simply bought and paid for; his blood is onnobody's head but his own. Of course, a small matter like legality wasalways the least of Mort Hallstock's worries.

  "I'll go get some shots of it," I said, and then I snapped on my radioand called the story in.

  Dad had already gotten it, from fire-alarm center, but he hadn't heardthat Devis was one of the deceased arsonists. Like me, he was verysorry to hear about it. Devis as Devis was no loss, but alive andtalking he'd have helped us pin both the wax fire and the bombing ofthe _Javelin_ on Steve Ravick. Then I went back and got in the jeep.

  They were beginning to get in closer to the middle of the stacks wherethe fire had been started. There was no chance of getting over the topof it, and on the right there were at least five hundred men and ahundred vehicles, all working like crazy to pull out unburned wax. Bigmanipulators were coming up and grabbing as many of the half-tonsausages as they could, and lurching away to dump them onto skids orinto lorries or just drop them on top of the bags of nutrient stackedbeyond. Jeeps and cars would dart in, throw grapne
ls on the end oflines, and then pull away all the wax they could and return to throwtheir grapnels again. As fast as they pulled the big skins down, menwith hand-lifters like the ones we had used at our camp to handlefirewood would pick them up and float them away.

  That seemed to be where the major effort was being made, at present,and I could see lifter-skids coming in with big blower fans on them. Iknew what the strategy was, now; they were going to pull the wax awayto where it was burning on one side, and then set up the blowers andblow the heat and smoke away on that side. That way, on the other sidemore men could work closer to the fire, and in the long run they'dsave more wax.

  I started around the wax piles to the left, clockwise, to avoid theactivity on the other side, and before long I realized that I'd havedone better not to have. There was a long wall, ceiling-high, thatstretched off uptown in the direction of the spaceport, part of thesupport for the weight of the pulpwood plant on the level above, andpiled against it was a lot of junk machinery of different kinds thathad been hauled in here and dumped long ago and then forgotten. Thewax was piled almost against this, and the heat and smoke forced medown.

  I looked at the junk pile and decided that I could get through it onfoot. I had been keeping up a running narration into my radio, and Icommented on all this salvageable metal lying in here forgotten, withour perennial metal shortages. Then I started picking my way throughit, my portable audiovisual camera slung over my shoulder and aflashlight in my hand. My left hand, of course; it's never smart tocarry a light in your right, unless you're left-handed.

  The going wasn't too bad. Most of the time, I could get between thingswithout climbing over them. I was going between a broken-down pressfrom the lumber plant and a leaky 500-gallon pressure cooker from thecarniculture nutrient plant when I heard something moving behind me,and I was suddenly very glad that I hadn't let myself be talked intoleaving my pistol behind.

  It was a thing the size of a ten-gallon keg, with a thick tail andflippers on which it crawled, and six tentacles like small elephants'trunks around a circular mouth filled with jagged teeth halfway downthe throat. There are a dozen or so names for it, but mostly it iscalled a meat-grinder.

  The things are always hungry and try to eat anything that moves. Themere fact that I would be as poisonous to it as any of the local floraor fauna would be to me made no difference; this meat-grinder was nobiochemist. It was coming straight for me, all its tentacles writhing.

  I had had my Sterberg out as soon as I'd heard the noise. I alsoremembered that my radio was on, and that I was supposed to comment onanything of interest that took place around me.

  "Here's a meat-grinder, coming right for me," I commented in a voicenot altogether steady, and slammed three shots down its tooth-studdedgullet. Then I scored my target, at the same time keeping out of theway of the tentacles. He began twitching a little. I fired again. Themeat-grinder jerked slightly, and that was all.

  "Now I'm going out and take a look at that lorry." I was certain nowthat the voice was shaky.

