The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (39 page)

Part of the leather from Tom’s tough palms stayed with the blade as he was flung off. He went head over heels backwards, but had his feet gathered and sprang as they touched the ground; for he knew that no machine could bury its blade like that and get out easily. He leaped to the top of the blade, got one hand on the radiator cap, vaulted. Perversely, the cap broke from its hinge and came away in his hand, in that split instant when only that hand rested on anything. Off balance, he landed on his shoulder with his legs flailing the air, his body sliding off the hood’s smooth shoulder towards the track now churning the earth beneath. He made a wild grab at the air intake pipe, barely had it in his fingers when the dozer freed itself and shot backwards up and over the hump. Again that breathless flight pivoting over the top, and the clanking crash as the machine landed, this time almost flat on its tracks.

The jolt tore Tom’s hand away, and as he slid back over the hood the crook of his elbow caught the exhaust stack, the dull red metal biting into his flesh. He grunted and clamped the arm around it. His momentum carried him around it, and his feet crashed into the steering clutch levers. Hooking one with his instep, he doubled his legs and whipped himself back, scrabbling at the smooth warm metal, crawling frantically backwards until he finally fell heavily into the seat.

“Now,” he gritted through a red wall of pain, “You’re gonna git operated.” And he kicked out the master clutch.

The motor wailed, with the load taken off so suddenly. Tom grasped the throttle, his thumb down on the ratchet release, and he shoved the lever forward to shut off the fuel.

It wouldn’t shut off; it went down to a slow idle, but it wouldn’t shut off.

“There’s one thing you can’t do without,” he muttered, “compression.”

He stood up and leaned around the dash, reaching for the compression-release lever. As he came up out of the seat, the engine revved up again. He turned to the throttle, which had snapped back into the “open” position. As his hand touched it the master clutch lever snapped in and the howling machine lurched forward with a jerk that snapped his head on his shoulders and threw him heavily back into the seat. He snatched at the hydraulic blade control and threw it to “float” position; and then as the falling mouldboard touched the ground, into “power down.” The cutting edge bit into the ground and the engine began to labour. Holding the blade control, he pushed the throttle forward with his other hand. One of the steering clutch levers whipped back and struck him agonisingly on the kneecap. He involuntarily let go of the blade control and the mouldboard began to rise. The engine began to turn faster and he realized that it was not responding to the throttle. Cursing, he leaped to his feet; the suddenly flailing steering clutch levers struck him three times in the groin before he could get between them.

Blind with pain, Tom clung gasping to the dash. The oil-pressure gauge fell off the dash to his right, with a tinkling of broken glass, and from its broken quarter-inch line scalding oil drenched him. The shock of it snapped back his wavering consciousness. Ignoring the blows of the left steering clutch and the master clutch which had started the same mad punching, he bent over the left end of the dash and grasped the compression lever. The tractor rushed forward and spun sickeningly, and Tom knew he was thrown. But as he felt himself leave the decking his hand punched the compression lever down. The great valves at the cylinder heads opened and locked open; atomized fuel and superheated air chattered out, and as Tom’s head and shoulders struck the ground the great wild machine rolled to a stop, stood silently except for the grumble of water boiling in the cooling system.

Minutes later Tom raised his head and groaned. He rolled over and sat up, his chin on his knees, washed by wave after wave of pain. As they gradually subsided, he crawled to the machine and pulled himself to his feet, hand over hand on the track. And groggily he began to cripple the tractor, at least for the night.

He opened the cock under the fuel tank, left the warm yellow fluid gushing out on the ground. He opened the drain on the reservoir by the injection pump. He found a piece of wire in the crank box and with it tied down the compression release lever. He crawled up on the machine, wrenched the hood and ball jar off the air intake precleaner, pulled off his shirt and stuffed it down the pipe. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and locked it with the locking pin. And he shut off the fuel on the main line from the tank to the pump.

Then he climbed heavily to the ground and slogged back to the edge of the plateau where he had left Rivera.

