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phase.”
    “How much bigger?”
    “Several times bigger. Millions of cubic feet.”
    Tom’s cigarette had gone out. He felt his trouser pocket for his lighter. He pushed it up with his fingers until the metal head showed.He flipped the lid and thumbed the wheel, he closed the eye nearest the flame.
    Tom pushed his tobacco pouch toward Comstock, but the other man held up his hand. He probably thought it a primitive way to smoke.
    Tom breathed out a cloud and said, “Maybe you better tell us how this plant will be to live beside.”
    “You know what I mean when I say it’s a sour gas plant, right?” Comstock said.
    What they knew came from Don Harbeg and a piece in the
Haultain Herald
. Tom said he wanted Comstock to explain from scratch. This was smart, Ella thought. Better than trying to show off and getting confused. She wasn’t sure yet how she knew, but she felt Comstock wanted Tom to make mistakes that he could correct.
    “Sour means natural gas containing hydrogen sulphide,” Comstock said. “The gas here’s about eleven per cent hydrogen sulphide, and there’s also six per cent carbon dioxide. The second field we’re testing for this plant is over twenty per cent hydrogen sulphide. The plant will run at fifteen hundred pounds per square inch. Trust me, that’s a lot of pressure.” Clint Comstock leaned back in his chair.
    Ella felt a weight or a pressure lift from her and imagined Tom feeling the same thing.
    “I’m not going to pussyfoot with you, Tom, Ella. This hydrogen sulphide is poisonous stuff. In certain circumstances, it can kill a person.”
    Ella felt a new pressure come on. She understood then that this was something Comstock was doing on purpose.
    “Nor am I here to scare you. That plant we’re building in your neighbour’s field has several functions, but the main one is to change that dangerous gas into something safer. I see you’ve got a good old wood stove there. I grew up with one just like it. I’ll bet you fivedollars that within five years you’ll have a propane tank outside. In ten years, you might have a natural gas line right to your house. Those fuels are products we’ll make at our plant.”
    He broke off a tiny piece of his scone, lifted it toward his mouth, then set it down again. He reached toward the assistant, and this time the young man placed a little yellow brick on his palm. Comstock held the brick out to Tom.
    “Go ahead, take it. The plant’s main by-product is this, sulphur, which might wind up in the fertilizer you spread on your grain field. It’s dark orange in its liquid form. When it solidifies, it turns this nice lemon yellow. You can keep that.”
    Tom weighed the brick in his palm, then handed it to Ella. It was heavier than it looked. She held it to her nose and it had a nasty but familiar odour. The smell of a lit match.
    “How do you get the sulphur out?” asked Tom. He was becoming more confident.
    “It’s complicated, but, to put it simply, you heat the raw gas very hot. You add oxygen. There’s a chemical reaction. You get liquid sulphur out one end and sulphur dioxide out the other.”
    “Does all of the poison get changed?”
    Comstock favoured Tom with a wink. “You’re an astute man, Tom. Nope. Chemical reactions never react a hundred per cent. Our plant is built to recover ninety-three per cent. That’s state-of-the-art.”
    “That other seven per cent must be dangerous.”
    “Right again. It could kill you.”
    Comstock said this and held a sombre impression. Then he let his lips spring apart over his big white teeth. He laughed and slapped his leg.
    “But
that’s
not all we do with the hydrogen sulphide. We’re just now completing the sulphur stack. It’s got an incinerator at thebottom, one that will burn at one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. In that incinerator, we’ll burn the residual H 2 S— that’s what we call hydrogen sulphide, H 2 S . We’ll send what comes off that fire up the sulphur stack. That cement