  The lorry--and Al Devis and his companion--had come to an end againstone of the two-hundred-foot masonry and concrete foundations thecolumns rest on. It had hit about halfway up and folded almost like anaccordion, sliding down to the floor. With one thing and another,there is a lot of violent death around Port Sandor. I don't like tolook at the results. It's part of the job, however, and this time itwasn't a pleasant job at all.

  The two men who were guarding the wreck and contents were sitting ona couple of boxes, smoking and watching the fire-fighting operation.

  I took the partly empty clip out of my pistol and put in a full one onthe way back, and kept my flashlight moving its circle of light aheadand on both sides of me. That was foolish, or at least unnecessary. Ifthere'd been one meat-grinder in that junk pile, it was a safe betthere wasn't anything else. Meat-grinders aren't popular neighbors,even for tread-snails. As I approached the carcass of the grinder Ihad shot I found a ten-foot length of steel rod and poked it a fewtimes. When it didn't even twitch, I felt safe in walking past it.

  I got back in the jeep and returned to where Joe Kivelson was keepingtrack of what was going on in five screens, including one from apickup on a lifter at the ceiling, and shouting orders that were beingreshouted out of loudspeakers all over the place. The Odin Dock &Shipyard equipment had begun coming out; lorries picking up the waxthat had been dumped back from the fire and wax that was being pulledoff the piles, and material-handling equipment. They had a lot ofsmall fork-lifters that were helping close to the fire.

  A lot of the wax was getting so soft that it was hard to handle, andquite a few of the plastic skins had begun to split from the heat.Here and there I saw that outside piles had begun to burn at thebottom, from burning wax that had run out underneath. I had movedaround to the right and was getting views of the big claw-derricks atwork picking the big sausages off the tops of piles, and while I wasswinging the camera back and forth, I was trying to figure just howmuch wax there had been to start with, and how much was being saved.Each of those plastic-covered cylinders was a thousand pounds; one ofthe claw-derricks was picking up two or three of them at a grab....

  I was still figuring when shouts of alarm on my right drew my headaround. There was an uprush of flame, and somebody began screaming,and I could see an ambulance moving toward the center of excitementand firemen in asbestos suits converging on a run. One of the pilesmust have collapsed and somebody must have been splashed. I gave aninvoluntary shudder. Burning wax was hotter than melted lead, and itstuck to anything it touched, worse than napalm. I saw a man beingdragged out of further danger, his clothes on fire, andasbestos-suited firemen crowding around to tear the burning garmentsfrom him. Before I could get to where it had happened, though, theyhad him in the ambulance and were taking him away. I hoped they'd gethim to the hospital before he died.

  Then more shouting started around at the right as a couple more pilesbegan collapsing. I was able to get all of that--the wax sausagessliding forward, the men who had been working on foot running out ofdanger, the flames shooting up, and the gush of liquid fire frombelow. All three derricks moved in at once and began grabbing waxcylinders away on either side of it.

  Then I saw Guido Fieschi, the Odin Dock & Shipyard's superintendent,and caught him in my camera, moving the jeep toward him.

  "Mr. Fieschi!" I called. "Give me a few seconds and say something."

  He saw me and grinned.

  "I just came out to see how much more could be saved," he said. "Wehave close to a thousand tons on the shipping floor or out of dangerhere and on the way in, and it looks as though you'll be able to savethat much more. That'll be a million and a half sols we can be sureof, and a possible three million, at the new price. And I want to takethis occasion, on behalf of my company and of Terra-Odin Spacelines,to welcome a new freight shipper."

  "Well, that's wonderful news for everybody on Fenris," I said, andadded mentally, "with a few exceptions." Then I asked if he'd heardwho had gotten splashed.

  "No. I know it happened; I passed the ambulance on the way out. Icertainly hope they get to work on him in time."

  Then more wax started sliding off the piles, and more fire camerunning out at the bottom. Joe Kivelson's voice, out of theloudspeakers all around, was yelling:

  "Everybody away from the front! Get the blowers in; start in on theother side!"