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
‘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
‘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?’
‘Certainly—if you regard them as limitations?
‘Very well,’ said Jacko, ‘come and prove your point.’
By the time they arrived at the span the hot-spot was beginning to break. Even as they watched, the ground lurched and broke as the angry pressures blew the topsoil apart. Then came a heavier explosion, the ground cracked into a fissure and a column of fire spurted irregularly through a spray of liquid, incandescent magma, which congealed around the blowhole to form the foundations of the cone. About fifteen metres above, the span appeared to dance in the stream of heated gases, and was soon blackened and scorched . It’s demise was inevitable.
Ensign Harris came over at a run, pulling and old-fashioned mortar on a trolley, and was followed by Malu and two engineers carrying a rack of mortar bombs. They set up the mortar at a reasonable distance and proceeded to prime the bombs.
‘Are you crazy?’ asked Jacko.
‘Yes,’ said Fritz. ‘That’s my forte. I want to see what happens if we put a mortar bomb smack inside that crater. You’re the weapons expert. Can you do that without damage to the trestles?’
Jacko estimated the position silently. ‘With a couple of ranging shots I can pin the hole all right, but the trestles will be in the hands of the gods.’
The result was even more spectacular than anticipated. The first shot fell short, and the mortar was adjusted slightly to lower the trajectory a fraction. The second bomb rose in a brief arc and fell with careful precision into the mouth of the flaming cone. A split second’s pause and then Hell itself was unleashed. The pyramid of toffee magma split wide with a murderous roar; gouts of flame and incandescent lava boiled and foamed high into the air and collapsed into a storm of white-hot cinders and writhing jets of burning gas. At the base, where the cone had stood, the blowhole angrily vomited a widening pool of boiling lava like some grotesque festering sore.
‘Another?’ asked Jacko.
Fritz nodded. ‘We might as well be fried sheep as roast lambs.’
The third bomb, too, was accurately placed. This time the lava rose like a living wall and plunged outward, splashing and streaming its magnificent debris up to thirty metres from the seething well. A sheet of roaring flame rose up with frenzied fingers and enveloped the protesting members of the rail-span overhead.
The blast of heat and awesome fury sent the watchers scurrying for shelter, with Harris fearing for the safety of his remaining munitions. Only Fritz stayed put, his clothes smouldering, shielding his eyes with his hands and overcome with the enormity of the havoc he had wrought. Then the flaming torches died and the white-hot
