The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (58 page)

 

THE VICE OF MEMORY The Kraut, down on holiday from Brisbane, picked this weekend to visit Clearwater. He was only ten in April '45 and four years too young to die as a German soldier, though not too young to die as a civilian in the famous thousand-bomber raids then in vogue. When he crept round the Puroil fence it was almost like being on a mission through enemy lines, a situation made familiar in countless movies. It was broad daylight when he untwisted the wire stays the Thieving Magpie had left in the cyclone fence. The original wire was ten-gauge and too stiff for fingers: the Magpie had replaced it with sixteen-gauge, nice and easy to bend.

He lifted the bottom corner of the wire panel and crawled over the narrow roadway to the export valve controlling steam sales to all the factories round about. It was a green valve—air failure to shut—so he bled the air off the diaphragm and left the bleed open. The valve shut obediently. He crawled back, fixed the wire and crept up the roadside drain to his little rented car.

Swearing commenced immediately among the Sunday staffs of the surrounding factories. At Puroil, someone saw the rise in steam pressure and cut firing a fraction. The drop in steam sales was recorded only out in the pipe-track near the valve shut by the Kraut, so no one in the refinery would know until a customer rang up complaining, or till a reading was taken from the recorder at the end of shift.

‘If I can't get the money out of them, at least I'll cost them some,' he commented as he drove away. He would like to have seen fire and smoke and heard deafening explosions. Only disasters could match the loss of the shift-penalty proportion in his severance pay.

 

GOOD INTENTIONS The Loch Ness Monster wanted to be helpful. He envied the men who could walk about and fix things, knowing what they were doing. This big valve, now. What a screamer! He read the inscription on the plastic strip: High Pressure Steam Let Down to Medium Pressure. Wonder what that means. He'd only been on the plant twelve months.

Just look at that vibration. A sort of collar, vibrating on that stem there. He walked a few paces and came back with a brand-new aluminium ladder, propped it against the huge valve and spun the vibrating collar down hard to the bottom of its travel.

He went away happy. He would go and make tea for the Aussie lads, just for the pleasure of announcing: ‘Tea up!' It always amused them. Now and then there came into his mind the horrible moment when he had been sent up top to put one side of the new regenerator pressure control slide valves on handwheel control and he had shut off the air to both sides. The valve slammed shut, the pressure nearly blew the top off the vessel and everyone screamed at him. That was the worst—the other lads yelling. He never let this thought stay long. You can't afford to dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

The collar he'd spun down on the high-pressure steam let-down valve shouldn't have been loose, but equally it shouldn't have been spun down. It was now acting as a maximum stop, the valve couldn't open further.

 

A RESCUE The Maltese Falcon had cleaned that ladder. He watched now from behind a stanchion as the Monster left it by the high-pressure steam valve. As soon as the boy disappeared he rescued the ladder and hurried with it over to the trench inside the fence. He had to paint his two rented houses later and his garage with the three Hungarian boys in it: it would be very handy. And it was such a good price.

He smiled at that. The way things were left about. All he had to do was come by at eleven, after knock-off. Afternoon shift was always best: you had darkness for cover. Day and night shift ended in daylight and that was no good at all.

 

COMING TO THE BOIL Despite an increase in circulation partly due to the Donk, and despite a rising level, the slurry oil at the bottom of the fractionator was too hot, so the Count was told to go out and shut a bypass round the coolers to force more oil through the coolers and bring it back cooler to the column. Out he went when his cigarette was finished and shut the valve to the coolers.

By this mistake he allowed the coolers to plug, which they did very quickly, for the water entering the coolers, expecting to be converted to steam, was disappointed and stayed cool, causing the waxy slurry to set in the tubes. Since this instruction was given towards the end of dayshift and no one bothered to check the temperature of the outgoing uncooled slurry the temperature rose past the allowable 105 Centigrade to 150, rapidly to 200, then gradually to 280, 300, running down to a storage tank whose contents were perhaps 70 Centigrade, and which was supposed to contain no water.

