The things are always hungry and try to eat anything that moves. The mere fact that I would be as poisonous to it as any of the local flora or fauna would be to me made no difference; this meat-grinder was no biochemist. 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 also remembered that my radio was on, and that I was supposed to comment on anything of interest that took place around me.
"Here"s a meat-grinder, coming right for me," I commented in a voice not altogether steady, and slammed three shots down its tooth-studded gullet. Then I scored my target, at the same time keeping out of the way of the tentacles. He began twitching a little. I fired again. The meat-grinder jerked slightly, and that was all.
"Now I"m going out and take a look at that lorry." I was certain now that the voice was shaky.
The lorry--and Al Devis and his companion--had come to an end against one of the two-hundred-foot masonry and concrete foundations the columns rest on. It had hit about halfway up and folded almost like an accordion, sliding down to the floor. With one thing and another, there is a lot of violent death around Port Sandor. I don"t like to look at the results. It"s part of the job, however, and this time it wasn"t a pleasant job at all.
The two men who were guarding the wreck and contents were sitting on a 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 on the way back, and kept my flashlight moving its circle of light ahead and on both sides of me. That was foolish, or at least unnecessary. If there"d been one meat-grinder in that junk pile, it was a safe bet there wasn"t anything else. Meat-grinders aren"t popular neighbors, even for tread-snails. As I approached the carca.s.s of the grinder I had shot I found a ten-foot length of steel rod and poked it a few times. 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 keeping track of what was going on in five screens, including one from a pickup on a lifter at the ceiling, and shouting orders that were being reshouted out of loudspeakers all over the place. The Odin Dock & Shipyard equipment had begun coming out; lorries picking up the wax that had been dumped back from the fire and wax that was being pulled off the piles, and material-handling equipment. They had a lot of small fork-lifters that were helping close to the fire.
A lot of the wax was getting so soft that it was hard to handle, and quite 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 the bottom, from burning wax that had run out underneath. I had moved around to the right and was getting views of the big claw-derricks at work picking the big sausages off the tops of piles, and while I was swinging the camera back and forth, I was trying to figure just how much wax there had been to start with, and how much was being saved.
Each of those plastic-covered cylinders was a thousand pounds; one of the 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 head around. There was an uprush of flame, and somebody began screaming, and I could see an ambulance moving toward the center of excitement and firemen in asbestos suits converging on a run. One of the piles must have collapsed and somebody must have been splashed. I gave an involuntary shudder. Burning wax was hotter than melted lead, and it stuck to anything it touched, worse than napalm. I saw a man being dragged out of further danger, his clothes on fire, and asbestos-suited firemen crowding around to tear the burning garments from him. Before I could get to where it had happened, though, they had him in the ambulance and were taking him away. I hoped they"d get him to the hospital before he died.
Then more shouting started around at the right as a couple more piles began collapsing. I was able to get all of that--the wax sausages sliding forward, the men who had been working on foot running out of danger, the flames shooting up, and the gush of liquid fire from below. All three derricks moved in at once and began grabbing wax cylinders 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. "We have close to a thousand tons on the shipping floor or out of danger here and on the way in, and it looks as though you"ll be able to save that much more. That"ll be a million and a half sols we can be sure of, and a possible three million, at the new price. And I want to take this occasion, on behalf of my company and of Terra-Odin s.p.a.celines, to welcome a new freight shipper."
"Well, that"s wonderful news for everybody on Fenris," I said, and added mentally, "with a few exceptions." Then I asked if he"d heard who had gotten splashed.
"No. I know it happened; I pa.s.sed the ambulance on the way out. I certainly hope they get to work on him in time."
Then more wax started sliding off the piles, and more fire came running out at the bottom. Joe Kivelson"s voice, out of the loudspeakers all around, was yelling:
"Everybody away from the front! Get the blowers in; start in on the other side!"
18
THE TREASON OF BISH WARE
I wanted to find out who had been splashed, but Joe Kivelson was too busy directing the new phase of the fight to hand out casualty reports to the press, and besides, there were too many things happening all at once that I had to get. I went around to the other side where the incendiaries had met their end, moving slowly as close to the face of the fire as I could get and shooting the burning wax flowing out from it. A lot of equipment, including two of the three claw-derricks and a dredger--they"d brought a second one up from the waterfront--were moving to that side. By the time I had gotten around, the blowers had been maneuvered into place and were ready to start. There was a lot of back-and-forth yelling to make sure that everybody was out from in front, and then the blowers started.
