by David Weber
“Dad,” Anders said, speaking over whatever Kesia had been about to say. “You’re wrong and you know you are. I was along that day, don’t forget. Ranger Jedrusinski took us to dozens of places related to treecats in one way or another.”
“Yes. But this was the only real site. Surely, if she used her pea brain for something other than keeping lists of rules and regulations, she would remember this very important area and think to direct the search there.”
“She’d also remember,” Anders said, hands on hips, chin thrust upwards in defiance, “that this was the one and only place among all those locations that you were expressly forbidden to come back to. I suppose if she was a less direct sort of person she’d realize you couldn’t resist the temptation, but my guess is that if and when the SFS does start retracing those locations, this will be the last place they’ll look precisely because they wouldn’t think you’d be slime enough to betray their trust.”
That did it. Anders knew it. Despite the circle of watching adults, Dad actually took a step toward Anders, his hand raised to wallop him as he hadn’t done since Anders was old enough to understand words. Something was shattering in Dad, breaking the shell of civilization.
Behind Dad, Virgil was taking cautious steps forward, obviously prepared to intervene. Anders shook his head to stop Virgil. After all, wasn’t he doing this especially for him and Kesia?
“Dad,” Anders said, fumbling for words that would slow his father before he did something foolish, but at the same time reluctant to relinquish his position. “Dad…I’m sorry, but…”
“Anders, I’ve put up with enough of your insubordination!”
Dr. Whittaker’s hand continued inexorably toward Anders. Was it really moving in slow motion? Anders watched, horrified, knowing exactly how that meaty fist would feel, especially with all the extra force of Sphinx’s gravity behind it.
That last realization awoke Anders’ sense of self-preservation. He dropped his hand to his counter-grav unit, switching up the power just long enough so that he could dodge out of the way. Dr. Whittaker’s hand swept through open air, the violence of the gesture enough to cause him to stumble and fall forward. Anders started running, his feet still unnaturally light.
Dr. Whittaker struggled to his feet, rage fading into confusion. “Anders…I…Anders, come back here!
But Anders was already gone.
Stephanie-and Jessica, who was sleeping in her room-were awakened slightly before dawn by Stephanie’s dad. Richard Harrington looked grim.
“Steph, get up and moving. The search has been called off, but you’re still needed-more than ever, in fact.”
“What? Called off?”
“You’ll get briefing from the SFS with more details than I have,” he said, giving her a quick hug then hurrying for the door. “A lightning strike last night in the foothills north of here set off what’s rapidly becoming a raging fire. I’m going to wake up Karl. Your mom set out food before she left to go save some experimental plants that could be threatened if the fire moves west. I’m off to my clinic in town. They’re bringing the injured to me there since Twin Forks is likely to remain a safe point.”
“Right, Dad. Thanks!”
Stephanie had rolled out of bed and was now pulling on her clothes. Jessica was doing the same. Faster than Stephanie would have thought possible, they were dressed and downstairs.
Karl joined them a moment later.
“Grab that stuff,” he said, pointing to the array of protein bars and fruit Marjorie Harrington had set out. “I’ll get the car. Time enough to eat once we’re moving.”
Stephanie, Karl, and Jessica arrived at the SFS regional headquarters in Twin Forks and hurried inside. Even though the fire was hundreds of kilometers distant, the smoke overhead was thick enough that the light of the rising sun was dampened into an artificial twilight. A faint, not completely unpleasant scent of burning wood tinged the air.
Inside the station, they saw that the largest meeting room had been transformed into command central for those working the fire. There they found Frank Lethbridge in charge of immediate operations.
Although he had cleaned up some, the ranger had evidently already been out at the fire. Grime clung beneath his fingernails and had settled into the creases of his face. He smelled strongly of smoke. When they came in, he was just finishing talking to a woman in an SFS uniform-Assistant Ranger Geraldine something or other. Stephanie had met her a few times, but didn’t know her well.
