The Unorthodox Engineers Page 2

‘We may have to,’ said Jacko. He pointed outwards across the tracks to where thick motes of dust and cinder were dancing in the sun. ‘Unless I miss my guess there’s magma pushing up from down there.’

  ‘I want,’ said Fritz van Noon, ‘to start at least fifty klicks out on something nice and simple. We should have worked out the necessary technique by the time we get back to Hellsport. What type of engines did they use, anyway?’

  Jacko drew a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ He sounded depressed, ‘But the engines were even stranger than the tracks. A locomotive designed in the town of Juara, about a hundred klicks from here, was a steam-engine run on dried resins. Two locos from Manin, down by the coast, were sort of battery-electric jobs. One from a place called Nath came home on some kind of super gyroscope, and there was one using an internal-combustion engine run on alcohol made by fermenting bean husks. I’ve no idea who made that one. There are others so weird no-one has a clue how they operated at all.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me!’ said Fritz dryly. ‘These people may be able to beat us at our own game, Jacko. Talk about unorthodox engineering! We’re a set of ruddy amateurs compared to them.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Jacko. ‘In my youth I thought I was the world’s worst crackpot screwball. Then I met up with you and found that, in comparison, I was merely a sane, sensible, hard-working engineer. I never got over the disappointment of that hour of realization. I have a feeling these people will find themselves in a similar predicament. Under the heavy hand of Fritz van Noon the Cannis railway will never be the same again.’

  ‘Thank you for that sly vote of confidence,’ said Fritz. ‘Now this is what I propose to do. I want you to take a helicopter to the Callin area, find the loco and bring it back to there—’ He stabbed his finger on the map. ‘There’s a two kilometre break in the track that will suit us just fine. I’m taking the rest of UE to that point and we’ll repair the break - if we can. It will give us a workable area down as far as Juara. I want to complete that run before the Callin bean harvest is ripe. That gives us about two months.’

  ‘Two kilometres of new track in two months? You’re off your rocker!’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Fritz. ‘Else I wouldn’t be running UE…’

  The town of Juara lay on a crest of sullen rock. The shelf of granite had reduced the volcanic activity of the region to a tolerable level, and made habitation possible at the expense of the fertility of the soil. The railhead was untouched, but as the line swung again north-west and then north of the plateau it entered a low basin where the slag-cases, dunned with vegetation, stood up thick and tall like armless trees in some fantastic petrified forest.

  This was a bad point for the rail. From the air it was obvious by the tortuous twisting of the route that the line had been diverted from disaster and rebuilt at least a dozen times. Occasional sections were completely isolated from the remains of the existing track and lay as forlorn crescents of rotting railway awaiting trains that could never come.

  Six kilometres out from Juara was the break. The railway had literally been shaken to pieces. For nearly two kilometres the remnants of twisted girderwork and trestles sprawled on the broken ground, tied together with the soft iron of the rails. North again by over forty kilometres lay Callin and the fertile mountains of Cansoun.

  In the centre of the break, the cargo aero-sleds rendezvoused to drop the heavier equipment. The fragile, alloy Knudsen huts were hastily assembled and staggered, two by two, between the tall mini-volcano spires. Prefabricated workshops were completed in record time as soon as a bulldozer had cleared a sufficient site. The packaged forge and the rolling mill were moved on air cushions to key points on the site.

  Working feverishly and without obvious direction, the engineers of UE carved themselves a base on the alien territory and settled themselves in. By nightfall a new functional township had arisen beneath the dark towers of Cannis.

  Fritz was well pleased with the achievement: Its success was marked by a subtlety which would have passed all but the keenest of observers. For UE was not a team as such; it was a collection of individuals. Nobody planned or directed, except in the very broadest way, but each engineer was trained to analyse the salient points of an operation and to guide his own activities to achieve the maximum effect. It was the myth of anarchy on a practical, productive scale—and it worked! The patient genius of Fritz van Noon had wrought a philosophic miracle.

  At the crack of dawn the following day, a skinny, brown-skinned humanoid walked in from the desert.

