Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume 24

I surveyed the immense thing, wondering how I could possibly be of any use. "You said you thought there'd been attacks? What kind of attacks?"

He led me over to the great crank on the high pressure cylinder side. It was whirling around and around, almost too fast to follow with my eyes. "See that thing on top of the main crankshaft bearing?" he asked, pointing to the trunnion bearing behind the crank.

On top of the heavy ironwork was a polished copper fitting a bit bigger than my fist. "That's an oil cup," he said. "It's full of oil, and the oil in it slowly drips down into the bearing. Without oil, the bearing would burn up and wreck the engine."

"Burn up?"

Scott paused before he answered. "Ever see how hot a wagon axle gets if there's no grease on the hub? This wheel is turning so fast that the metal itself will melt if it runs dry."

"So what happened here?" I asked.

"Every half hour, the engine master comes through and tops up the oil in each of the oil cups. A month and a half ago, right after we got this engine working, the bearing caught fire. Afterward, we found that the oil cup was missing, broken off. The engine master swore that the cup was there not twenty minutes before."

I looked at the cup. "But the engine wasn't wrecked?"

"It came close. The engine master was nearby, and when he saw the smoke, he killed the engine. We had to re-turn the axle and replace the brasses before we put the engine back in service."

"So we're looking for someone who knows the engine needs oil," I said. "This engine master you mentioned, I should talk to him."

"Probably," Scott said, "but Franz was badly hurt in the next accident. Come here."

He led me into the space between the two cylinders. There was a confusion of moving parts there, with the great wheel spinning madly not far in front of us. A cast-iron case as big as the great wheel gave off a hum that sounded like the electric switchyard outside.

"What's all this," I asked, and got more than I wanted. The great wheel was the flywheel, the humming case beside it was the alternator , with another wheel inside it called the forty-eight pole rotor. I'd been right about the sound. The alternator was the part of the engine that actually made electricity. The spinning shaft along the side of each cylinder was a camshaft that worked the valves, and the whirligig on the end of each camshaft was the governor that controlled the engine speed.

"My little engine at home has piston valves, but that kind of valve doesn't work very well at high speed. When we started working on this engine design, some of us wanted to use Corliss valves, but the Masaniellos convinced us to do it with balanced poppet valves. They're faster and the parts are easier to machine. The camshaft here works the poppets."

I was totally baffled, except that I could clearly see his finger pointing at the spinning shaft he called the camshaft. "What was the next accident you were talking about?" I asked, trying to bring things back to something I might be able to understand.

"That's what I was getting at," Scott said. "Right after we got this engine restarted, the head of the low-pressure cylinder blew. Steam and hot water sprayed out and it scalded Franz, the engine master I was talking about earlier."

"Blew?" I asked.

"The end of the cylinder exploded," he said.

"Like a burst cannon?" I asked, remembering a gun crew I'd once seen shredded by the final shot they fired.

"The cylinder casting held," Scott said. "This is it, but the head cracked and some of the bolts that held it on pulled out. We had to put in new bolts and use the head intended for Unit Seven to repair it."

"While we were repairing it, we found that the cam for the exhaust valve at that end of the cylinder was loose. We'd just changed the valve timing when the bearing failed, so I can't believe that the key that held it to the shaft fell out on its own. With that cam loose, some of the steam that should have come out through the valve turned to water. The water had nowhere to go and the piston was pounding on it one hundred fifty times a minute. The water had to go somewhere, and with the valve stuck closed, the end of the cylinder exploded."

I scratched my head. "So we're looking for someone who really knows how these engines work. How many of you uptimers know enough to do this kind of damage?"

"Anyone who's ever worked on cars knows how much damage you can do by letting an engine run dry," he said. "The trick with the exhaust valve, though, you really need to understand steam engines to know the damage that can cause. This engine has eight valves total, and there are only two of them, the low pressure exhaust valves, that can wreck the engine if the cams are loosened."

"So it has to be a steam engine expert," I said, frowning.

"Right. And there aren't many of us."

"How will you prevent it from happening again?" I asked, as Scott and I looked out over the machinery hall. "Some o' those accidents might really have been accidents, and even if we catch whoever did it, there might be others."

Scott scratched his head. "We learn something from each problem we have. We're working on automatic oilers, so nobody has to climb around in dangerous places to get oil into the bearings. After that cylinder head blew, we redesigned the poppets. We needed to do that anyway, balanced valves are harder to make than we thought. Each valve is really two valves on one stem, and our first ones always leaked. The new ones have a spring in them to help get a better seal, but the spring also lets the valve leak if the cylinder goes over pressure, just enough to protect the engine."

About then, a whistle blew. "Lunchtime," Scott said. "There's a lunch room in the plant, or we could go out to eat."

"A lunch room?" I asked, uncertainly.

The place, it seemed, was a room where you could buy food. American style sandwiches, the little cakes Americans call cookies, and a choice of water, milk or weak beer to drink. I've eaten worse, but I'd have preferred better.

Scott looked quizzically at me as I sat down. "You're a soldier with MacKay's regiment, right? How'd you get involved with police work?"

"When the regiment moves into a town, someone has to smooth things over with the town watch," I said. "The watch and the local militia can be our best friends, but if we hit it off wrong, well, they're armed as well as we are. I was pushed into police work, as you call it, by stopping a fight.

"What happened?" he asked, after swallowing a bit of his food.

"MacKay was new to the regiment. This was when we were in the marshes up north. He didn't know the regiment, we didn't know the land, and we set up camp outside this village. The quartermaster went to buy cattle, and suddenly, it seemed we were about to do battle with the militia. I saw it happen, just a little thing, really. MacKay had assigned John Storm to help the quartermaster. John was a wild one, God rest his soul. He pushed a militiaman aside as they walked into the market. Instead of pushing back, the guard pulled his sword."

"You did something?" Scott asked, after I'd eaten a bit of my sandwich.

"Aye, I whacked John on the rump with the flat o' my blade. That stopped it from going bad, but John complained to MacKay. Ever since, MacKay's pulled me into dealings with town watch. By Badenburg, he had me in charge of working with the watch. When we came to Grantville, MacKay asked me to work with your police even before he understood how different they are from the kind o' town guard we expected."

I took a bite, and then pulled him back to the big question. "So who knows enough about the power plant to plan the attacks you've had?"

Scott looked thoughtful as he chewed. "Uptimers mostly. You can rule out most of the power plant staff because they know the old turbines, not the new engines. It's got to be someone who really knows steam. That means me, Andy Frystack, and Andy Prickett. We're the three shift supervisors. Then, there's Vince Masaniello and his sons Lou and Charlie. They're doing lots of consulting on the project, but mostly, they're not here. Dick Shaver and Monty Szymanski have also been involved, but damn it, I can't see how any of them could do something like this."