“Go and triage that latest group of volunteers,” Lethbridge was saying. “Remember, even those who can’t be cleared to go out to the fire itself can help. We’re going to need pilots to shuttle people back and forth from the various fire areas. We’re going to need people to man relief stations in the safety zones. Oh! And someone needs to take a van to the warehouse and bring out more of those emergency kits-the ones with a suit, shelter, and a Pulaski. Have them bring some bladder bags and drip torches, too, but be careful who gets those-especially the torches. Oh! If you find anyone with experience flying heavier vehicles, send them to Smitty. He’s coordinating the water drops.”
Geraldine hurried out, giving the three young people a quick, tight nod as she passed.
As was so often the case in times of crisis, momentarily, the room was empty.
Frank Lethbridge greeted them with a weary nod. “Thanks for coming so quickly. I’ve got a job picked out for you already.”
He indicated a holomap. “Here’s the head of the fire. It’s moving northwest, picking up speed as the winds rise. As you can see, although the lightning strike hit within a Forestry Service district, if it continues in that direction, it’s going to threaten Hayestown and the Painter settlement, as well as several smaller holdings. We’re hoping to use branches of the Weeping River as an anchor point from which to build a fire line.
“What I want you to do is go south. We’ve had a report that there was a second lightning strike down that way. The level of heat and smoke from the main fire is intense enough that it’s reducing our ability to tell how this secondary fire is spreading. However, we do have reports the wind is shifting from the original northwestern push, acquiring a southern dimension.”
Stephanie frowned. “You didn’t call us out at dawn just to put us away from where we’re needed, did you? If that’s the way it is, I’d like permission to go back to looking for the missing xenoanthropological crew.”
She knew she was being rude, but the food her mom had put out seemed to have filled her belly without giving her any strength. Worry washed through her like waves against a cliff, battering her normal composure to sand.
Lethbridge shook his head. “Stephanie, this is not make-work. You and Karl have shown yourselves capable both of being methodical and taking initiative when needed. Right now, we have ample strong backs. What we need are people who can take a look at forest conditions and decide how serious the situation is. Usually, I’d delegate a couple of rangers, but right now, with the main fire encroaching on so many human habitations we’re getting lots of volunteers and we need the rangers to brief and coordinate them.”
Karl cut in. “And that’s one job we can’t do. No one would take us seriously. Right, Frank? I mean, Ranger Lethbridge…”
“Right,” Lethbridge said. “But we do take you seriously. Can you handle this?” He gave a tired grin. “And ‘Frank’s’ okay as long as it’s just us…”
Stephanie nodded slowly. “But the xenoanthropologists…Yesterday their being missing was a major crisis with not only personal but political ramifications. Today they’re just being forgotten?”
Frank glanced at the hologram of the fire. Updated from satellite feed, it was a living map. For now, the fire showed as clouds of thick white and gray smoke, an angry red glow beneath. From her training, Stephanie knew how quickly that red might climb to the treetops. If the wind caught it, then what was already a wildfire would mutate into something far worse-a crown fire, spreading from treetop to treetop, capable
of leaping both human-made control lines and natural barriers such as rivers.
Whatever Frank saw in that image, apparently it reassured him that he could spend a little more time explaining the situation to the probationary rangers and their friend.
“You’re not the only ones who are worried. We are, too. Last night, Chief Ranger Shelton had the spouses of two of the missing people in his office demanding a full-scale search be mounted. The woman was weeping and looking sick. The man was threatening lawsuits. Only Dr. Hobbard’s powers of persuasion are keeping them from taking the story to the newsies.”
Frank pressed his eyes closed, and Stephanie guessed that he’d been present for the unpleasant scene.