  Fritz had heard that the local population was inquisitive to a fault, and a casual inspection of any work in progress was slways part of the scheme of things. After poking and probing into every conceivable crevice, the native he went from hut to hut harrying the occupants with atrocious pidgin English. He found nobody who could understand him until he came across Harris, who had a flair for languages. Harris realized the worth of the contact and hurried him off to meet Fritz van Noon.

  ‘His name is Malu,’ said Harris. ‘I think he’s local engineer. He seems to want to help with the railways.’

  Fritz smiled quizzically. ‘Can he find me any local labour?’

  Heated discussion followed. Finally Harris turned back to Fritz. ‘If I understand him correctly, there is plenty of local labour but they won’t work in gangs under direction. They’re strictly independent buggers, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ said Fritz. ‘Point out that it’s their harvest we’re trying to get to Juara. It’s no skin off our nose if it doesn’t go through. Also they obviously don’t have the skill or the ability to do the job themselves else they’d have done it already.’

  ‘I think I already said that, but it’s no dice. They won’t play. I reckon they’d sooner starve than take orders from off-worlders.’

  ‘Come to think of it,’ said Fritz, meeting the native’s frank stare, ‘so would we I guess. Hell, I’ll take a chance! Get as many as you can. It may never look like a railway but I guarantee it’ll be a bloody lot of fun trying.’

  By this time Malu had wandered off to examine, with great interest, one of the Knudsen huts. He was obviously worried by the alloy hulks, and came back for a long and excited argument with Harris.

  ‘He doesn’t like the huts, sir,’ said Harris. ‘Says we mustn’t build directly on the ground.’

  ‘Oh? Why not? There’s no danger of flooding hereabouts and the site is reasonably level.’

  More gabbling and arm-waving..

  ‘No, sir. I think the lichen is temperature sensitive. It turns brown where a hot-spot is developing. It gives about a ten hour indication of when to move house. I suppose he means that the huts prevent us seeing the lichen underneath.’

  Fritz relaxed. ‘We already thought of that. Between each pair of huts we have a thermocouple buried. They’ll wake the dead if the temperature rises too much. More reliable than any local plant, for sure. Anyway you can’t put a Knudsen hut on stilts—it’d fall to bits.’

  Harris spoke with Malu, who shrugged resignedly and walked away wagging his head from side to side.

  ‘He says it won’t work,’ said Harris. ‘He’s not staying around to see the action.’’

  ‘Bloody hell! That’s all I need.’ said Fritz van Noon.

  Curiously enough the combination of local and UE personnel worked rather well. The natives knew their own limitations and did not attempt to handle unfamiliar tools until they were sure of their competence. The UE squad became the lead team, breaking new ground, and the local workforce seconded in careful emulation of their instructors. They proved to be even better at picking up languages than Harris, and communication improved rapidly.

  By the end of the fourth day a huge stretch of track had been cleared, the rails returned to the rolling mill for straightening, and trestles and undamaged span girders stacked ready for reassembly. Ingots of malleable iron were manhandled down the line from Juara, and the forge and rolling mill worked continuous shifts to s
hape the soft metal which had to serve instead of steel.

  The UE metallurgist was going quietly nuts trying to figure out why the Cannis IV iron refused to harden. He finally decided it was due to the perverse allotropic form of the native carbon, and broke down an electrolytic refining cell of Terran origin to gain a less temperamental sample of the element. Two pounds of this steel prepared in the laboratory exhibited a cold-short brittleness of such degree that it could be broken apart by a few taps of a hammer. Increasing the silicon and carbon content he obtained a steel of similar tensile strength to lead. At this point he broke down and wept bitterly, then went out and got drunk. Fritz didn’t have the heart to put him on a charge.

  A week passed and Fritz was awakened by the babble of voices outside his door. He dragged himself from his bunk, opened the door and stepped out. He immediately fell over Jacko who was prostrate on his stomach in front of the threshold probing the ground with the aid of a spot lamp. Malu and two other natives were watching the proceedings from a discreet distance.

