Grantville Gazette Volume 24

by Eric Flint

  "How much does the stone weigh?" I asked.

  "About two tons, solid quartzite," Scott said. "It's quarried from the ring wall north of Schwarzburg, less than a mile from here, all downhill for the heavy stones. The little stones go to that new warehouse they're building in town, we keep the big ones."

  As he spoke, the crane silently carried the stone toward the awaiting masons and lowered it onto a bed of fresh mortar.

  "What's all that stuff," I asked, pointing to piles of ironwork stacked along the wall beyond the masons.

  "Parts. We're getting parts from foundries and forges scattered all over. Some workshops are better at little castings, other can do big ones. Some forges do wrought iron, some can give us the little steel parts we need. When the parts come in, we line them up over there until we're ready to use them. Let's look at Unit Seven. There, we're starting to put things together."

  He led me to the narrow space between Units Six and Seven. Six was a huge version of the machine I'd seen in Scott's basement, churning away at double-time and making a quiet pop-pop noise as it worked. About half of the big iron pieces of Seven were in place, with a group of men hard at work on one of the big pieces.

  "They're turning the low-pressure cylinder right now," Scott said.

  "Turning?" I asked. "Looks like it's not moving at all."

  "Boring, I should say," Scott said. "See, they've run a boring bar down the middle of the cylinder, between those cast iron centers attached across each ends. There's an electric motor turning the boring bar, and there's a tool on the bar that goes round and round scraping the inside of the cylinder to be exactly thirteen and a half inches radius, as close as we can make it. It's not that different from boring a cannon, but a whole lot bigger around."

  Turning to look at Unit Six, I could see similarities to the engine I'd seen the night before, but there were differences. "On your little engine, the valve and the cylinder were right together on the same side of the big wheel, but here, they're on opposite sides."

  Scott looked baffled, and then chuckled. "No, my little engine at home has just one cylinder. Here, we have two cylinders, and each has its own valve system. The thirteen inch one on the far side is the high pressure cylinder, the twenty-seven inch one on the near side is the low pressure cylinder."

  He must have seen the baffled look on my face. "It's a compound engine. That means we use the steam twice. The high pressure steam is four hundred pounds per square inch. We get half the work out of the steam dropping the pressure to seventy-five PSI, that's pounds per square inch. The low pressure cylinder gets the other half of the work, dropping the pressure to near zero."

  I surveyed the immense thing, wondering how I could possibly be of any use. "You said you thought there'd been attacks? What kind of attacks?"

  He led me over to the great crank on the high pressure cylinder side. It was whirling around and around, almost too fast to follow with my eyes. "See that thing on top of the main crankshaft bearing?" he asked, pointing to the trunnion bearing behind the crank.

  On top of the heavy ironwork was a polished copper fitting a bit bigger than my fist. "That's an oil cup," he said. "It's full of oil, and the oil in it slowly drips down into the bearing. Without oil, the bearing would burn up and wreck the engine."

  "Burn up?"

  Scott paused before he answered. "Ever see how hot a wagon axle gets if there's no grease on the hub? This wheel is turning so fast that the metal itself will melt if it runs dry."

  "So what happened here?" I asked.

  "Every half hour, the engine master comes through and tops up the oil in each of the oil cups. A month and a half ago, right after we got this engine working, the bearing caught fire. Afterward, we found that the oil cup was missing, broken off. The engine master swore that the cup was there not twenty minutes before."

  I looked at the cup. "But the engine wasn't wrecked?"

  "It came close. The engine master was nearby, and when he saw the smoke, he killed the engine. We had to re-turn the axle and replace the brasses before we put the engine back in service."

  "So we're looking for someone who knows the engine needs oil," I said. "This engine master you mentioned, I should talk to him."

  "Probably," Scott said, "but Franz was badly hurt in the next accident. Come here."