“By then, however, we knew the fire which had been reported that afternoon was turning nasty, so Chief Ranger Shelton decided that the search for the xenoanthropologists must be given lower priority. If Dr. Whittaker and his team are still alive-and I sincerely hope they are-the area where they went down is quite distant from that threatened by the fire. Basically, they’re safer wherever they are than we are right here. Right now many square kilometers of forest are threatened. That’s bad enough, but if the fire gets any further out of control, then hundreds of humans’ lives are at risk. When you weigh that against seven people, it’s a pretty cold equation.”
He paused and indicated the fire. “Are you going to follow orders, Probationary Ranger Harrington, or would you like to be released from duty?”
Heart beating strongly in her ears, Stephanie struggled against the impulse to pull out her treasured badge and throw it on the table. But that grand gesture would be far from grand. It would be a fit of temper, worthy of a child, not of a young woman who wanted to live up to the trust that badge-an emblem of a post Chief Ranger Shelton had created for her and Karl-implied.
Stephanie gave a smile that she hoped would show nothing of her inner turmoil and said. “That southern fire needs checking out. Can we have a kit for Jessica, too?”
Frank Lethbridge gave her a lopsided grin, one that revealed for the first time how much he had dreaded that Stephanie would elect to follow the prompts of her own considerable will.
“Absolutely. Report in as you find how the southern fire is spreading. You’ll have access to a version of the data here, so you’ll be able to see when we need updating. Otherwise, consider yourselves free agents. As I said, what we need is your capacity for taking initiative.”
When they collected a kit for Jessica, they were also issued bladder bags already loaded with a mixture of fire-retardant chemicals and water.
“I’m giving you,” Geraldine said, “a pair of drip torches. You know how to use the torch?”
Karl nodded. “We’ve had training.”
“Right. Just…be careful if you have to use them, okay?”
“We will.” Karl flashed a grin. “We have no desire to have the next big one called the Zivonik/Harrington fire.”
When they were back in the air car, Stephanie suggested they get into their fire-suits as they drove.
“If we need them,” she said, “it’s going to be when we don’t want to waste time getting into them.”
Karl immediately set the auto-pilot-they were in open space, speeding over the green canopy of a forest that did not yet know its danger-and pulled his suit on over his clothes. As Stephanie did the same, she glanced to the backseat to see if Jessica needed help. The other girl was doing fine, but Stephanie found herself feeling just a tiny bit jealous of the interesting way Jessica’s fire-suit emphasized her curvaceous figure.
On me, she thought, the darn thing just covers over what little curve I’ve got!
Lionheart bleeked in what Stephanie was certain was amusement.
Jessica looked up from where she had been fastening the ankle tabs on her suit. “What will we do with Lionheart if we need to go out?”
Stephanie stroked the treecat’s thick gray fur along his back, trying to hide her concern.
“I’ll try to convince him to stay in the air car, but the decision is going to be his. He’s not a pet or a child. He’s a person-a grown-up person. If I’m going to respect that, I’m going to need to allow him to make his own choices.”
“But what if he gets burned? We have these suits and goggles and respirators, but what about him?”
“Lionheart’s pretty smart about avoiding danger,” Stephanie said. “When Karl and I did our training classes, one of the things we learned to do was use a fire shelter.”
She held up a package not much larger than a folded man’s shirt. “Have you ever seen one of these?”
“No, I haven’t. How could something that small be a shelter?”
“It’s made of light thermwall material, so it folds down pretty tight. Like our fire-suits, the material is fire-resistant and protects against radiant heat. Okay, imagine the following situation. We’re out there taking a look at a tongue of a fire, judging how great a risk it offers.”
“Right.”
“The wind shifts-winds do that a lot during fires because the heat of the fire itself creates wind-suddenly, though you’d been standing ten meters from the fire, you realize a tongue of fire too wide for you to safely make it through, even in your suit, has cut you off from a safe point. Worse, you can see the flames are coming toward you. You rip open this packet and pull this tab. It opens up into a small tent. You crawl inside and seal it shut. The flames race over you, leaving you maybe a bit hotter, but unburnt. When the flames have passed, you come out and get to safety.”
