yard which shouldn’t exist outside of a bad dream, six branch lines which don’t go anywhere, and no trains to try out anyway. Add the fact that we can’t get any steel and the probability that anything we do build will be ruined by more eruptions within six months, and I surmise we are well and truly screwed. I don’t know whether to blow the whole lot up and start again or to leave it as an object lesson on how
‘Now who’s being conventional?’ grinned Jacko. ‘I should have thought that this morass of mechanical ingenuity would have gladdened your heart no end.’
‘No,’ said Fritz, ‘and I’ll tell you why. You see, its builders paid no attention to basics. There is a certain idiot futility about building something destined for sure destruction. Even a bodger must work to the principle of the greatest return for the minimum of effort. That’s why this damned railway is not only unsound but also needlessly complicated.
‘Take this switching grid, for instance. It’s not only vulnerable but it’s largely unnecessary. It’s designed to be completely automatic, self-routing, self-isolating, self-signalling and probably foolproof. Even Terran computer- controlled rail networks have nothing to match this except in theory. But the faults result from limited vision. We could have done the whole thing with about a tenth of the parts and ten times the reliability.’
‘We may have to,’ said Jacko. He pointed outwards across the tracks to where thick motes of dust and cinder were dancing in the sun. ‘Unless I miss my guess there’s magma pushing up from down there.’
‘I want,’ said Fritz van Noon, ‘to start at least fifty klicks out on something nice and simple. We should have worked out the necessary technique by the time we get back to Hellsport. What type of engines did they use, anyway?’
Jacko drew a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ He sounded depressed, ‘But the engines were even stranger than the tracks. A locomotive designed in the town of Juara, about a hundred klicks from here, was a steam-engine run on dried resins. Two locos from Manin, down by the coast, were sort of battery-electric jobs. One from a place called Nath came home on some kind of super gyroscope, and there was one using an internal- combustion engine run on alcohol made by fermenting bean husks. I’ve no idea who made that one. There are others so weird no-one has a clue how they operated at all.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me!’ said Fritz dryly. ‘These people may be able to beat us at our own game, Jacko. Talk about unorthodox engineering! We’re a set of ruddy amateurs compared to them.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Jacko. ‘In my youth I thought I was the world’s worst crackpot screwball. Then I met up with you and found that, in comparison, I was merely a sane, sensible, hard-working engineer. I never got over the disappointment of that hour of realization. I have a feeling these people will find themselves in a similar predicament. Under the heavy hand of Fritz van Noon the Cannis railway will never be the same again.’
‘Thank you for that sly vote of confidence,’ said Fritz. ‘Now this is what I propose to do. I want you to take a helicopter to the Callin area, find the loco and bring it back to there—’ He stabbed his finger on the map. ‘There’s a two kilometre break in the track that will suit us just fine. I’m taking the rest of UE to that point and we’ll repair the break - if we can. It will give us a workable area down as far as Juara. I want to complete that run before the Callin bean harvest is ripe. That gives us about two months.’
‘Two kilometres of new track in two months? You’re off your rocker!’
‘Naturally,’ said Fritz. ‘Else I wouldn’t be running UE…’
The town of Juara lay on a crest of sullen rock. The shelf of granite had reduced the volcanic activity of the region to a tolerable level, and made habitation possible at the expense of the fertility of the soil. The railhead was untouched, but as the line swung again north-west and then north of the plateau it entered a low basin where the slag-cases, dunned with vegetation, stood up thick and tall like armless trees in some fantastic petrified forest.
This was a bad point for the rail. From the air it was obvious by the tortuous twisting of the route that the line had been diverted from disaster and rebuilt at least a dozen times. Occasional sections were completely isolated from the remains of the existing track and lay as forlorn crescents of rotting railway awaiting trains that could never come.
Six kilometres out from Juara was the break. The railway had literally been shaken to pieces. For nearly two kilometres the remnants of twisted girderwork and trestles sprawled on the broken ground, tied together with the soft iron of the rails. North again by over forty kilometres lay Callin and the fertile mountains of Cansoun.
In the centre of the break, the cargo aero-sleds rendezvoused to drop the heavier equipment. The fragile, alloy Knudsen huts were hastily assembled and staggered, two by two, between the tall mini-volcano spires. Prefabricated workshops were completed in record time as soon as a bulldozer had cleared a sufficient site. The packaged forge and the rolling mill were moved on air cushions to key points on the site.
Working feverishly and without obvious direction, the engineers of UE carved themselves a base on the alien territory and settled themselves in. By nightfall a new functional township had arisen beneath the dark towers of Cannis.
Fritz was well pleased with the achievement: Its success was marked by a subtlety which would have passed all but the keenest of observers. For UE was not a team as such; it was a collection of individuals. Nobody planned or directed, except in the very broadest way, but each engineer was trained to analyse the salient points of an operation and to guide his own activities to achieve the maximum effect. It was the myth of anarchy on a practical, productive scale—and it worked! The patient genius of Fritz van Noon had wrought a philosophic miracle.
At the crack of dawn the following day, a skinny, brown-skinned humanoid walked in from the desert.
Fritz had heard that the local population was inquisitive to a fault, and a casual inspection of any work in progress was slways part of the scheme of things. After poking and probing into every conceivable crevice, the native he went from hut to hut harrying the occupants with atrocious pidgin English. He found nobody who could understand him until he came across Harris, who had a flair for languages. Harris realized the worth of the contact and hurried him off to meet Fritz van Noon.
‘His name is Malu,’ said Harris. ‘I think he’s local engineer. He seems to want to help with the railways.’
Fritz smiled quizzically. ‘Can he find me any local labour?’
Heated discussion followed. Finally Harris turned back to Fritz. ‘If I understand him correctly, there is plenty of local labour but they won’t work in gangs under direction. They’re strictly independent buggers, sir.’
‘Well,’ said Fritz. ‘Point out that it’s their harvest we’re trying to get to Juara. It’s no skin off our nose if it doesn’t go through. Also they obviously don’t have the skill or the ability to do the job themselves else they’d have done it already.’
‘I think I already said that, but it’s no dice. They won’t play. I reckon they’d sooner starve than take orders from off-worlders.’
‘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
