Knowing that London, while not directly involved in the investigation, still had pipelines of information, Nim asked, “Have the police or FBI made any progress?”
“Nil. I said the people doing it are getting smart; so they are. It’s a safe bet they study the targets before they hit, then decide where they can get in and out fast, unnoticed, and do the most damage. This Friends of Freedom mob know, just as we do, that we’d need an army to guard everything.”
“And there haven’t been clues?”
“Nil again. Remember what I said before? If the cops solve this one it’ll be through a lucky break or because somebody got careless. Nim, it ain’t the way it is on TV or in novels where crimes always get solved. In the real police world they often don’t.”
“I know that,” Nim said, mildly irritated that London was slipping into his lecturer’s role again.
“There is one thing, though,” the Property Protection chief said thoughtfully.
“What’s that?”
“For a while the bombings slowed down, almost stopped. Now suddenly they’ve perked up, making it look as if the people doing them have got a new source of explosives, or money, or both.”
Nim pondered, then changed the subject. “What’s new with theft of service?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Oh sure, we’re working hard and catching some small fry. There’s a couple dozen new cases of meter tampering we’ll take to court. But it’s like plugging a hundred leaks when you know there’s ten thousand more out there if you just had the people and time to find ’em.”
“How about that big office building? The one where you’re keeping watch?”
“Zaco Properties. We still have surveillance on it. Nothing’s happened yet. I guess we’re going through a flat spell.” Uncharacteristically, Harry London sounded depressed. Maybe it was infectious; perhaps he had transmitted his own low spirits, Nim thought as he said good night and hung up.
He was still restless, alone in the silent house. So who else could he call?
He considered Ardythe, then dismissed the idea. Nim was not ready yet—if he ever would be—to cope with Ardythe Talbot’s onset of religion. But thinking of Ardythe reminded him of Wally Jr., whom Nim had visited in the hospital twice recently. Wally was now out of danger and removed from intensive care, though ahead lay months, perhaps years, of tedious, painful plastic surgery. Not surprisingly, Wally’s spirits had been low. They had not discussed his sexual incapacity.
Half guiltily, as he remembered Wally, Nim reminded himself that his own sexual ability was unimpaired. Should he call one of his women friends? There were several whom he had not seen for months but who, quite probably, would be available for drinks, a late dinner somewhere, and whatever followed. If he made the effort, he need not spend the night alone.
Somehow he couldn’t be bothered.
Karen Sloan? No. As much as he enjoyed her company, he wasn’t in the mood.
Work, then? There was work aplenty piled on his office desk at GSP & L headquarters. If he went there now it would not be the first time he had toiled at night, taking advantage of the quietness to accomplish more than was possible in daytime. It might also be a good idea. The Tunipah hearings were already consuming much of Nim’s available time, and the demand would continue, though his normal work load had to be fitted in somehow.
But no, not that either; not desk work in his present mood. How about some other kind of work to occupy his mind?
What could he do, he wondered, to prepare himself for his debut Monday on the witness stand? He was already well briefed. But there was always something more to be prepared for—the unexpected.
An idea jumped into his mind, from out of nowhere, like bread emerging from a pop-up toaster.
Coal!
Tunipah was coal. Without coal—to be freighted from Utah to California—no Tunipah electric generating plant was feasible. And yet, while Nim’s technical expertise on coal was considerable, his practical experience was limited. There was a simple reason. As yet, no coal-burning electric generating plant existed inside California. Tunipah would be the first in history.
Surely … somehow, he thought … between now and Monday morning he must go—as if on a pilgrimage—to a coal-fueled plant. And from it he would return to the Tunipah hearings with the sight, sound, taste and smell of coal fresh in his senses. Nim’s instincts, which were often right, advised him he would be a better, stronger witness if he did.
It would also solve the problem of his weekend restlessness.
But a coal-burning plant where?
When the easy answer occurred to him he mixed another scotch and water. Then, with the drink at his side, he sat at the telephone once more and dialed directory assistance in Denver, Colorado.
