Suddenly the captain sighed, took a sip of water, and sat down heavily on a wooden bench. He was exhausted from the almost ceaseless activity and strain of command, and the flippant attitude of some of his high- tech passengers was obviously grating on his nerves.
The momentary silence was broken by John Hertzler, who spoke in a loud voice but clearly was sensitive to Nordstrom’s annoyance.
“We want to be helpful, Captain,” he said. “And we recognize that right now we have to rely on primitive ways of doing things. But at the same time, we want to move to higher technological levels as soon as possible. And in order to do this, we have to know what materials are available for us to work with. When we met the other day, one of our South African engineers was telling us about the area’s natural resources; but his presentation was limited to agriculture and animals.”
At this point, Hertzler turned to Dr. Wilson Hardy for help. “You know, Wilson, you promised us that this fellow Marshall was going to fill out the picture for us. How about it? What are our prospects of working our way out of the horse-and-buggy age?”
“You’re right, John,” said Hardy. “Pieter Kemm gave us his report, and said that Kelvin Marshall would fill us in on the mineral resources.” Then, turning around to look for Marshall, he said, “I guess this is as good a time as any. Assuming Captain Nordstrom agrees.”
The captain wearily waved his assent.
Kelvin Marshall was a tall, heavy, ruddy-faced man with thin, graying hair, who rose with difficulty from where he had been sitting in the sand. The manufacture of chairs was not yet a high priority among the survivors.
“If you’re looking for mineral resources,” he began, “you’ve come to the right place. We have it all, and in huge amounts: coal and iron, copper and nickel, lead and zinc, tin and platinum, silver and gold, and on and on. Also everything you need for building: lime, clay, gypsum, and different kinds of stone. You may not want rare and strategic metals right away, but for those materials we are numero uno, a veritable global headquarters. I have the figures right here.” He referred to a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled some notes. “Manganese—eighty-one percent of the world reserves; chromium—sixty-eight percent; vanadium—forty-five percent; zirconium—twenty-six percent; titanium—seventeen percent; and more.
“Ready for atomic energy? Well, when you are, we have six percent of the uranium known to be in the earth. We also have proven reserves of natural gas. The only thing that we do not have—and I’ll be the first to admit it—is petroleum. But that’s where my company, Sasol, comes in. We are—or were—the only people in the world to have developed an economical process for converting coal into liquid fuel. Thanks to the international boycott that deprived us of petroleum imports during the apartheid days, we solved our problem through technology. At the moment, our factories are doubtless burned to cinders like practically every other structure on the face of the globe. But the knowledge is preserved in our plans and manuals, many of which I brought with me for the seminar—and up here,” he said, smiling, tapping the side of his head with his index finger.
“Let me add,” he continued, “that in addition to petroleum, we have ethanol. We make it from sugar cane, and for years we’ve been adding two to four percent ethanol to all our petrol. Until about 1970, we used ethanol— with the trade name Union—as an alternative fuel. Speaking of sugar, we also make an alcoholic drink called Cane Spirit. Sort of like vodka. If your car runs out of fuel, and you’ve got a bottle of that stuff with you, no problem. You pour it in your tank, and it’s sure to get you home.”
General White of the Army Engineers stood and asked to be recognized. “You know, Wilson,” he said, addressing Dr. Hardy, “I can see that you and Hertzler and a few others are having a good time planning the world of the future, complete with skyscrapers, computers, and airports. But let me remind you that we are scrambling around on this beach trying to provide some shelter for twenty-five hundred needy people, and we’re working with turned-over lifeboats, odd pieces of driftwood, some blankets, a few patches of canvas, and just about any bit of useful debris we can find. It doesn’t do us a damned bit of good to know that there’s a whole bunch of coal in the ground when it’s not next door, and all we’ve got to dig with is a few sticks.”
“I take your point, General,” Hardy replied. Even-tempered by nature, he had promised himself not to allow difference of opinion and dissent to make him angry when he was presiding with Captain Nordstrom over these discussions. “Pieter and Kelvin, what do you think our prospects are for actually getting at all this wonderful stuff that lies underground? As the general says, we do have immediate needs to balance against hopes for the future.”
