"Fine, Mr. Stillman," Jonny said, feeling awkward as he shook hands. He'd been working here for three weeks now, but still didn't feel comfortable dealing directly with his father's customers. "Dader's out right now; can I help you with something?"
Stillman shook his head. "I really just dropped by to say hello to you and to bring you some news. I heard this morning that Wyatt Brothers Contracting is putting together a group to demolish the old Lamplighter Hotel. Would you be interested in applying for a job with them?"
"No, I don't think so. I'm doing okay here right now. But thanks for—"
He was cut off by a dull thunderclap. "What was that?" Stillman asked, glancing at the cloudless sky.
"Explosion," Jonny said curtly, eyes searching the southwest sky for evidence of fire. For an instant he was back on Adirondack. "A big one, southwest of us. There!" He pointed to a thin plume of smoke that had suddenly appeared.
"The cesium extractor, I'll bet," Stillman muttered. "Damn! Come on, let's go."
The déjà vu vanished. "I can't go with you," Jonny said.
"Never mind the shop. No one will steal anything." Stillman was already getting into his car.
"But—" There would be crowds there! "I just can't."
"This is no time for shyness," the mayor snapped. "If that blast really was all the way over at the extraction plant, there's probably one hell of a fire there now. They might need our help. Come on!"
Jonny obeyed. The smoke plume, he noted, was growing darker by the second.
Stillman was right on all counts. The four-story cesium extraction plant was indeed burning furiously as they roared up to the edge of the growing crowd of spectators. The patrollers and fireters were already there, the latter pouring a white liquid through the doors and windows of the building. The flames, Jonny saw as he and the mayor pushed through the crowd, seemed largely confined to the first floor. The entire floor was burning, however, with flames extending even a meter or two onto the ground outside the building. Clearly, the fire was being fueled by one or more liquids.
The two men had reached one of the patrollers now. "Keep back, folks—" he began.
"I'm Mayor Stillman," Stillman identified himself. "What can we do to help?"
"Just keep back—no, wait a second, you can help us string a cordon line. There could be another explosion any time and we've got to keep these people back. The stuff's over there."
The "stuff" consisted of thin, bottom-weighted poles and bright red cord to string between them. Stillman and Jonny joined three patrollers who were in the process of setting up the line.
"How'd it happen?" Stillman asked as they worked, shouting to make himself heard over the roar of the flames.
"Witnesses say a tank of iaphanine got ruptured somehow and ignited," one of the patrollers shouted back. "Before they could put it out, the heat set off another couple of tanks. I guess they had a few hundred kiloliters of the damned stuff in there—it's used in the refining process—and the whole lot went up at once. It's a wonder the building's still standing."
"Anyone still in there?"
"Yeah. Half a dozen or so—third floor."
Jonny turned, squinting against the light. Sure enough, he could see two or three anxious faces at a partially open third-floor window. Directly below them Cedar Lake's single "skyhooker" fire truck had been driven to within a cautious ten meters of the building and was extending its ladder upwards. Jonny turned back to the cordon line—
The blast was deafening, and Jonny's nanocomputer reacted by throwing him flat on the ground. Twisting around to face the building, he saw that a large chunk of wall a dozen meters from the working fireters had been disintegrated by the explosion. In its place was now a solid sheet of blue-tinged yellow flame. Fortunately, none of the fireters seemed to have been hurt.
"Oh, hell," a patroller said as Jonny scrambled to his feet. "Look at that."
A piece of the wall had apparently winged the skyhooker's ladder on its way to oblivion. One of the uprights had been mangled, causing the whole structure to sag to the side. Even as the fireters hurriedly brought it down the upright snapped, toppling the ladder to the ground.
"Damn!" Stillman muttered. "Do they have another ladder long enough?"
"Not when it has to sit that far from the wall," the patroller gritted. "I don't think the Public Works talltrucks can reach that high either."
"Maybe we can get a hover-plane from Horizon City," Stillman said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.
"They haven't got time." Jonny pointed at the second-floor windows. "The fire's already on the second floor. Something has to be done right away."
The fireters had apparently come to the same conclusion and were pulling one of their other ladders from its rack on the skyhooker. "Looks like they're going to try to reach the second floor and work their way to the third from inside," the patroller muttered.
"That's suicide," Stillman shook his head. "Isn't there any place they can set up airbags close enough to let the men jump?"
The answer to that was obvious and no one bothered to voice it: if the fireters could have done that, they would have already done so. Clearly, the flames extended too far from the building for that to work.
"Do we have any strong rope?" Jonny asked suddenly. "I'm sure I could throw one end of it to them."
"But they'd slide down into the fire," Stillman pointed out.
"Not if you anchored the bottom end fifteen or twenty meters away; tied it to one of the fire trucks, say. Come on, let's go talk to one of the fireters."
They found the fire chief in the group trying to set up the new ladder. "It's a nice idea, but I doubt if all of the men up there could make it down a rope," he frowned after Jonny had sketched his plan. "They've been in smoke and terrific heat for nearly a quarter hour now and are probably getting close to collapse."
"Do you have anything like a breeches buoy?" Jonny asked. "It's like a sling with a pulley that slides on a rope."
The chief shook his head. "Look, I haven't got any more time to waste here. We've got to get our men inside right away."
"You can't send men into that," Stillman objected. "The whole second floor must be on fire by now."
"That's why we have to hurry, damn it!"
Jonny fought a brief battle with himself. But, as Stillman had said, this was no time to be shy. "There's another way. I can take a rope to them along the outside of the building."
"What? How?"
"You'll see. I'll need at least thirty meters of rope, a pair of insulated gloves, and about ten strips of heavy cloth. Now!"
The tone of command, once learned, was not easily forgotten. Nor was it easy to resist; and within a minute Jonny was standing beneath his third-floor target window, as close to the building as the flames permitted. The rope, tied firmly around his waist, trailed behind him, kept just taut enough to insure that it, too, stayed out of the fire. Taking a deep breath, Jonny bent his knees and jumped.
Three years of practice had indeed made perfect. He caught the window ledge at the top of his arc, curled up feet taking the impact against red-hot brick. In a single smooth motion he pulled himself through the half-open window and into the building.
The fire chief's guess about the heat and smoke had been correct. The seven men lying or sitting on the floor of the small room were so groggy they weren't even startled by Jonny's sudden appearance. Three were already unconscious; alive, but just barely.
The first task was to get the window completely open. It was designed, Jonny saw, to only open halfway, the metal frame of the upper section firmly joined to the wall. A few carefully placed laser shots into the heat-softened metal did the trick, and a single kick popped the pane neatly and sent it tumbling to the ground.