  He led me into the space between the two cylinders. There was a confusion of moving parts there, with the great wheel spinning madly not far in front of us. A cast-iron case as big as the great wheel gave off a hum that sounded like the electric switchyard outside.

  "What's all this," I asked, and got more than I wanted. The great wheel was the flywheel, the humming case beside it was the alternator , with another wheel inside it called the forty-eight pole rotor. I'd been right about the sound. The alternator was the part of the engine that actually made electricity. The spinning shaft along the side of each cylinder was a camshaft that worked the valves, and the whirligig on the end of each camshaft was the governor that controlled the engine speed.

  "My little engine at home has piston valves, but that kind of valve doesn't work very well at high speed. When we started working on this engine design, some of us wanted to use Corliss valves, but the Masaniellos convinced us to do it with balanced poppet valves. They're faster and the parts are easier to machine. The camshaft here works the poppets."

  I was totally baffled, except that I could clearly see his finger pointing at the spinning shaft he called the camshaft. "What was the next accident you were talking about?" I asked, trying to bring things back to something I might be able to understand.

  "That's what I was getting at," Scott said. "Right after we got this engine restarted, the head of the low-pressure cylinder blew. Steam and hot water sprayed out and it scalded Franz, the engine master I was talking about earlier."

  "Blew?" I asked.

  "The end of the cylinder exploded," he said.

  "Like a burst cannon?" I asked, remembering a gun crew I'd once seen shredded by the final shot they fired.

  "The cylinder casting held," Scott said. "This is it, but the head cracked and some of the bolts that held it on pulled out. We had to put in new bolts and use the head intended for Unit Seven to repair it."

  "While we were repairing it, we found that the cam for the exhaust valve at that end of the cylinder was loose. We'd just changed the valve timing when the bearing failed, so I can't believe that the key that held it to the shaft fell out on its own. With that cam loose, some of the steam that should have come out through the valve turned to water. The water had nowhere to go and the piston was pounding on it one hundred fifty times a minute. The water had to go somewhere, and with the valve stuck closed, the end of the cylinder exploded."

  I scratched my head. "So we're looking for someone who really knows how these engines work. How many of you uptimers know enough to do this kind of damage?"

  "Anyone who's ever worked on cars knows how much damage you can do by letting an engine run dry," he said. "The trick with the exhaust valve, though, you really need to understand steam engines to know the damage that can cause. This engine has eight valves total, and there are only two of them, the low pressure exhaust valves, that can wreck the engine if the cams are loosened."

  "So it has to be a steam engine expert," I said, frowning.

  "Right. And there aren't many of us."

  ***

  "How will you prevent it from happening again?" I asked, as Scott and I looked out over the machinery hall. "Some o' those accidents might really have been accidents, and even if we catch whoever did it, there might be others."

  Scott scratched his head. "We learn something from each problem we have. We're working on automatic oilers, so nobody has to climb around in dangerous places to get oil into the bearings. After that cylinder head blew, we redesigned the poppets. We needed to do that anyway, balanced valves are harder to make than we thought. Each valve is really two valves on one stem, and our first ones always leaked. The new ones have a spring i
n them to help get a better seal, but the spring also lets the valve leak if the cylinder goes over pressure, just enough to protect the engine."

  About then, a whistle blew. "Lunchtime," Scott said. "There's a lunch room in the plant, or we could go out to eat."

  "A lunch room?" I asked, uncertainly.

  The place, it seemed, was a room where you could buy food. American style sandwiches, the little cakes Americans call cookies, and a choice of water, milk or weak beer to drink. I've eaten worse, but I'd have preferred better.

  Scott looked quizzically at me as I sat down. "You're a soldier with MacKay's regiment, right? How'd you get involved with police work?"

  "When the regiment moves into a town, someone has to smooth things over with the town watch," I said. "The watch and the local militia can be our best friends, but if we hit it off wrong, well, they're armed as well as we are. I was pushed into police work, as you call it, by stopping a fight.

  "What happened?" he asked, after swallowing a bit of his food.

