s,
even for tread-snails. As I approached the carcass of the grinder I
had shot I found a ten-foot length of steel rod and poked it a few
times. When it didn't even twitch, I felt safe in walking past it.

I got back in the jeep and returned to where Joe Kivelson was keeping
track of what was going on in five screens, including one from a
pickup on a lifter at the ceiling, and shouting orders that were being
reshouted out of loudspeakers all over the place. The Odin Dock &
Shipyard equipment had begun coming out; lorries picking up the wax
that had been dumped back from the fire and wax that was being pulled
off the piles, and material-handling equipment. They had a lot of
small fork-lifters that were helping close to the fire.

A lot of the wax was getting so soft that it was hard to handle, and
quite a few of the plastic skins had begun to split from the heat.
Here and there I saw that outside piles had begun to burn at the
bottom, from burning wax that had run out underneath. I had moved
around to the right and was getting views of the big claw-derricks at
work picking the big sausages off the tops of piles, and while I was
swinging the camera back and forth, I was trying to figure just how
much wax there had been to start with, and how much was being saved.
Each of those plastic-covered cylinders was a thousand pounds; one of
the claw-derricks was picking up two or three of them at a grab....

I was still figuring when shouts of alarm on my right drew my head
around. There was an uprush of flame, and somebody began screaming,
and I could see an ambulance moving toward the center of excitement
and firemen in asbestos suits converging on a run. One of the piles
must have collapsed and somebody must have been splashed. I gave an
involuntary shudder. Burning wax was hotter than melted lead, and it
stuck to anything it touched, worse than napalm. I saw a man being
dragged out of further danger, his clothes on fire, and
asbestos-suited firemen crowding around to tear the burning garments
from him. Before I could get to where it had happened, though, they
had him in the ambulance and were taking him away. I hoped they'd get
him to the hospital before he died.

Then more shouting started around at the right as a couple more piles
began collapsing. I was able to get all of that--the wax sausages
sliding forward, the men who had been working on foot running out of
danger, the flames shooting up, and the gush of liquid fir