Four-Day Planet - H. Beam Piper (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📗

“Now I’m going out and take a look at that lorry.” I was certain now that the voice was shaky.

The lorry⁠—and Al Devis and his companion⁠—had come to an end against one of the two-hundred-foot masonry and concrete foundations the columns rest on. It had hit about halfway up and folded almost like an accordion, sliding down to the floor. With one thing and another, there is a lot of violent death around Port Sandor. I don’t like to look at the results. It’s part of the job, however, and this time it wasn’t a pleasant job at all.

The two men who were guarding the wreck and contents were sitting on a couple of boxes, smoking and watching the fire-fighting operation.

I took the partly empty clip out of my pistol and put in a full one on the way back, and kept my flashlight moving its circle of light ahead and on both sides of me. That was foolish, or at least unnecessary. If there’d been one meat-grinder in that junk pile, it was a safe bet there wasn’t anything else. Meat-grinders aren’t popular neighbors, even for tread-snails. As I approached the carcass of the grinder I had shot I found a ten-foot length of steel rod and poked it a few times. When it didn’t even twitch, I felt safe in walking past it.

I got back in the jeep and returned to where Joe Kivelson was keeping track of what was going on in five screens, including one from a pickup on a lifter at the ceiling, and shouting orders that were being reshouted out of loudspeakers all over the place. The Odin Dock & Shipyard equipment had begun coming out; lorries picking up the wax that had been dumped back from the fire and wax that was being pulled off the piles, and material-handling equipment. They had a lot of small fork-lifters that were helping close to the fire.

A lot of the wax was getting so soft that it was hard to handle, and quite a few of the plastic skins had begun to split from the heat. Here and there I saw that outside piles had begun to burn at the bottom, from burning wax that had run out underneath. I had moved around to the right and was getting views of the big claw-derricks at work picking the big sausages off the tops of piles, and while I was swinging the camera back and forth, I was trying to figure just how much wax there had been to start with, and how much was being saved. Each of those plastic-covered cylinders was a thousand pounds; one of the claw-derricks was picking up two or three of them at a grab.⁠ ⁠…

I was still figuring when shouts of alarm on my right drew my head around. There was an uprush of flame, and somebody began screaming, and I could see an ambulance moving toward the center of excitement and firemen in asbestos suits converging on a run. One of the piles must have collapsed and somebody must have been splashed. I gave an involuntary shudder. Burning wax was hotter than melted lead, and it stuck to anything it touched, worse than napalm. I saw a man being dragged out of further danger, his clothes on fire, and asbestos-suited firemen crowding around to tear the burning garments from him. Before I could get to where it had happened, though, they had him in the ambulance and were taking him away. I hoped they’d get him to the hospital before he died.

Then more shouting started around at the right as a couple more piles began collapsing. I was able to get all of that⁠—the wax sausages sliding forward, the men who had been working on foot running out of danger, the flames shooting up, and the gush of liquid fire from below. All three derricks moved in at once and began grabbing wax cylinders away on either side of it.

Then I saw Guido Fieschi, the Odin Dock & Shipyard’s superintendent, and caught him in my camera, moving the jeep toward him.

“Mr. Fieschi!” I called. “Give me a few seconds and say something.”

He saw me and grinned.

“I just came out to see how much more could be saved,” he said. “We have close to a thousand tons on the shipping floor or out of danger here and on the way in, and it looks as though you’ll be able to save that much more. That’ll be a million and a half sols we can be sure of, and a possible three million, at the new price. And I want to take this occasion, on behalf of my company and of Terra-Odin Spacelines, to welcome a new freight shipper.”

“Well, that’s wonderful news for everybody on Fenris,” I said, and added mentally, “with a few exceptions.” Then I asked if he’d heard who had gotten splashed.

“No. I know it happened; I passed the ambulance on the way out. I certainly hope they get to work on him in time.”

Then more wax started sliding off the piles, and more fire came running out at the bottom. Joe Kivelson’s voice, out of the loudspeakers all around, was yelling:

“Everybody away from the front! Get the blowers in; start in on the other side!”

I wanted to find out who had been splashed, but Joe Kivelson was too busy directing the new phase of the fight to hand out casualty reports to the press, and besides, there were too many things happening all at once that I had to get. I went around to the other side where the incendiaries had met their end, moving slowly as close to the face of the fire as I could get and shooting the burning wax flowing out from it. A lot of equipment, including two of the three claw-derricks and a dredger⁠—they’d brought a second one up from the waterfront⁠—were moving to that side. By the time I had gotten around, the blowers