“But what if the flames don’t pass?” Jessica asked. “Do I just sit in there and cook?”
Karl chuckled. “Unless you set your tent up on top of a pile of brush or a tree trunk or in a grove of trees or something, the flames will pass. No matter how powerful a fire may seem when you look at something like the holomap Ranger Lethbridge had, fires need at least four conditions or they can’t exist. Steph?”
Dutifully, Stephanie recited: “Oxygen, fuel, heat, and a self-sustained chemical reaction. Eliminate any of these and the fire will die. That’s called the ‘fire tetrahedron.’ An easier version to remember is the ‘fire triangle’-oxygen, fuel, and heat.”
“So in that lovely little story you told,” Jessica said, “I’ve had the brains not to put my tent right in the middle of a heap of fuel. Oxygen can’t really be eliminated out in the open and there would be plenty of heat, but once the fire burns up the fuel, then it can’t stay there. Right?”
“You’ve got it,” Stephanie said. “Moreover, as your teammates, we’d be doing what we could to help. The bladder bags contain water mixed with various fire-suppressant chemicals. Water eliminates heat as well. We’d spray it in the area around your shelter.”
“So these bladder bags are basically like the fire extinguisher we have in the kitchen at home?”
“Pretty much, but the sprayer has a lot more range and the chemicals have been tailored to deal with a fire that will have unlimited oxygen, unlike a structure fire, where the structure itself can dampen the fire for a time. They’re also equipped to be quickly refilled, unlike your home extinguisher, which is pretty much a one-use item.”
Jessica nodded. “You started this because I asked about how Lionheart would deal with a fire. Did you teach him how to use a fire shelter?”
“We did,” Stephanie said. “It wasn’t easy, because he has a treecat’s ingrained caution regarding fire, but he’s smart. Once he saw the demonstration a few times, I think he figured out how useful such shelters could be.”
“That reminds me,” Jessica said. “I wanted to ask about the last piece of equipment you were given, that drip torch. It sounded to me like the ranger was actually suggesting you might need to start a fire. That sounds crazy.”
“It does,” Stephanie agreed, “but using fire to fight fire is an old technique and one that still has its place. Remember how I said that ‘fuel’ is one of the key elements in creating a fire-ready condition?”
“Yes.”
>
“Well, if you eliminate fuel, you can eliminate one of the directions in which the fire can spread. Sometimes you can do that by soaking the fuel in advance of the fire. Sometimes firebreaks are built-either with tools or, if there’s time, using machinery. You cut away the trees, limbs, and snags, leaving nothing but bare dirt. When fire gets to the break it’s stopped. If the fire isn’t too fierce, sometimes even a line made with the side of a boot-as long as it clears the area down to bare dirt or rock-can create a large enough break.”
Karl took over. “But there are times when it’s faster to burn the fuels up in advance of the fire. That works well with ‘light’ fuels like grass, leaves, pine needles, and dry slash. You make certain you have a fire line around them, then burn out the middle. When the main fire arrives, it finds bare earth where a meadow full of yummy dried grass would have been.”
Jessica shuddered. “It sounds horrible, transforming a meadow into a burnt waste.”
“The fire would have done it anyhow,” Stephanie said, “and this way the forest on the other side is protected.”
“Mostly, these days,” Karl said, “fire is used for clearing a safe zone. That’s what that Franchitti idiot said he was doing when he started the fire a few weeks ago.”
He glanced at the navigation screen and made a few adjustments.
“We’re closing in on the southern side of the fire. I’m going to bring us down beneath the canopy now. Time to stop talking and start watching.”
Stephanie nodded and turned her attention to the window. Lionheart climbed into her lap, equally intent.
Yet even as Stephanie turned her attention to charting the spread of a tongue of the secondary fire, a sense that she was partaking in a deep betrayal filled her. She shouldn’t be here. She should be out there, searching for someone. For one someone. For Anders.