Unfortunately, when the tank-farm men reported no water, they meant that no matter how they drained the tank they could not get the water out. This was not quite the same thing. But pumping and tank-farm boys were different sections of Operations and kept their secrets.

The danger was that the hot oil would make steam from the water and blow the top off the tank, and that the oil would flash when exposed to air.

 

THE VICE OF OBEDIENCE Ambrose was thinking. His wife, on her twenty-first birthday, had made him a present of a confession. She had been his friend's girl for three years, and married Ambrose when he gave her the heave-ho. So it was true what the men said, his mate had trodden the arse off her for three years. How did they know? Could they tell from his face? It was a mystery. He was worried.

‘Phone for Ambrose.'

‘Ambrose!'

‘Where's the poor silly bastard gone?'

‘Here I am.'

This phone was one of several on the interphone circuit, but also with an outside number, so it could be rung from outside without going through the switchboard. The Spotted Trout on the other end said, ‘This is the Python. I want you to shut off steam to the ethylene plant. This is an emergency. Right away.'

Ambrose said nothing, waiting to see if the Python had finished with him.

‘Do you know where the valve is? Out in the pipetrack at the south battery limit. Right away!'

The Trout hung up his phone at the Servicemen's Club and went back to his whisky. Curse the company! The PR job would have suited him till he retired. Now he would be selling wine and spirits or machine parts again. Each ethylene plant crash cost Puroil several thousand dollars and worsening relations with the polythene manufacturers on the other end of the product line.

But what about the cracker? He had been so hasty he had overlooked the obvious plant to attack. Tomorrow, that was the ticket. One call a day. He enjoyed his whisky. He felt bigger, more of a man than he had felt for years now he was hitting back. He'd taken it for too long. Just a matter of picking a different nong each time. There were plenty.

Ambrose trotted happily out, saying nothing to the others. They rubbished him every chance they got, why should he always go back for more? He forgot his safety hat, of course, and came back for it, but he got to the steam valve and shut it. It was stiff, and when he finished and stood up, he saw the ethylene flare shoot up flames a hundred feet high burning to black smoke the jettisoned ethylene from the crashed plant. He didn't know that, he was trying to think what he should do about his wife. Perhaps he should keep quiet, not worry her. Women had a lot to suffer. Everyone said so.

 

ONE THING AT A TIME The Corpse made a habit of whipping tank valves shut at the product tanks and opening them again, denying that he'd touched anything; hoping to cause a steady number of untraceable troubles. Today he performed his few little shut-offs against the cracker, back-pressuring the final gasoline-treating section, not causing much trouble. Getting back from day work to shift hours with its extra money wasn't enough to blunt the edge of his resentment.

The trouble came when he had shut off once and looked round to hear the first rumbles from the slurry storage tank. This was such an urgent matter that he left the gasoline tank shut off. As he got near the slurry tank he could see the heat vapours rising from the unlagged sections of the line. He ran towards it.

 

TAKING STEPS ‘We're back-pressured from the treating unit.'

‘Get someone to get the gasoline away.'

‘Stretch is here. You know what to do, Stretch?'

‘Sure.' Off he went with great fearful strides, glad to be away from that end of the plant.

‘If only,' wailed the Humdinger, ‘if only I had closed-circuit TV monitors here instead of operators, to show me the position outside on key valves! Eyes don't have to walk outside.'

 

THE VICE OF CONFIDENCE After a short time of gaping at the plant and trying to follow process diagrams, SK had diagnosed one difficulty no one else had seen. His theory was that the pressure differential over the feed nozzles was too low. This was the cause of all the trouble. Fix that and you fix the lot.

He tried to interest others in this idea, but no one took any notice. He would fix it.

SKlation had no idea what he was doing, but he was not aware of this fact. He had the idea that any man who could drive a car, find his way to work and sign for his pay was equal to anything. He'd risen to foreman, hadn't he? He looked round to see if anyone was watching, and began opening valves. All you need is confidence.

 

LIVING BY RULES Stretch loped in.

‘Can't get it away. Our pump's going but it's just not getting away.'

‘Get on to the pumpers in the tank farm.'

Stretch went looking for a phone, came back.