“I can tell you something about the coal,” said Marshall, “since that’s a big part of my business. It’s true that South Africa’s largest deposits are far to the north; but there are several productive collieries right here in KwaZulu Natal—at Dundee, Glencoe, Vryheid, Newcastle, and Utrecht, just to name a few. These mines may be a couple of hundred kilometers inland, but they all used to be linked by train and highway to Richards Bay, which happens to be where we are right now. I dare say that with a little fixing up these roadbeds will do nicely for ox-drawn wagons.”
As the discussion turned to details of mining and transport, the crowd that had gathered to hear the news from Ulundi began to disperse. But Marshall continued his dissertation undeterred.
“Two hundred kilometers too far, you say? How about the Zululand Anthracite Mine, right near Ulundi? Or better still, look near Heatonville, just north of Empangeni, which is just a few kilometers up the hill from here. Coal was actually mined there for a short period in the 1980s. Most South African coal is fairly near the surface, which should be good news for anyone starting out with limited labor and primitive tools. Of course, if you don’t want to dig at all, just go to Nongoma. It’s a bit more than one hundred kilometers away, but the outcrop seams are right there at the surface, ready for the picking. Local folk come with their wheelbarrows and take home some very high-quality pieces.
“So, don’t worry about having access to coal, now and practically forever. We have all that we need, some of it is not that hard to get to, and the geologists tell us there is lots more. They’ve identified a seam parallel to the coast, starting not far from here and running for hundreds of kilometers up into Mozambique.
“As you know, once you have coal, you have the beginning of your industrial revolution. Not only can we burn the coal for power, but we can also use it to make oil, and all the things one can make from oil, for example, acrylic fibers, explosives, fertilizers, ammonia, phenols, waxes, paints—our company made more than one hundred twenty products.” Marshall’s voice was growing louder and his motions more animated.
“Thank you, Kelvin,” Wilson Hardy said, breaking in as diplomatically as possible. “But before we can rebuild your very sophisticated factories, we must have some very sophisticated equipment, and for that we’ll need sophisticated machine tools, and in order to make those machine tools we’ll need more rudimentary machine tools, and so forth back through several generations of tools, and before we can start that process we’ll require something of a steel industry. So, assuming we can get the coal, where are we going to get the iron?”
“Pieter’s the one to tell you about that,” Marshall said, “and he’ll probably tell you that all you have to do is look under your feet.”
Pieter Kemm stepped forward. “What Kelvin means,” he said, “is that my company, Richards Bay Minerals, mines the sand dunes right here in Richards Bay, just down the beach a bit. It’s an extraordinary story: These dark sand dunes, two kilometers wide and seventeen kilometers long, have been found to contain concentrated amounts of titanium, zircon, and high-purity iron. Through the ages, these minerals, originating in our mountains, have been washed down to the sea and then redeposited by wind and waves in the form of dunes. Since the 1970s, the mining of these dunes has provided a large share of the world market in these valuable materials. I’m sure that, as the reconstruction of the world begins, our mining and factory operations will play an important role.
“In the meantime, although the largest iron deposits lie far to the north and west, six hundred kilometers away and more, I feel certain there is enough closer by to take care of our needs for a good long while. In Greytown, just one hundred kilometers distant, the very first commercial iron in South Africa was mined and smelted in 1901. The works were on a farm named Proclamation and were operated by a Mr. C. H. Green. The ore was of good quality, and although the mine was abandoned long ago, I don’t see why it couldn’t be reopened. At least that’s what one of my geologist friends told me just last year. In the Dundee area, already mentioned in connection with coal, iron was mined back in the forties, and I’m sure there is more to be had for enterprising pioneers.”
As Kemm paced back and forth under the canvas roof, which flapped occasionally in the breeze, a feeling of growing excitement could be sensed. The morning had started with good news about a surviving population in
