Tom and Joe Kivelson had left already, to round up the scattered Javelin crew for fire fighting. The attack on the Municipal Building and on Hunters' Hall had been postponed, but it wasn't going to be abandoned. Oscar and Professor Hartzenbosch and Dad and a couple of others were planning some sort of an observation force of a few men for each place, until the fire had been gotten out or under control. Glenn Murell decided he'd go out with me, at least as far as the fire, so we went down to the vehicle port and got the jeep out. Main City Level Broadway was almost deserted; everybody had gone down below where the excitement was. We started down the nearest vehicle shaft and immediately got into a jam, above a lot of stuff that was going into the shaft from the First Level Down, mostly manipulators and that sort of thing. There were no police around, natch, and a lot of volunteers were trying to direct traffic and getting in each other's way. I got some views with the jeep camera, just to remind any of the public who needed reminding what our city administration wasn't doing in an emergency. A couple of pieces of apparatus, a chemical tank and a pumper marked SALAMANDER VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY NO. 3 came along, veered out of the jam, and continued uptown. "If they know another way down, maybe we'd better follow them," Murell suggested. "They're not going down. They're going to the lumber plant, in case the fire spreads upward," I said. "They wouldn't be taking that sort of equipment to a wax fire." "Why not?" I looked at him. "I thought you were in the wax business," I said. "I am, but I'm no chemist. I don't know anything about how wax burns. All I know is what it's used for, roughly, and who's in the market for it." "Well, you know about those jumbo molecules, don't you?" I asked. "They have everything but the kitchen sink in them, including enough oxygen to sustain combustion even under water or in a vacuum. Not enough oxygen to make wax explode, like powder, but enough to keep it burning. Chemical extinguishers are all smothering agents, and you just can't smother a wax fire. And water's worse than useless." He wanted to know why. "Burning wax is a liquid. The melting point is around 250 degrees Centigrade. Wax ignites at 750. It has no boiling point, unless that's the burning point. Throw water on a wax fire and you get a steam explosion, just as you would if you threw it on molten metal, and that throws the fire around and spreads it." "If it melts that far below the ignition point, wouldn't it run away before it caught fire?"