10
Flight 460 of United Airlines made an on-time departure from the West Coast at 7:15 A.M. As the Boeing 727-200 became airborne and climbed steeply, the morning sun, which minutes before had cleared the eastern horizon, tinted the landscape below a soft red-gold. The world seemed clean and pure, Nim thought, as it always does at dawn, a daily illusion lasting less than half an hour.
While the jet steadied on an easterly course, Nim settled back in his comfortable first-class seat. He had no hesitation in making the trip this way, at company expense, since reflection this morning while driving to the airport in darkness confirmed the good sense of last night’s impulse. It would be a two-hour-twenty-minute non-stop flight to Denver. An old friend, Thurston Jones, would meet him there.
A chirpy, personality-packed young hostess—the kind United seemed to have a knack for recruiting—served an omelette breakfast and persuaded Nim to accompany it with California wine, early as it was. “Oh, come on!” she urged when she saw him hesitate. “You’ve ‘shed the surly bonds of earth,’ so unzip that psyche! Enjoy!” He did enjoy—a Mirassou Riesling, not great but good—and arrived at Denver more relaxed than he had been the previous night.
At Denver’s Stapleton International Airport, Thurston Jones shook Nun’s hand warmly, then led the way directly to his car since Nun’s only baggage was a small overnighter he was carrying.
Thurston and Nim had been students together, as well as roommates and close friends, at Stanford University. In those days they had shared most things, including women whom they knew, and there was little about either which was unknown to the other. Since then the friendship had endured, even though they met only occasionally and exchanged infrequent letters.
In outward mannerisms the two had differed, and still did. Thurston was quiet, studious, brilliant and good-looking in a boyish way. His manner was self-effacing, though he could exercise authority when needed. He had a cheerful sense of humor. Coincidentally, Thurston had followed the same career route as Nim and now was Nun’s opposite number—vice president of planning—for Public Service Company of Colorado, one of the nation’s most respected producers and distributors of electricity and natural gas. Thurston also had what Nim lacked—wide practical experience in power generation by coal.
“How’s everything at home?” Nim asked on their way to the airport parking lot. His old friend had been married happily for eight years or so to a bubbly English girl named Ursula, whom Nim knew and liked.
“Fine. The same with you, I hope.”
“Not really.”
Nim hoped he had conveyed, without rudeness, a reluctance to discuss his own and Ruth’s problems. Apparently so, because Thurston made no comment and went on, “Ursula’s looking forward to seeing you. You’ll stay with us, of course.”
Nim murmured thanks while they climbed into Thurston’s car, a Ford Pinto. His friend, Nim knew, shared his own distaste for cars with wasteful fuel habits.
Outside it was a bright, dry, sunny day. As they drove toward Denver, the snowcapped front range of the Rocky Mountains was clear and beautiful to the west.
A trifle shyly, Thurston remarked, “After all this time it’s really good to have you here, Nim.” He added with a smile,
“Even if you did just come for a taste of coal.”
“Does it sound crazy, Thurs?”
Nim had explained last night on the telephone his sudden desire to visit a coal-fired generating plant and the reasoning behind it.
“Who’s to say what’s crazy and what isn’t? Those endless hearings nowadays are crazy—not the idea of having them, but the way they’re run. In Colorado we’re in the same kind of bind you are in California. Nobody wants to let us build new generators, but five or six years from now when the power cuts start, we’ll be accused of not looking ahead, not planning for a crisis.”
“The plants your people want to build—they’d be coal-burning?”
“Damn right! When God set up natural resources he was kind to Colorado. He loaded this state with coal, the way he handed oil to the Arabs. And not just any old coal, but good stuff—low in sulfur, clean burning, most of it near the surface and easily mined. But you know all that.”
Nim nodded because he did know, then said thoughtfully, “There’s enough coal west of the Mississippi to supply this country’s energy needs for three and a half centuries. If we’re allowed to use it.”
Thurston continued threading the little car through Saturday morning traffic, which was light. “Well go directly to our Cherokee plant, north of the city,” he announced. “It’s our biggest. Cobbles up coal like a starvin brontosaurus.”