  "MacKay was new to the regiment. This was when we were in the marshes up north. He didn't know the regiment, we didn't know the land, and we set up camp outside this village. The quartermaster went to buy cattle, and suddenly, it seemed we were about to do battle with the militia. I saw it happen, just a little thing, really. MacKay had assigned John Storm to help the quartermaster. John was a wild one, God rest his soul. He pushed a militiaman aside as they walked into the market. Instead of pushing back, the guard pulled his sword."

  "You did something?" Scott asked, after I'd eaten a bit of my sandwich.

  "Aye, I whacked John on the rump with the flat o' my blade. That stopped it from going bad, but John complained to MacKay. Ever since, MacKay's pulled me into dealings with town watch. By Badenburg, he had me in charge of working with the watch. When we came to Grantville, MacKay asked me to work with your police even before he understood how different they are from the kind o' town guard we expected."

  I took a bite, and then pulled him back to the big question. "So who knows enough about the power plant to plan the attacks you've had?"

  Scott looked thoughtful as he chewed. "Uptimers mostly. You can rule out most of the power plant staff because they know the old turbines, not the new engines. It's got to be someone who really knows steam. That means me, Andy Frystack, and Andy Prickett. We're the three shift supervisors. Then, there's Vince Masaniello and his sons Lou and Charlie. They're doing lots of consulting on the project, but mostly, they're not here. Dick Shaver and Monty Szymanski have also been involved, but damn it, I can't see how any of them could do something like this."

  "If we could figure out who was here when that oil thing got knocked off the trunnion bearing," I mused.

  Scott looked up sharply. "We can! We keep a log. Everyone signs in and out of the building. I signed you in today. The guard at the gate keeps a log too, so we know who comes in and out the main gate."

  I shook my head. The whole idea of keeping such records was foreign, but it was just like the Americans to do it. The police reports Chief Frost was always demanding were the same kind of thing.

  One of the upper chambers of the power plant was almost like a library, with cabinets and shelves full of papers. We went up there after our noon meal. With a bit of help from the woman clerk who worked there, we found the papers for the weeks of the two accidents.

  "The first accident happened during the night shift, midnight to eight AM, I was shift supervisor," Scott said, comparing the two sheaves of paper. "That's the least popular shift, with most of the world home in bed. You see Franz Schneider here, the engine master. He signed in and out in his own hand the day the bearing failed.

  "Now, the second accident happened first thing in the morning, right after the eight AM shift change, so it could be someone on the night shift who set things up. People take turns working the night shift, and Franz was on the day shift that week. See here, he signed in in his own hand, but he couldn't sign out because he was hurt. It looks like Andy Frystack signed him out after the accident."

  Scott continued mumbling over the log sheets, and then leaned back. "The way I see it, Thomas Eisfelder, Charles Martel, and Manfred Kleinschmidt are the three who matter. Those are the downtimers working on our steam engines who were there on the right shift for each accident," Scott said. "I don't think we need to worry about the masons and the common laborers working on the foundations, and the uptime steam crew are out too, since they all think in terms of turbines."

  "What if it's a spy," I said, after doing my best to write down the three names. "Someone outside paying off a laborer to fix the engine the same way someone paid off that jager to shoot at the, uh, crockery insulators in the electric yard outside."

  Scott scratched his head. "How would you tell a common laborer or a mason to pull the key from the exhaust valve cam on the low-pressure cylinder of Unit Six? And if they did, wouldn't someone notice them working where they weren't supposed to be?"

  "OK," I said. "So tell me why those three mechanics?"

  "They're three downtimers who really seem to understand what they're doing. Some people just do what they're told and don't ask questions. Some people ask questions and never seem to learn. These three guys are curious. They're the kinds of guys who figure out how things work. They ask good questions."

  I nodded. "It sounds like you want more people like that, but if they're not on your side, they can be dangerous."

