Chapter 18

The next morning, Jeff could hardly wait to examine his first effort at making steel. All he knew for sure was that this would be a steel with a high carbon content. At the moment, he had no way to determine the actual carbon level, so he could not know the quality of the steel he produced, but that was of secondary concern. The big deal was whether or not he had made any steel at all.

There was no question that the stuff in the cup was metal, so he was halfway to his goal. He took out the metallic mass, which was still warm to the touch, almost too hot to hold. He laid the piece of metal on a hard rock, he really didn't care what it was, he had just asked Henry to bring him a large rock as hard as he could find to be used as an anvil. Jeff took a bronze hammer and smacked the metal with the hammer head as hard as he could strike it. Wonderful! The metal deformed a small amount and did not break into several pieces. That indicated that the steel was of reasonably good quality and only moderately high in carbon.

Jeff continued to pound on the metal chunk and beat it thinner and thinner, in the process, damaging the bronze hammer head beyond repair. In passing, Jeff noted that he was much stronger than he had ever been before, since he had to be damned strong to deform either metal this much just by pounding on it with muscle power, alone.

OK, that was enough to prove the point. Now, Jeff needed to make as much steel as he could for several projects he had in mind. The small furnace had proved the concept, now he needed to make a much larger furnace to meet his requirements. Jeff and three of his coworkers built a furnace nearly 10 times the size of that small prototype. This took several days, and Jeff had several more bellows made during this time.

This time, the furnace was loaded with a large charge of the iron ore, coal, and limestone in the proper proportions. The fire under the furnace was started and the workers took turns feeding more coal into the fire and pumping the three bellows to keep the fire burning as hot as they could manage. Once the contents of the furnace got hot enough, another worker began using another bellows to blow air into the mass in the furnace. The process was still somewhat inefficient, so it took several days to get the mass hot enough for metal to start running from the furnace into the catch-basin. A cheer went up when the metal started to flow, albeit slowly.

Everybody was so happy that their five days of nonstop work had paid off that there was a virtually nonstop sex orgy to celebrate the results. Jeff and Adam, there to help, fathered several children during this episode, and nobody was unhappy that it happened. Both men fucked all of the women at least once, so there was no sure way to tell which one fathered which baby, but nobody cared. Most of the women were either officially part of Jeff's family or girls who had not decided on a permanent husband yet.

This time, they produced enough steel for Jeff to begin one of his projects. He wanted to make an electricity generator which could produce enough power to run a large number of light bulbs so that they could get more use from the many chambers in Cavopolis. To do this, he needed to make magnets, and to make magnets, he needed steel. He also needed a large quantity of copper wire, but that was Sarah's project.

It was kind of a circular problem. They needed a generator to make electricity to purify the copper to make wire to make a generator to make electricity to purify the copper to make wire, etc., etc., etc. The alternator they had from the car would do for making a few small magnets and to purify a small amount of copper. They could use the magnets and this wire to make a generator with higher capacity to repeat the process as many times as necessary to get the generator they needed. After that, they would put in their electric power station at the waterfall. This whole project was probably going to take at least a year, more likely two years, but they had no choice. At least, it could be done if they were sufficiently patient.

It was not difficult to make the magnets once they had the copper wire. Dolly had developed an interest in botany, and she had been able to find a plant with sap suitable for making a crude form of enamel to use to insulate the copper wire. The insulated wire was made and a magnetizing coil was constructed. This was initially powered from the car alternator, but the larger generator was used, once that had been constructed, to make larger magnets for larger generators.

While all of this was going on, more and more ore was brought in and converted to copper, zinc, tin, and iron/steel. After three years of almost continuous work, they had a steady supply of copper, brass, bronze, solder, and steel. They also had their electric system supplying light for Cavopolis and the other caves where factories had been set up.

The population had now grown to 117 people organized into six families consisting of one male and seven females. The rest were children, but four of them were male, so the work load on the men should ease off in a few years. Hopefully, in the near future, the population would stabilize at one husband and four wives. Actually, the men were more anxious for that time to come than were the women.

They now had three more tractors with 60 horsepower motors and six more trailers. These larger tractors and trailers were being used to haul ore, and the older units had been reassigned to things like bus service and hunting. The smallest of the tractors had been re-geared to run about 30-45 MPH and to pull a trailer with two machine guns mounted on it. This was used to protect them from attacks by bugs and reptiles. Their radios had gotten more reliable and one was now mounted in every tractor and every cave, so that they could call for help when they needed it.

The remaining machine guns were mounted in fixed locations to defend the individual caves, and the importance of this was pointed out early on, just after the high speed tractor-trailer system was put into service. Jeff, Jr. had argued for the armed car, as he was calling it, but he got little support. Jeff was finally convinced by his son's arguments and swung his influence behind the idea. This was enough to get the thing built, and barely in time, too.

They had put the unit into service with James and Suzy as gunners, Wilma as the driver, Kate as radio operator and loader, and Becky as commander and loader. One morning, Sharon was taking a load of people to work as she drove her ore hauler to pick up a load of sulfur for Sarah's sulfuric acid plant. One of the riders looked up and shouted for Sharon's attention. There was a cloud of unusual bugs flying in their general direction. Jeff, Jr. happened to be on this run, so he ran to the radio and called Kate to tell them to get the armed car into operation. He thought he saw trouble. He then ordered Sharon to head back to Cavopolis until they had the potential danger identified.

Jeff, Jr. called Cavopolis and warned them to man the fixed machine guns since trouble seemed to be headed their way. These two guns were now electrically powered and needed only the gunner. The ammunition hopper could hold 150 bolts, so the weapon did not need a dedicated loader. Meanwhile, Sharon was running her tractor back toward Cavopolis at 7 MPH, its maximum speed. They got to the cave before the flying bugs landed, so everybody was safe for the moment.

In his capacity as arms expert, Jeff, Jr. also commanded the defenses, so he ordered the armed car to run for the mines and those associated caves to provide them what protection it could. They had two fixed machine guns installed near those caves, but nothing at the mines. Fortunately, there were no people at the mines at the moment. Unfortunately, there were no experienced machine gunners a the caves, so the few people out there had no protection beyond the personal crossbows that they carried. There had been no trouble with bugs or reptiles in this area in the whole time that humans had been living here, so most people had become rather complacent about keeping in practice with their crossbows. Therefore, they were going to be in real trouble if aggressive carnivorous bugs landed there.