‘Can't get on to the Corpse. His offsider says he's outside but as far as he knows everything's all right.'

‘That's no good. Get him out there to see what's wrong. Then you better go back to your unit and try and do something about all that gasoline.'

Stretch went away.

‘You sure he knows what to do?' a voice asked.

‘He's been on it three years. He ought to.'

‘The Corpse's offsider won't go out.'

‘Why not?'

‘They've been told one of 'em has to stay by the phone all the time. The Python rang up Friday and couldn't get an answer for an hour, so he brings in a new rule.'

‘How will they get all their tank dips—and do their blends and product movements?'

‘Easy. Make a new rule.'

 

A SURE FOOTING The Boardrider picked his way expertly over oil-covered metal gratings and green slurried concrete. Over at the base of the reactor he saw SKlation working on feed valves.

Feed valves? Automatically he walked towards the reactor. Admittedly it was out in the open and there was no guard on it, but safety at this spot was so vital that surely no one would mess round without proper knowledge and definite orders. Still, SK was a foreman now. Plant knowledge accompanied promotion automatically.

He changed direction and headed back to the control room. His section was OK; this mob didn't pay you for doing more than your job, nor would they accept less than their own price for a gallon of juice. They gave nothing away, neither would he. Bugger SK. He turned his thoughts back where they belonged, to his dream of the Wave—the Wave gathering and curling for ever, never breaking, on an ocean without shore.

 

THE STORM BIRD The hot spot bubbled out. The bubble, though, was not quite ready to burst. What it needed was a sudden increase of pressure in the regenerator. Inside that bubble the regenerating fire blazed, burning coke from catalyst, to make it active again; productivity, prosperity, riches were in that fire. There was also hate. Unconfined, that fire could burn, maim, destroy the delicate humans tending it.

On the other end of the plant, Stretch lay on the ground. Congo Kid's gas had got him.

The air bleed from the instrument standing under the skirt of the regenerator was whistling. Rustle of Spring was having a Sunday indoors and the high-pitched whistle sounded very like the call of a storm-cock indefinitely prolonged. It pierced right through to a very special Sunday nerve until he decided not to put up with it.

He fiddled with the instrument, the piercing noise died down. What he did, although he did not know this—the tiny knobs looked so innocent, so remote, so unlikely to be important—what he did was raise the setting on the instrument. It was a low-flow cut-in on the regenerator air. When the air flow (which was not now registered anywhere because of a three-month temporary breakdown of control-room instruments) fell to a point set on this outside instrument, an air signal was sent automatically to a steam cut-in valve, and steam poured into the regenerator to keep the catalyst in that vessel aerated.

The instrument setting was low, for safety, because the total air flow was not known, but Rustle of Spring soon moved the setting high enough.

 

ACUPUNCTURE Stillsons, in the shelter of his mother's house in a nearby suburb turning slowly into a slum, watched from his bedroom window, waiting for it to be time to go to work again. He noticed the flares were big. The ethylene flare was huge.

‘Plant down,' he judged aloud. He lay back, relaxed for a while. He couldn't resist the pull of the plant, though, and sat up to look at the thick orange flame turning into billows of blue-black smoke.

He checked the time. Only seven hours twenty to go, and he'd be back there, safe inside the blue gates. He hoped the cracker would go down, too, now they'd shunted him off it. Humans are ferocious beasts; no one gets the kindness he deserves. He took a pin from his reactor cork—in his little model cracker—and jabbed it into the top seam of the fat regenerator cork. This was the champagne cork he'd found in the street: it had a nice round bulbous top, just like the regenerator.

 

THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS IS THE RIGHT TO BE FREE In his shooting days, One Eye used to head out for Nyngan and points west to hunt the harmless kangaroo. The skins had a little value for making toy koala bears.

In his more vicious moments he'd often wished a man could take a rifle to the footie and pot off players that dropped passes and missed tackles and stood around flat-footed. A man lost money on that sort of play. And referees, too, they needed a boot up the ginger. What was more to the point, his dry-cleaning business that he'd set his heart on for so long had failed. That was how he put it to himself; not that he had failed.