Kenneth Robeson - The Avenger 13 by Murder on Wheels

Author:Murder on Wheels
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-20T15:15:23+00:00

Chapter X

Wrecked Rollers

The new Marr automotive works was something that drew sightseers from all over America and technicians from all over Europe who thirsted for industrial knowledge.

The heart of the plant was its new strip mill, into one end of which went scrap iron and raw ingots, and from the other end of which came detailed parts of cars ready for final machining.

There was an entire building devoted to turning out the thin plates from which body parts were stamped. And in this building there was a line of rollers that had cost close to a million dollars to install.

It was a typical blooming-mill operation, with new improvements.

A bloom, or white-hot steel billet went through a succession of rollers. Each set of rollers was adjusted closer together than the last, and the billet became a thinner and thinner and wider and wider plate, till eventually it wound up as the thin-guage steel sheet which would make turret tops and fenders.

The blooms, fed into the thick end of the roller procession, were constantly tested by a metallurgical expert, to see that they weren’t too hard or too soft. Indeed, the very billet that did the damage that morning, was one of the one-in-three that had been so tested.

But you’d never think it had been tested when it hit that first roller.

There weren’t many men in the ship. There are few in a modern plant of that nature. But those who were there suddenly dropped everything they were doing at about ten minutes past ten in the morning. Because that was when it occurred.

The crash sounded like a sixteen-inch gun being fired. Only this was accompanied by a screaming of strained metal and a roaring of metal chunks, weighing tons, dropping to the concrete floor.

Wham!

The next roller, its rolls set closer, went with a report like the blowing up of a battleship!

And the white-hot bloom that had broken the first rolls and had scarcely been flattened at all, sailed past the second set still undented, save for a smaller chunk split off a corner.

Down the moving bed of the rolls it slid, while the cries of men resounded in the place.

“Stop the rolls!”

“Shut off that current!”

“Stop the?”

Bam!

The flaming billet was so much too big for the third set that it merely stayed hard against them while the moving bed buckled and ground underneath. But there was that foot-thick fragment split off before.

That wasn’t too thick to go through, but it was too thick to handle if it wouldn’t flatten.

Which it hadn’t!

One more set of rollers smashed with the unyielding fragment before they got the rolls stopped and examined, speechless, the damage done. Then the foreman handed his shop coat to a workman, rolled up his sleeves and, white-faced, hunted around for the metallurgist who had tested that bloom. He meant to strew pieces of his body around the plant.

“You damned fool! You let a billet go in with a carbon content so high it was like shoving a chunk of high-speed cutting

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.