The Devil's Opera(120)
The second hiccup appeared in the form of Dr. Nichols and Erling Ljungberg standing side by side blocking his way. Ljungberg said nothing; merely crossed his arms and made an excellent representation of the Platonic ideal of an immovable object.
The good doctor, on the other hand, appeared to be an Aristotelian. He stepped up beside the emperor. Even though he pitched his voice low, Ulrik was still close enough to hear him.
“Don’t even think about climbing up on a horse.”
Gustav started to speak, and Nichols held up a peremptory hand.
“Don’t be an idiot! You had a seizure yesterday on the boat. No way are you getting up on a horse today. Remember that conversation we had about being careful? This comes under that heading. Now get in the damn car and get to the palace, so I can finally get you to lie down and get some rest!”
One long brown finger reinforced the order by pointing to the car. Gustav looked from the doctor to the bodyguard, who might as well have been carved from granite for all the give there was in his face. He shrugged, and turned toward the car.
It took a moment to get everyone settled. Gustav, Kristina and Ulrik took the back seat, and Caroline rode in the front seat with the driver. Ljungberg and Baldur walked on opposite sides of the car beside the doors.
When the last door shut, Gustav looked over Kristina’s head to Ulrik. “I must take more care. Help me remember that.” At that moment, the emperor’s face was very drawn. “It is hard.”
Ulrik said nothing; merely nodded.
The car jerked into motion, and the people along the street began cheering and waving flags and banners as the procession got into motion.
Chapter 48
Water under pressure in a boiler has an interesting property. If the pressure is suddenly released, the water converts to steam as close to instantaneously as makes no difference, and almost as quickly expands to occupy a volume a thousand times as great. And the actual steam in the boiler, when the pressure is released, expands by a factor of thirteen.
If Ciclope and Pietro had understood any of this, it wouldn’t have stopped them from setting the bombs—but they would have run a little faster and a lot farther before they stopped.
* * *
Steam plants are usually constructed along simple designs. That was definitely true with the design of this system. The boiler tank in the wagon was a wrought iron cylinder about one and one-half feet in diameter and a bit over eight feet long, with iron plates riveted on the ends to close the cylinder, and pressure pipes feeding from the end opposite the firebox to the actual steam engine in the crane assembly. It held about three hundred gallons of water, by up-time standards.
Feasible with the down-timer level of technology. And if operated with care, not inordinately dangerous.
But the placing of four gunpowder bombs in the firebox as the boiler was getting into operating pressure range had just turned the steam plant into a looming disaster.
The wax on the ends of the bombs melted immediately and flamed. The wax sealing the plugs in their holes didn’t last much longer, but melted and leaked out very soon thereafter, increasing the flame for moments. It was inevitable that the flames would start trying to follow the path of the wax. After that, it was a race to see which bomb the fire would detonate first. All in all, Pietro had created an interesting fuze for his bombs, without even realizing what he was doing.
It took longer than one might have expected. And in the end, it wasn’t the first bomb placed that detonated, but the third. But it didn’t really matter, for its detonation caused two of the other three to detonate immediately.
In that instant, the metal door blew off the firebox and through the door at the end of the wagon. The bricks of the firebox shattered and blew out the sides. And the unfortunate Nils, whom Pietro had callously dismissed as dead one way or the other, had indeed expired before they left the wagon. But if he hadn’t been, he definitely would have been dead now as his broken corpse followed the firebox door through the now gaping doorway.
That was bad enough. There was worse to come.
The bulk of the construction laborers were in the process of gathering to get their day’s orders from the work gang bosses. The splinters from the door and the sides of the wagon scythed out through the area by the main gate to the site, downing several of them in screaming agony.
Most of the men the splinters didn’t get were dropped by the shrapnel of the broken bricks. And the unfortunate boss of the masons caught the firebox door in the neck. It didn’t decapitate him—quite—but he was the first person to die as a direct result of the explosion.
In the same instant that the firebox was shattered into debris, the force of the explosion blew the end of the boiler tank up, torquing the metal until something gave way. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the pipe fittings at the other end of the tank. Instead, it was one of the rivets holding the end cap on the tank that failed. And with all that pressure in the tank, one was all it took.