  ‘Jacko!’ said Fritz. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Jacko rolled over and looked up at him. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘is an apt description of our destination if we don’t leave this spot pronto. Your hut is nicely located on a hot-spot.’

  ‘What?’ Fritz felt a sudden tremor of the ground beneath his feet and caught a wisp of the sulphurous fumes issuing from widening fissures in the ground. He pulled Jacko to his feet and they backed off rapidly. They had scarcely covered twenty metres before the Knudsen disintegrated in a plume of gas and smoke, shot through with streaks of fire. At a safe distance they turned and watched the miniature volcano erupt at the very spot where Fritz had been sleeping barely four minutes earlier.

  ‘One up to Cannis IV!’ said Fritz grimly.

  Jacko surveyed the furious gout of fire before him. ‘What happened to the thermocouple alarms?’

  ‘Useless,’ said Fritz. ‘Platinum, platinum-rhodium couples at three metres depth. But the hot sulphur and silicates and god-knows-what-else are corroding them away at a ridiculous rate. It must have gone open-circuit before it could operate the alarm. Useless. The rest of the Knudsens will have to be jacked up somehow, so we can see what’s happening underneath.’

  ‘Can we afford the time? asked Jacko. ‘The bean harvest won’t wait and you know the old saying: civilization is only ever three meals away from a revolution! Can’t we simply use another type of thermocouple?’

  ‘No, this damned soil is too corrosive, and a shielded couple isn’t sufficiently sensitive. Either we find a way to raise the huts or we risk frying in our beds. I don’t fancy waking in the morning and finding myself well done on both sides. And we’re still putting this railway through to Juara on time even if it’s over your dead body.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, boss’ muttered Jacko. ‘By the way, I’ve got you an engine. As a locomotive it would make a very good potting-shed, but the fuel is simply superb.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fritz. ‘I can smell it on your breath.’

  Much of the track itself was recoverable since the low speeds and traffic density of the line would make no great demands on the quality of the rail. A great deal of the girderwork from the spans was likewise capable of reclamation. Only the trestles had suffered badly. Four out of five were a total write-off and, due to the great allowances needed by reason of the poor quality of the metal, rebuilding ate deeply into the available stocks of iron. As the work progressed it became painfully obvious that no more than half of the break could be completed because of the lack of trestles.

  Fritz refused to be disheartened, and laid his advance plans with a quiet precision and a secrecy which involved the confidence only of Harris and Malu, who both disappeared on special missions Fritz wouldn’t talk about. Everyone else grew despondent, and even Jacko’s customary pessimism seemed justified when the next hot-spot appeared.

  Where is it?’ asked Fritz.

  ‘Sod’s law,’ said Jacko, ‘It’s right where it will do the most damage. Under our new track and right in the centre of a span. Three days and the whole lot will be down again. How the hell can you build a railway under these terms?’

  ‘You can’t,’ agreed Fritz. ‘That’s why we’re going to alter the terms. Take my advice, Jacko, never try to buck the system. If it’s big enough to break you, try helping it on its way.’

  ‘Fine in theory,’ said Jacko. ‘But you can’t stop a volcano.’

  ‘Can’t I? Cannis IV and I have a lot in common. We both think the same way—mean and underhand. It’s a policy of kicking the enemy while he’s down. That way you get the greatest results for the least effort. This is getting personal, and no bitch of a planet is going to put one over on Fritz van Noon.’

  Jacko shook his head sadly. ‘Let’s face it, Fritz. We’re licked. We can’t go any further without Terran steel and we can’t even hold on to what we’ve already done. There’s no disgrace in folding up before a physical impossibility.’

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ said Fritz sternly, ‘there’s no such thing as a physical impossibility. A limitation is a state of mind not a question of fact. An aeroplane was a physical impossibility until men’s minds learned how to tame the concept.’

  ‘Is lack of steel and a surplus of volcanoes also a state of mind?’

  ‘Certainly—if you regard them as limitations?

  ‘Very well,’ said Jacko, ‘come and prove your point.’