  "Right," Scott said. "So the next thing to do is track them down and question them, right?"

  I shook my head, thinking of some of the American movies I'd seen. Dan Frost had just about forced me to see one particular movie about a policeman, Murder on the Orient Express. "We need to learn everything about them before we confront them."

  "Then you need to read their personnel files," Scott said.

  The plant had a folder of paperwork on each employee. I had little use for the pages showing the hours worked and dollars paid, but there was more. For each person working at the plant, there were notes written about their work. "Part of my job as shift supervisor is to keep notes on the people working for me," Scott explained. "That way, if we need someone for a special job, we can look through the papers to find who's best for that job."

  I needed Scott's help understanding the notes, but the story they told was interesting. Two of the men were from the west side of the Thuringer Wald, not quite in Franconia, but close enough. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection with the Franconian jager who'd shot at the electric yard. Thomas Eisfelder had worked in a mill on the Werra river downstream from Eisfeld, and Manfred Kleinschmidt had been an apprentice gunsmith in Suhl. The third man, Charles Martel, was a French locksmith, a Huguenout refugee.

  "So do you want me to set up interviews with them?" Scott asked. "Manfred Kleinschmidt is here now."

  "No," I said. "What I want to do is talk to their friends. You gave me their home addresses, you told me when they're supposed to work in the next week. I don't want them to know I'm interested in them."

  ***

  It was drizzling when I went back to the police station that afternoon. I dreaded the report writing that Angela Baker was bound to want, and she didn't disappoint me. Angela insisted that I write up the results of my day's work immediately, and Chief Frost was there to back her up.

  Angela helped set my day down on paper, and when we got to the three names, she immediately turned from the report. "Vera! I have three names, can you look them up for me? Eisfelder, Thomas. Martel, Charles. Kleinschmidt, Manfred."

  Vera was an older woman who worked in the back chamber. When people cursed the reports they had to write, they swore that Vera was the only person who ever saw them. Now, while we finished writing up my day's work, Vera searched through her files for anything the police might know about the three mechanics.

  "I have one arrest record," Vera said, a few minutes later. "Thomas Eisfelder, drunk and disorderly at the Thuringer Gardens back in March. Got in a
fight with another drunk. Pled guilty, paid his fine. No arrest records for the others."

  Chief Frost had walked out of his chamber while Vera spoke. "That's a start," he said, "but you know who might have more? The Red Cross. To get that, you'll need a warrant."

  "What?" I asked, and then remembered. "You mean like an arrest warrant?" I'd been with Ralph Oferino when he'd arrested a thief. In addition to a ritual involving reading a list of rights, Ralph had read the charges of theft and sale of stolen property from the arrest warrant.

  "Almost. A search warrant is an order from the court that requires the Red Cross to show you their files. Vera will type it up while you finish your report, and then we'll have to get Judge Tito's signature before you take it over to the Red Cross."

  Half an hour later, I set off through the rain to find the judge. Vera had telephoned and found that the Judge was teaching a late afternoon class out at the high school. I was a bit annoyed to have to do it myself, but Chief Frost had made it clear that the Judge wouldn't authorize a search warrant unless I was there to answer questions, and he couldn't spare anyone to go with me.

  Grantville's high school is almost as far east of town as the power plant is west, down Buffalo Creek past the village of Deborah. I had to hurry because the judge's class was supposed to end precisely at five o'clock.

  I'd heard that the Croats had wrecked the front of the school, but I hadn't been there since the raid. Temporary wood panels filled most of the huge window openings by the entrance. As I walked into the building after tying up my horse, two carpenters were at work hanging a new wood door. Despite the damage, the business of the school continued.

  I had to ask for help finding Judge Tito's law class. It was classified as adult ed, and it was being held in one of the Tech Center classrooms at the back of the school. On the way there, I passed a sign board listing a number of shops. I would have ignored it except that, among the listings for electrical, carpentry, and automotive, it listed a steam engine shop.