It looked like a horizontal volcanic eruption; burning wax blowing away from the fire for close to a hundred feet into the clear s.p.a.ce beyond. The derricks and manipulators and the cars and jeeps with grapnels went in on both sides, s.n.a.t.c.hing and dragging wax away.
Because they had the wind from the blowers behind them, the men could work a lot closer, and the fire wasn"t spreading as rapidly. They were saving a lot of wax; each one of those big sausages that the lifters picked up and floated away weighed a thousand pounds, and was worth, at the new price, eight hundred sols.
Finally, they got everything away that they could, and then the blowers were shut down and the two dredge shovels moved in, scooping up the burning sludge and carrying it away, scattering it on the concrete. I would have judged that there had been six or seven million sols" worth of wax in the piles to start with, and that a little more than half of it had been saved before they pulled the last cylinder away.
The work slacked off; finally, there was nothing but the two dredges doing anything, and then they backed away and let down, and it was all over but standing around and watching the scattered fire burn itself out. I looked at my watch. It was two hours since the first alarm had come in. I took a last swing around, got the s.p.a.ceport people gathering up wax and hauling it away, and the broken lake of fire that extended downtown from where the stacks had been, and then I floated my jeep over to the sandwich-and-coffee stand and let down, getting out. Maybe, I thought, I could make some kind of deal with somebody like Interworld News on this. It would make a nice thrilling feature-program item. Just a little slice of life from Fenris, the Garden Spot of the Galaxy.
I got myself a big zhoumy-loin sandwich with hot sauce and a cup of coffee, made sure that my portable radio was on, and circulated among the fire fighters, getting comments. Everybody had been a hero, natch, and they were all very unbashful about admitting it. There was a great deal of wisecracking about Al Devis buying himself a ringside seat for the fire he"d started. Then I saw Cesario Vieira and joined him.
"Have all the fire you want, for a while?" I asked him.
"Brother, and how! We could have used a little of this over on Hermann Reuch"s Land, though. Have you seen Tom around anywhere?"
"No. Have you?"
"I saw him over there, about an hour ago. I guess he stayed on this side. After they started blowing it, I was over on Al Devis"s side."
He whistled softly. "Was that a mess!"
There was still a crowd at the fire, but they seemed all to be townspeople. The hunters had gathered where Joe Kivelson had been directing operations. We finished our sandwiches and went over to join them. As soon as we got within earshot, I found that they were all in a very ugly mood.
"Don"t fool around," one man was saying as we came up. "Don"t even bother looking for a rope. Just shoot them as soon as you see them."
Well, I thought, a couple of million sols" worth of tallow-wax, in which they all owned shares, was something to get mean about. I said something like that.
"It"s not that," another man said. "It"s Tom Kivelson."
"What about him?" I asked, alarmed.
"Didn"t you hear? He got splashed with burning wax," the hunter said.
"His whole back was on fire; I don"t know whether he"s alive now or not."
So that was who I"d seen screaming in agony while the firemen tore his burning clothes away. I pushed through, with Cesario behind me, and found Joe Kivelson and Mohandas Feinberg and Corkscrew Finnegan and Oscar Fujisawa and a dozen other captains and ships" officers in a huddle.
"Joe," I said, "I just heard about Tom. Do you know anything yet?"
Joe turned. "Oh, Walt. Why, as far as we know, he"s alive. He was alive when they got him to the hospital."
"That"s at the s.p.a.ceport?" I unhooked my handphone and got Dad. He"d heard about a man being splashed, but didn"t know who it was. He said he"d call the hospital at once. A few minutes later, he was calling me back.
"He"s been badly burned, all over the back. They"re preparing to do a deep graft on him. They said his condition was serious, but he was alive five minutes ago."
I thanked him and hung up, relaying the information to the others.
They all looked worried. When the screen girl at a hospital tells you somebody"s serious, instead of giving you the well-as-can-be-expected routine, you know it is serious. Anybody who makes it alive to a hospital, these days, has an excellent chance, but injury cases do die, now and then, after they"ve been brought in. They are the "serious" cases.
"Well, I don"t suppose there"s anything we can do," Joe said heavily.
"We can clean up on the gang that started this fire," Oscar Fujisawa said. "Do it now; then if Tom doesn"t make it, he"s paid for in advance."
Oscar, I recalled, was the one who had been the most impressed with Bish Ware"s argument that lynching Steve Ravick would cost the hunters the four million sols they might otherwise be able to recover, after a few years" interstellar litigation, from his bank account on Terra.
That reminded me that I hadn"t even thought of Bish since I"d left the _Times_. I called back. Dad hadn"t heard a word from him.