1634: The Baltic War Read Free Page B

or two, just to give the man a legitimate excuse to take a rest from the grueling labor of shoveling coal down the chute into the retorts. "We seem to be losing gas somewhere along the way. Are you having any problems?"
    Stiteler shook his head. "No, nothing."
    Thorsten inspected the furnace, which seemed fine. Then he headed toward the gas main.
    Stumbling over something, he looked down. There was a grate lying on the floor, which he hadn't spotted before because it was half-covered in the coal dust that was spread over much of room. Frowning, Thorsten looked over at the furnace again and noticed for the first time that the grate that should have been located on the coal chute was missing. Instead, the opening for the grate seemed to be covered with something solid, from what little of it Thorsten could see because of the coal dust.
    He looked back down at the object he'd stumbled over. "Robert, what is this grate doing here? And what have you got covering the hole it was on?"
    Stiteler had gone back to shoveling, but now looked over. "Oh, that damned thing. I took it off two days ago and replaced it with some wood. It kept getting fouled with the smaller pieces of coal. Made it hard to shovel the coal in, because it kept catching the blade. This way works much better."
    Engler hissed in a breath. "Robert, it's supposed to get fouled. You don't want the fine pieces . . ."
    Robert was frowning at him. "Why? What's the matter?"
    Truth be told, Engler wasn't sure himself why the grate was important. But he had a vague memory of one of the up-time engineers who'd designed the plant telling him that it was. If he remembered correctly, the function of the grate was to make sure that only the larger chunks of coal got into the furnace itself. If you let the coal pieces that were too fine into the furnace, especially the dust . . .
    He couldn't remember what would happen. The foreman's training he'd gotten—all half a day of it—had been too quick and hurried for him to remember a lot of what he'd been told. But it was certainly nothing good.
    "Put the grate back on," he ordered, "and don't take it off again."
    Moving more urgently now, he began moving down the main, inspecting the big pipe. Eric Krenz came with him.
    "The main looks wrong," Thorsten said. "See, Eric?"
    Krenz nodded. "The pipe should be entirely red hot, but only the top half seems red. It stops at the bend."
    There was a loud crack from inside the furnace, the sound of metal breaking.
    "What was that?" half-shouted Stiteler, stumbling back and almost dropping his shovel.
    "I don't know," Thorsten replied. "I've never seen something like this." He began to smell smoke. "Smoke?"
    "Look, Thorsten!" said Eric. "There's your smoke!"
    Sure enough. Smoke was starting to pour out of one of the short smokestacks next to the furnace.
    Understanding came instantly to Thorsten. "One of the retorts must have broken, and the coal has caught fire. But why?"
    He looked again at the gas main, thinking quickly. With the grate removed, small pieces of coal—a lot of it nothing more than dust—would have . . .
    He wasn't sure. But with the inside of the gas main lined with coal tar, as it inevitably became . . . and as gummy as that stuff was . . . he had a bad feeling that the coal dust would have started piling up in there, constricting the main.
    "There has to be a blockage," he stated firmly. "Quick, turn the gas off!"
    "If the coal has caught fire in there," said Eric, "that won't do any good. We can't put that out."
    Thorsten wavered for a second. He wanted to handle this problem himself, but not bringing the fire under control could be disastrous. "Yes, you're right. Run over and get the fire brigade now!"
     
    "Please get these messages out ASAP," Mike Stearns said, handing the radio operator a sheaf of papers. "And let me know if any of the messages are not acknowledged."
    "Yes, sir," the operator said. "Conditions seem pretty good tonight. I'll encrypt them and get them