They didn’t know Tom was hurt until an hour and a half later – there had been too much to do – rigging a stretcher for the Puerto Rican, building him a shelter, an engine crate with an Army pup tent for a roof. They brought out the first-aid kit and the medical books and did what they could – tied and splinted and dosed with an opiate. Tom was a mass of bruises, and his right arm, where it had hooked the exhaust stack, was a flayed mass. They fixed him up then, old Peebles handling the sulfa powder and bandages like a trained nurse. And only then was there talk.

“I’ve seen a man thrown off a pan,” said Dennis, as they sat around the coffee urn munching C rations. “Sittin’ up on the arm rest on a cat, looking backwards. Cat hit a rock and bucked. Threw him off on the track. Stretched him out ten feet long.” He in-whistled some coffee to dilute the mouthful of food he had been talking around, and masticated noisily. “Man’s a fool to set up there on one side of his butt even on a pan. Can’t see why th’ goony was doin’ it on a dozer.”

“He wasn’t,” said Tom.

Kelly rubbed his pointed jaw. “He set flat on th’ seat an’ was th’owed?”

“That’s right.”

After an unbelieving silence Dennis said, “What was he doin’ – drivin’ over sixty?”

Tom looked around the circle of faces lit up by the over-artificial brilliance of a pressure lantern, and wondered what the reaction would be if he told it all just as it was. He had to say something, and it didn’t look as if it could be the truth.

“He was workin’,” he said finally. “Bucking stone out of the wall of an old building up on the mesa there. One turned loose an’ as it did the governor must’ve gone haywire. She buckled like a loco hoss and run off.”

“Run off?”

Tom opened his mouth and closed it again, and just nodded.

Dennis said, “Well, reckon that’s what happens when you put a mechanic to operatin’.”

“That had nothin’ to do with it,” Tom snapped.

Peebles spoke up quickly. “Tom – what about the Seven? Broke up any?”

“Some,” said Tom. “Better look at the steering clutches. An’ she was hot.”

“Head’s cracked,” said Harris, a burly young man with shoulders like a buffalo and a famous thirst.

“How do you know?”

“Saw it when Al and me went up with the stretcher to get the kid while you all were building the shelter. Hot water runnin’ down the side of the block.”

“You mean you walked all the way out to the mound to look at that tractor while the kid was lyin’ there? I told you where he was!”

“Out to the mound!” Al Knowles’ pop eyes teetered out of their sockets. “We found that cat stalled twenty feet away from where the kid was!”

“What!”

“That’s right, Tom,” said Harris. “What’s eatin’ you? Where’d you leave it?”

“I told you . . . by the mound . . . the ol’ building we cut into.”

“Leave the startin’ motor runnin’?”

“Starting motor?” Tom’s mind caught the picture of the small, two-cylinder gasoline engine bolted to the side of the big Diesel’s crankcase, coupled through a Bendix gear and clutch to the flywheel of the Diesel to crank it. He remembered his last glance at the still machine, silent but for the sound of water boiling. “Hell, no!”

Al and Harris exchanged a glance. “I guess you were sort of slap-happy at the time, Tom,” Harris said, not unkindly. “When we were halfway up the hill we heard it, and you know you can’t mistake that racket. Sounded like it was under a load.”

Tom beat softly at his temples with his clenched fists. “I left that machine dead,” he said quietly. “I got compression off her and tied down the lever. I even stuffed my shirt in the intake. I drained the tank. But – I didn’t touch the starting motor.”

Peebles wanted to know why he had gone to all that trouble. Tom just looked vaguely at him and shook his head. “I shoulda pulled the wires. I never thought about the starting motor,” he whispered. Then, “Harris – you say you found the starting motor running when you got to the top?”

“No – she was stalled. And hot – awmighty hot. I’d say the startin’ motor was seized up tight. That must be it, Tom. You left the startin’ motor runnin’ and somehow engaged the clutch an’ Bendix.” His voice lost conviction as he said it – it takes seventeen separate motions to start a tractor of this type. “Anyhow, she was in gear an’ crawled along on the little motor.”

“I done that once,” said Chub. “Broke a con rod on an Eight, on a highway job. Walked her about three-quarters of a mile on the startin’ motor that way. Only I had to stop every hundred yards and let her cool down some.”