“We burn seven and a half thousand tons a day here, give or take a little.” The Cherokee plant superintendent shouted the information at Nim, doing his best to be heard above the roar of pulverizer mills, fans and pumps. He was an alert, sandy-haired young man whose surname—Folger—was stenciled on the red hard hat he wore. Nim had on a white hard hat labeled “Visitor.” Thurston Jones had brought his own.
They were standing on a steel plate floor near one side of a gargantuan boiler into which coal—which had just been pulverized to a fine dust—was being air-blown in enormous quantities. Inside the boiler the coal ignited instantly and became white hot; part of it was visible through a glass-enclosed inspection port like a peephole glimpse of hell. This heat transferred itself to a latticework of boiler tubes containing water which promptly became high-pressure steam and ripsnorted to a separate super-heater section, emerging at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The steam, in turn, rotated a turbine generator which—along with other boilers and turbines at Cherokee—supplied almost three quarters of a million kilowatts to power-hungry Denver and environs.
Only a portion of the boiler’s exterior was visible from the enclosed area where the men were standing; the entire height of the boiler was equal to fifteen floors of a normal building.
But all around them were the sight and sound and smell and taste of coal. A fine gravel of black dust was underfoot. Already Nim was conscious of a grittiness between his teeth and in his nostrils.
“We clean up as often as we can,” Superintendent Folger volunteered. “But coal is dirty.”
Thurston added loudly, with a smile, “Messier than oil or hydro. You sure you want this filthy stuff in California?”
Nim nodded affirmatively, not choosing to pit his voice against the surrounding roar of blowers and conveyors. Then, changing his mind, he shouted back, “Well join the black gang. Don’t have any choice.”
He was already glad he had come. It was important to acquire a feeling about coal, coal as it would relate to Tunipah, for his testimony next week.
King Coal! Nim had read somewhere recently that “Old King Coal is striding back toward his throne.” It had to be that way, he thought; there was no alternative. In the last few decades America had turned its back on coal, which once brought cheap energy, along with growth and prosperity, when the United States was young. Other forms of power—notably oil and gas—had supplanted coal because they were cleaner, easier to handle, readily obtainable and, for a while, cheaper. But not any more!
Despite coal’s disadvantages—and nothing would wish those away—the vast black deposits underground could still be America’s salvation, its last and most important natural wealth, its ultimate ace in the hole.
He became aware of Thurston motioning, suggesting they move on.
For another hour they explored Cherokee’s noisy, coal-dusty intricacy. A lengthy stop was at the enormous electrostatic dust collectors—required under environmental laws—whose purpose was to remove burned fly ash which otherwise would belch from smokestacks as a pollutant.
And cathedral-like generator halls with their familiar. deafening roar-whine were reminders that whatever the base fuel, electricity in Brobdingnagian quantities was what this place was all about.
The trio—Nim, Thurston, Folger—emerged at length from the plant interior into the open—on a high walkway near the building’s peak, two hundred feet above the ground. The walkway, linked to a maze of others beneath it by steep steel stairways, was actually a metal grating with everything below immediately visible. Plant workers moving on lower walkways appeared like flies. At first Nim looked down at his feet and through the grating nervously; after a few minutes he adjusted. The purpose of open gratings, young Folger explained, was for winter weather—to allow ice and snow to fall through.
Even here the all-pervading noise was still around them. Clouds of water vapor, emerging from the plant’s cooling towers and changing direction in the wind, blew around and across the walkway. One moment Nim would find himself in a cloud, seemingly isolated, with visibility limited to a foot or two ahead. Then the water vapor would swirl away, leaving a view of the suburbs of Denver spread below, with downtown high-rise buildings in the distance. Though the day was sunny, the wind up here was cold and biting and Nim shivered. There was a sense of loneliness, he thought, of isolation and of danger.
“There’s the promised land,” Thurston said. “If you have your way, it’s what you’ll see at Tunipah.” He was pointing to an area, directly ahead, of about fifteen acres. Covering it completely was a gigantic coal pile.