  By the time they arrived at the span the hot-spot was beginning to break. Even as they watched, the ground lurched and broke as the angry pressures blew the topsoil apart. Then came a heavier explosion, the ground cracked into a fissure and a column of fire spurted irregularly through a spray of liquid, incandescent magma, which congealed around the blowhole to form the foundations of the cone. About fifteen metres above, the span appeared to dance in the stream of heated gases, and was soon blackened and scorched . It’s demise was inevitable.

  Ensign Harris came over at a run, pulling and old-fashioned mortar on a trolley, and was followed by Malu and two engineers carrying a rack of mortar bombs. They set up the mortar at a reasonable distance and proceeded to prime the bombs.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ asked Jacko.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fritz. ‘That’s my forte. I want to see what happens if we put a mortar bomb smack inside that crater. You’re the weapons expert. Can you do that without damage to the trestles?’

  Jacko estimated the position silently. ‘With a couple of ranging shots I can pin the hole all right, but the trestles will be in the hands of the gods.’

  The result was even more spectacular than anticipated. The first shot fell short, and the mortar was adjusted slightly to lower the trajectory a fraction. The second bomb rose in a brief arc and fell with careful precision into the mouth of the flaming cone. A split second’s pause and then Hell itself was unleashed. The pyramid of toffee magma split wide with a murderous roar; gouts of flame and incandescent lava boiled and foamed high into the air and collapsed into a storm of white-hot cinders and writhing jets of burning gas. At the base, where the cone had stood, the blowhole angrily vomited a widening pool of boiling lava like some grotesque festering sore.

  ‘Another?’ asked Jacko.

  Fritz nodded. ‘We might as well be fried sheep as roast lambs.’

  The third bomb, too, was accurately placed. This time the lava rose like a living wall and plunged outward, splashing and streaming its magnificent debris up to thirty metres from the seething well. A sheet of roaring flame rose up with frenzied fingers and enveloped the protesting members of the rail-span overhead.

  The blast of heat and awesome fury sent the watchers scurrying for shelter, with Harris fearing for the safety of his remaining munitions. Only Fritz stayed put, his clothes smouldering, shielding his eyes with his hands and overcome with the enormity of the havoc he had wrought. Then the flaming torches died and the white-hot spume grew less. The lava pool became a darkening puddle of red toffee, shot w
ith occasional bursts of recalescent heat and overhung with the will-o’-the-wisp of burning sulphur.

  ‘One up to me,’ said Fritz van Noon.

  By morning the remains of the volcano held no visible sign of life. The lava had spread into a vast rippled puddle of rock, still hot but solid enough to bear a man’s weight. Already the lichen was beginning its assault on the cooler regions, eager to begin the symbiosis with the grass to follow.

  Jacko had the calculations finished by the time that Fritz was ready to inspect.

  ‘Fritz, you’re a ruddy genius! There’s enough material in this puddle to make two average-sized volcanoes in this district. That means we’ve cleared it out completely. With a bit of luck they won’t have another volcano here for the next sixty years or so. Unless an eruption happens right under a trestle leg we can treat it the same as this one. That simplifies life no end.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Fritz. ‘But it’s the trestle legs I’m worried about. Pile-driving those base supports makes the trestles rather vulnerable. What happens to your railway if your trestles suffer a high mortality rate?’

  ‘I think we quit,’ said Jacko candidly.

  ‘Not on your life,’ said Fritz. ‘We’ve got enemies. If UE goes home with it’s collective tail between it’s legs they’ll try and break us for sure. We’ve got the largest collection of screwballs and technical malcontents in the whole army. Not one of them would be happy about returning to honest engineering while they can stay with us and play forsaken children’s games under the minimum of effectual supervision. As officers, we have a responsibility to these guys. We can’t just let them be pissed on from a great height. Besides which, there’s more than the Cannis railway at stake here.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ said Jacko. ‘But look at the problem. We can’t put a straight track run on the ground because of the cones in the way. Even if we could it would take years to level up the site. Therefore we build on trestles and spans over the rocks and smaller cones. That makes sense even if it looks grotesque. But you can’t stop a volcano which comes up under a trestle. That’s what has been killing this railway since it was invented.’