Colin Kapp - The Unorthodox Engineers

‘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 shape 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?’