‘Now I know you’re nuts,’ said Jacko. ‘If you haven’t got volcanoes then you haven’t got any, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘Is that so? Then I think you have something yet to learn. This may not be one of the most brilliant moments of my career but it may well prove to be the most spectacular.’
At the end of the line, where the next trestle ought to have been, Harris, and Fanning, the UE geologist, had the mobile drilling rig assembled. Fanning was taking core samples from the drill and shaking his head sadly.
‘I don’t like this, Fritz. We’ve penetrated to forty metres and the stuff is coming up hotter than hell. I should hate the drill to break into a high pressure region. We’d all be very dead, very quickly.’
‘How near are we to a molten layer?’
‘Can’t tell exactly, but the ground-penetrating radar puts it at about seventy metres, plus or minus ten.’
‘Near enough,’ said Fritz. ‘If the stuff the drill is picking up is fusible then I think we can stop right here.’
Fanning breathed a sigh of relief and began to withdraw the drill. When it was out they collapsed the drilling rig, and the bulldozer hauled it from the site.
Then Harris returned dragging a trolley bearing several metal cylinders. He looked a little nervous. Fritz waved everyone away from the drilling, pulled the pin from the safety-disarm and heaved one of the cylinders end-first down the well. Nothing happened except that after about a minute thick yellow smoke began to issue from the hole. Fritz cursed and, approaching warily, dropped another cylinder after the first.
He scarcely got away in time. There was a crack like the voice of thunder, and a ball of violent, sparking incandescence screamed into the sky. Then flames jetted up, a scorching burst of fire leaping from the soil like some demented blow-torch. Molten magma, entrained in the superheated gases, was hurled high in the air and descended as a scatter of singeing hail driven on the light cross-winds.
The onlookers fled in confusion. By the time that Fritz reached shelter his uniform was smouldering in a dozen places and his face and hands were red from exposure to the heat and covered with superficial burns from the searing fall-out. Jacko had fared little better, having waited to make sure that Fritz was able to escape. They sat down on a broken slag-case, dabbing balm from a first-aid pack on their burns and watching the hectic blast as it roared into the sky.
Slowly the cone began to form as lava congealed around the flaming throat, and the fiery torch rode up with slow magnificence as the cone became a candle and then a tower with a bright and angry beacon at the top.
‘Voila!’ said Fritz. ‘I give you a volcano.’
‘Hell, I’ll give you volcanoes!’ said Jacko, dabbing at his burns. ‘Next time you try this Guy Fawkes stunt you’re strictly on your own. What the heck did you drop down that hole?’
Fritz smiled. ‘A thermite bomb—and a cylinder of oxygen for luck. The intense heat generated by the bomb just above a bed of active igneous magma was more than sufficient to trigger an eruption. This time the process was channelled by the bore-hole, so we got a cone instead of a puddle. We’ll have to adjust the thermite charge to tailor the height of the resultant cone, but that’s not difficult.’
‘Only where we have to,’ said Fritz. ‘And even that will take more thermite bombs than we can come by honestly. Fortunately there’s a way round that. Up on the Juara shelf is the Command weapon stores.
They’ve more munitions there than we’re ever likely to need.’
‘But will they let us have them?’
‘No,’ said Fritz, ‘but that’s never stopped Harris before.’
Several days later the new volcano was extinct. A crazy scaffold was set up round the cone and the top neatly truncated with power chisels and pneumatic drills. As a structure it stood supremely suited for its job. The siliceous rock had set like concrete, and had it been cast deliberately by hand it could not have stood more straight or firm. The yoke was placed around the cone top and secured by hooks into the narrow crater. Prefabricated spans were trimmed to length and joined up to the existing structure. The result was the finest trestle that Cannis IV had ever possessed.
For UE it was an hour of jubilation. The forgotten gimmicks and the half-formed innovations suddenly leaped to new promise now it was certain the line was going through. At the end of a three week burst of energy the last rail of the Juara line was bolted into place. The locomotive returned to Callin with improvised rolling-stock and two days later chugged triumphantly through to Juara with the first load of the finest bean harvest for years.
Then it blew itself to bits.
‘And something else,’ said Jacko. ‘They’ve just arrested Harris at the Command weapons store. So we won’t be using thermite bombs any more.’
It was summer in Hellsport. Flies and dust thickened the air, whilst the humid heat was relentless and intolerable. Even in the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Command HQ the fine dust crept through the filters and the humidity defied the monitors to hold the moisture content and the pressure down.
Sweltering in the heat, Colonel Ivan Nash was about ready to chew bricks anyway. So when the shouting began, he emerged from his office in a thoroughly bad mood. ‘What the
One of the native helpers said with sly humour, ‘It is said that a train comes in from Juara bearing the greatest man on Cannis.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Nash irritably. ‘There are no trains left on the Juara-Callin line.’
‘That may be true,’ the native answered smugly, ‘but something is coming down the line. Look, you can see it for yourself.’
Nash fetched his field glasses and scanned the railway, which seemed to be dancing in the slow heat-haze. Something
Nash choked and closed his eyes. ‘That
The ‘train’ bore a curious resemblance to an army cargo helicopter, minus rotors, and slung on a low truck, the wheels of which were broad grooved rollers. Various items of machinery were slung about the outside of the strange assembly, and on the front, perched awkwardly and in imminent danger of falling off, was Malu. He was waving a large red flag…
The train entered the terminus, reversed to another rail, then shuttled back and forwards just to show the proficiency of its roller wheels in manoeuvring on any gauge of line. The local workers went wild with enthusiasm, and shouted and cheered until Nash thought his head was going to split. He was still staring from his office window when Fritz van Noon came into the room.
The Colonel weighed him up silently. ‘All right, Fritz, you win—so far. I never thought you’d really make it. Too bad you had to step out of line to do it.’
‘You didn’t exactly help,’ said Fritz. ‘I thought we were finished when you had Ensign Harris arrested for stealing the thermite bombs. Fortunately Malu, our tame local genius, cooked us up a substitute using what I believe might be rocket fuel.’
‘Well,’ said Nash. ‘A very worthy effort. Too bad I have to throw the book at you. Unorthodox engineering I could learn to stand, but stealing government property is a very different matter.’
‘Is it?’ asked Fritz. ‘I have a warrant here authorizing the release of Ensign Harris. It’s neatly signed, sealed and counter-signed by Terran GenCom.’
‘No dice!’ said Nash. ‘I mean to court-martial Harris good and proper. Even GenCom can’t dictate to me on the internal administration of my own sector. With any luck Harris will still be in jail when the sun freezes over. And as soon as I can get evidence of complicity
‘No need,’ said Fritz complacently. ‘I always have a release warrant for Ensign Harris filed away. We usually need it somewhere along the way.’
Nash stared at him grimly. ‘You mean to say that this man’s conduct is officially condoned?’
‘Condoned?’ Fritz chuckled. ‘As far as I am aware the only crime Harris committed was to get caught. For that I will personally reprimand him.’
‘But this is preposterous!’ said Nash. The man’s a