“You’re looking at four months’ supply for the plant, not far from a million tons,” Folger informed them.
“And underneath it all is what used to be a lovely meadow,” Thurston added. “Now it’s an ugly eyesore; no one can dispute that. But we need it. There’s the rub.”
While they watched, a diesel locomotive on a rail spur jockeyed a long train of freight cars delivering still more coal. Each car, without uncoupling, moved into a rotary dumper which then inverted, letting the coal fall out onto heavy grates. Beneath were conveyors which carried the coal toward the power plant.
“Never stops,” Thurston said. “Never.”
There would be strong objections, Nim already knew, to transferring this scene to the unspoiled wilderness of Tunipah. In a simplistic way he shared the objectors’ point of view. But he told himself: Electric power to be generated at Tunipah was essential; therefore the intrusion must be tolerated.
They moved from the high viewing point, descended one of the outside metal stairways to a slightly lower level, and paused again. Nowthey were more sheltered and the force of the wind had lessened. But the surrounding noise was greater.
“Something else you’ll find when you work with coal,” the plant superintendent was saying, “is that you’ll have more personnel accidents than you will with oil or gas or, for that matter, nuclear energy. We’ve got a good accident prevention program here. Just the same …”
Nim wasn’t listening.
Incredibly, with only the kind of coincidence which real life—not fiction—can produce, an accident was happening while he watched.
Some fifty feet ahead of Nim, and behind the backs of the other two who were facing him, a coal conveyor belt was in operation. The belt, a combination of pliant rubber and steel running over cylindrical rollers, carried coal to crushers which reduced it to small pieces. Later still it would be pulverized to a fine powder, ready for instant burning. Now, a portion of the conveyor belt, because of some large coal lumps, was blocked and overflowing. The be
lt continued moving. New coal was pouring over the side as it arrived. Above the moving belt, a solitary workman, perched precariously on an overhead grating, was probing with a steel rod, attempting to clear the blockage.
Later, Nim would learn the procedure was prohibited. Safety regulations required that the conveyor belt be shut down before a blockage was cleared. But plant workers, conscious of the need to maintain coal flow, sometimes ignored the regulation.
Within one or two seconds, while Nim watched, the workman slipped, checked himself by grabbing the edge of the grating, slipped again, and fell onto the belt below. Nim saw the man’s mouth open as he cried out, but the sound was lost. He had fallen heavily; clearly, he was hurt. The belt was already carrying him higher, nearer the point where the coal crushing machinery, housed in a box-like structure, would cut him to pieces.
No one else was in sight. No one, other than Nim, had seen the accident happen.
All he had time for was to leap forward, run, and shout as he went, “Stop the belt!”
As Nim dived between them, Thurston and Folger, not knowing what was happening, spun around. They took in the scene quickly, reacted fast, and raced after Nim. But by the time they moved he was well ahead.
The conveyor belt, at its nearest point to the walkway, was several feet higher and sloping upward. Getting onto it was awkward. Nim took a chance and leaped. As he landed clumsily on the moving belt, on hands and feet, a sharp edge of coal cut his left hand. He ignored the hurt and scrambled forward, upward, over loose, shifting coal, nearer to the workman who was lying dazed and was stirring feebly on a higher portion of the belt. By now the man was less than three feet from the deadly machinery ahead and moving closer.
What followed was a sequence of events so swift that its elements were inseparable.
Nim reached the workman and grabbed him, trying to pull him back. He succeeded briefly, then heard cloth rip and felt resistance. Somewhere, somehow, the man’s clothing was caught in the moving belt. Nim tugged again, to no effect. The clanking machinery was barely a foot away. Nim struggled desperately, knowing it was the last chance. Nothing happened. The workman’s right arm, which was ahead of his body, entered the machinery and bone crushed horribly. Blood spurted as the conveyor belt moved on. Then, with unbelieving horror, Nim realized his own clothing was caught. It was too late even to save himself.