It looked like a horizontal volcanic eruption; burning wax blowing away from the fire for close to a hundred feet into the clear space beyond. The derricks and manipulators and the cars and jeeps with grapnels went in on both sides, snatching and dragging wax away. Because they had the wind from the blowers behind them, the men could work a lot closer, and the fire wasn’t spreading as rapidly. They were saving a lot of wax; each one of those big sausages that the lifters picked up and floated away weighed a thousand pounds, and was worth, at the new price, eight hundred sols.
Finally, they got everything away that they could, and then the blowers were shut down and the two dredge shovels moved in, scooping up the burning sludge and carrying it away, scattering it on the concrete. I would have judged that there had been six or seven million sols’ worth of wax in the piles to start with, and that a little more than half of it had been saved before they pulled the last cylinder away.
The work slacked off; finally, there was nothing but the two dredges doing anything, and then they backed away and let down, and it was all over but standing around and watching the scattered fire burn itself out. I looked at my watch. It was two hours since the first alarm had come in. I took a last swing around, got the spaceport people gathering up wax and hauling it away, and the broken lake of fire that extended downtown from where the stacks had been, and then I floated my jeep over to the sandwich-and-coffee stand and let down, getting out. Maybe, I thought, I could make some kind of deal with somebody like Interworld News on this. It would make a nice thrilling feature-program item. Just a little slice of life from Fenris, the Garden Spot of the Galaxy.
I got myself a big zhoumy-loin sandwich with hot sauce and a cup of coffee, made sure that my portable radio was on, and circulated among the fire fighters, getting comments. Everybody had been a hero, natch, and they were all very unbashful about admitting it. There was a great deal of wisecracking about Al Devis buying himself a ringside seat for the fire he’d started. Then I saw Cesário Vieira and joined him.
“Have all the fire you want, for a while?” I asked him.
“Brother, and how! We could have used a little of this over on Hermann Reuch’s Land, though. Have you seen Tom around anywhere?”
“No. Have you?”
“I saw him over there, about an hour ago. I guess he stayed on this side. After they started blowing it, I was over on Al Devis’s side.” He whistled softly. “Was that a mess!”
There was still a crowd at the fire, but they seemed all to be townspeople. The hunters had gathered where Joe Kivelson had been directing operations. We finished our sandwiches and went over to join them. As soon as we got within earshot, I found that they were all in a very ugly mood.
“Don’t fool around,” one man was saying as we came up. “Don’t even bother looking for a rope. Just shoot them as soon as you see them.”
Well, I thought, a couple of million sols’ worth of tallow-wax, in which they all owned shares, was something to get mean about. I said something like that.
“It’s not that,” another man said. “It’s Tom Kivelson.”
“What about him?” I asked, alarmed.
“Didn’t you hear? He got splashed with burning wax,” the hunter said. “His whole back was on fire; I don’t know whether he’s alive now or not.”
So that was who I’d seen screaming in agony while the firemen tore his burning clothes away. I pushed through, with Cesário behind me, and found Joe Kivelson and Mohandas Feinberg and Corkscrew Finnegan and Oscar Fujisawa and a dozen other captains and ships’ officers in a huddle.
“Joe,” I said, “I just heard about Tom. Do you know anything yet?”
Joe turned. “Oh, Walt. Why, as far as we know, he’s alive. He was alive when they got him to the hospital.”
“That’s at the spaceport?” I unhooked my handphone and got Dad. He’d heard about a man being splashed, but didn’t know who it was. He said he’d call the hospital at once. A few minutes later, he was calling me back.
“He’s been badly burned, all over the back. They’re preparing to do a deep graft on him. They said his condition was serious, but he was alive five minutes ago.”
I thanked him and hung up, relaying the information to the others. They all looked worried. When the screen girl at a hospital tells you somebody’s serious, instead of giving you the well-as-can-be-expected routine, you know it is serious. Anybody who makes it alive to a hospital, these days, has an excellent chance, but injury cases do die, now and then, after they’ve been brought in. They are the “serious” cases.
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do,” Joe said heavily.
“We can clean up on the gang that started this fire,” Oscar Fujisawa said. “Do it now; then if Tom doesn’t make it, he’s paid for in advance.”
Oscar, I recalled, was the one who had been the most impressed with Bish Ware’s argument that lynching Steve Ravick would cost the hunters the four million sols they might otherwise be able to recover, after a few years’ interstellar litigation, from his bank account on Terra. That reminded me that I hadn’t even thought of Bish since I’d left the Times. I called back. Dad hadn’t heard a word from him.
“What’s the situation at Hunters’ Hall?” I asked.
“Everything’s quiet there. The police left when Hallstock commandeered that fire-fighting equipment. They helped the shipyard men get it out, and then they all
