Chapter 16: Civil War Postponed

The moaner went on for thirty seconds, like a banshee mourning its nearest and dearest. It was everywhere, Main City Level and the four levels below. What we have in Port Sandor is a volunteer fire organization--or disorganization, rather--of six independent companies, each of which cherishes enmity for all the rest. It’s the best we can do, though; if we depended on the city government, we’d have no fire protection at all. They do have a central alarm system, though, and the Times is connected with that.

Then the moaner stopped, and there were four deep whistle blasts for Fourth Ward, and four more shrill ones for Bottom Level. There was an instant’s silence, and then a bedlam of shouts from the hunter-boat captains. That was where the tallow-wax that was being held out from the Co-operative was stored.

“Shut up!” Dad roared, the loudest I’d ever heard him speak. “Shut up and listen!”

“Fourth Ward, Bottom Level,” a voice from the fire-alarm speaker said. “This is a tallow-wax fire. It is not the Co-op wax; it is wax stored in an otherwise disused area. It is dangerously close to stored 50-mm cannon ammunition, and it is directly under the pulpwood lumber plant, on the Third Level Down, and if the fire spreads up to that, it will endanger some of the growing vats at the carniculture plant on the Second Level Down. I repeat, this is a tallow-wax fire. Do not use water or chemical extinguishers.”

About half of the Vigilantes, businessmen who belonged to one or another of the volunteer companies had bugged out for their fire stations already. The Buddhist priest and a couple of doctors were also leaving. The rest, mostly hunter-ship men, were standing around looking at one another.

Oscar Fujisawa gave a sour laugh. “That diversion idea of mine was all right,” he said. “The only trouble was that Steve Ravick thought of it first.”

“You think he started the fire?” Dad began, and then gave a sourer laugh than Oscar’s. “Am I dumb enough to ask that?”

I had started assembling equipment as soon as the feint on the Municipal Building and the attack on Hunters’ Hall had gotten into the discussion stage. I would use a jeep that had a heavy-duty audiovisual recording and transmitting outfit on it, and for situations where I’d have to leave the jeep and go on foot, I had a lighter outfit like the one Oscar had brought with him in the Pequod’s boat. Then I had my radio for two-way conversation with the office. And, because this wasn’t likely to be the sort of war in which the rights of noncombatants like war correspondents would be taken very seriously, I had gotten out my Sterberg 7.7-mm.

Dad saw me buckling it on, and seemed rather distressed.

“Better leave that, Walt,” he said. “You don’t want to get into any shooting.”

Logical, I thought. If you aren’t prepared for something, it just won’t happen. There’s an awful lot of that sort of thinking going on. As I remember my Old Terran history, it was even indulged in by governments, at one time. None of them exists now.

“You know what all crawls into the Bottom Level,” I reminded him. “If you don’t, ask Mr. Murell, here. One sent him to the hospital.”

Dad nodded; I had a point there. The abandoned sections of Bottom Level are full of tread-snails and other assorted little nasties, and the heat of the fire would stir them all up and start them moving around. Even aside from the possibility that, having started the fire, Steve Ravick’s gang would try to take steps to keep it from being put out too soon, a gun was going to be a comforting companion, down there.

“Well, stay out of any fighting. Your job’s to get the news, not play hero in gun fights. I’m no hero; that’s why I’m sixty years old. I never knew many heroes that got that old.”

It was my turn to nod. On that, Dad had a point. I said something about getting the news, not making it, and checked the chamber and magazine of the Sterberg, and then slung my radio and picked up the audiovisual outfit.

Tom and Joe Kivelson had left already, to round up the scattered Javelin crew for fire fighting. The attack on the Municipal Building and on Hunters’ Hall had been postponed, but it wasn’t going to be abandoned. Oscar and Professor Hartzenbosch and Dad and a couple of others were planning some sort of an observation force of a few men for each place, until the fire had been gotten out or under control. Glenn Murell decided he’d go out with me, at least as far as the fire, so we went down to the vehicle port and got the jeep out. Main City Level Broadway was almost deserted; everybody had gone down below where the excitement was. We started down the nearest vehicle shaft and immediately got into a jam, above a lot of stuff that was going into the shaft from the First Level Down, mostly manipulators and that sort of thing. There were no police around, natch, and a lot of volunteers were trying to direct traffic and getting in each other’s way. I got some views with the jeep camera, just to remind any of the public who needed reminding what our city administration wasn’t doing in an emergency. A couple of pieces of apparatus, a chemical tank and a pumper marked SALAMANDER VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY NO. 3 came along, veered out of the jam, and continued uptown.

“If they know another way down, maybe we’d better follow them,” Murell suggested.

“They’re not going down. They’re going to the lumber plant, in case the fire spreads upward,” I said. “They wouldn’t be taking that sort of equipment to a wax fire.”

“Why not?”

I looked at him. “I thought you were in the wax business,” I said.

“I am, but I’m no chemist. I don’t know anything about how wax burns. All I know is what it’s used for, roughly, and who’s in the market for it.”

“Well, you know about those jumbo molecules, don’t you?” I asked. “They have everything but the kitchen sink in them, including enough oxygen to sustain combustion even under water or in a vacuum. Not enough oxygen to make wax explode, like powder, but enough to keep it burning. Chemical extinguishers are all smothering agents, and you just can’t smother a wax fire. And water’s worse than useless.”

He wanted to know why.

“Burning wax is a liquid. The melting point is around 250 degrees Centigrade. Wax ignites at 750. It has no boiling point, unless that’s the burning point. Throw water on a wax fire and you get a steam explosion, just as you would if you threw it on molten metal, and that throws the fire around and spreads it.”

“If it melts that far below the ignition point, wouldn’t it run away before it caught fire?”