Not without sarcasm, Dennis said, “Seems to me like the Seven was out to get th’ goony. Made one pass at him and then went back to finish the job.”

Al Knowles haw-hawed extravagantly.

Tom stood up, shaking his head, and went off among the crates to the hospital they had jury-rigged for the kid.

A dim light was burning inside, and Rivera lay very still, with his eyes closed. Tom leaned in the doorway – the open end of the engine crate – and watched him for a moment. Behind him he could hear the murmur of the crew’s voices; the night was otherwise windless and still. Rivera’s face was the peculiar color that olive skin takes when drained of blood. Tom looked at his chest and for a panicky moment thought he could discern no movement there. He entered and put a hand over the boy’s heart. Rivera shivered, his eyes flew open, and he drew a sudden breath which caught raggedly at the back of his throat. “Tom. . . Tom!” he cried weakly.

“O.K., Goony
. . . que pasa
?”

“She comeen back . . . Tom!”

“Who?”

“
El de siete
.”

Daisy Etta
– “She ain’t comin’ back, kiddo, You’re off the mesa now. Keep your chin up, fella.”

Rivera’s dark, doped eyes stared up at him without expression. Tom moved back and the eyes continued to stare. They weren’t seeing anything. “Go to sleep,” he whispered. The eyes closed instantly.

Kelly was saying that nobody ever got hurt on a construction job unless somebody was dumb. “An’ most times you don’t realize how dumb what you’re doin’ is until somebody does get hurt.”

“The dumb part was gettin’ a kid, an’ not even an operator at that, up on a machine,” said Dennis in his smuggest voice.

“I heard you try to sing that song before,” said old Peebles quietly. “I hate to have to point out anything like this to a man because it don’t do any good to make comparisons. But I’ve worked with that fella Rivera for a long time now, an’ I’ve seen ’em as good but doggone few better. As far as you’re concerned, you’re O.K. on a pan, but the kid could give you cards and spades and still make you look like a cost accountant on a dozer.”

Dennis half rose and mouthed something filthy. He looked at Al Knowles for backing and got it. He looked around the circle and got none. Peebles lounged back, sucking on his pipe, watching from under those bristling brows. Dennis subsided, running now on another tack.

“So what does that prove? The better you say he is, the less reason he had to fall off a cat and get himself hurt.”

“I haven’t got the thing straight yet,” said Chub, in a voice whose tone indicated “I hate to admit it, but—”

About this time Tom returned, like a sleepwalker, standing with the brilliant pressure lantern between him and Dennis. Dennis rambled right on, not knowing he was anywhere near: “That’s something you never will find out. That Puerto Rican is a pretty husky kid. Could be Tom said somethin’ he didn’t like an’ he tried to put a knife in Tom’s back. They all do, y’know. Tom didn’t get all that bashin’ around just stoppin’ a machine. They must of went round an’ round for a while an’ the goony wound up with a busted back. Tom sets the dozer to walk him down while he lies there and comes on down here and tries to tell us—” His voice fluttered to a stop as Tom loomed over him.

Tom grabbed the pan operator up by the slack of his shirt front with his uninjured arm and shook him like an empty burlap bag.

“Skunk,” he growled. “I oughta lower th’ boom on you.” He set Dennis on his feet and backhanded his face with the edge of his forearm. Dennis went down – cowered down, rather than fell.

“Aw, Tom, I was just talkin’. Just a joke, Tom, I was just—”

“Yellow, too,” snarled Tom, stepping forward, raising a solid Texan boot.

Peebles barked “Tom!” and the foot came back to the ground.

“Out o’ my sight,” rumbled the foreman. “Git!”

Dennis got. Al Knowles said vaguely, “Naow, Tom, y’all cain’t—”

“You, y’wall-eyed string-bean!” Tom raved, his voice harsh and strained. “Go ’long with yer Siamese twin!”

“O.K., O.K.,” said Al, white-faced, and disappeared into the dark after Dennis.

“Nuts to this,” said Chub. “I’m turnin’ in.” He went to a crate and hauled out a mosquito-hooded sleeping bag and went off without another word. Harris and Kelly, who were both on their feet, sat down again. Old Peebles hadn’t moved.