The racers lined up behind Sir Dormir on the field. Most of them had taken the time

to rest and eat while waiting for the flying tree to come in for a landing. They had

spent the two hours given him to refuel and rest checking over their equipment. The

referees walked the field, looking over things.

Zachariah stood by the Rocket. He drank some of their stored water out of a canteen.

They would need more than what they had stored if they went down in the desert. He

smiled at being in the top five. The flying machine had performed better than he had

expected, even surviving the air battle.

He turned his thoughts of using the design for a boat to sail underwater. It should be

fine, except they would need a way to enter and exit the ship for repairs if nothing

else. The crew compartment would have to be a separate compartment from that.

He had no clue what kind of weapons he could use underwater. That was something

he would have to devote some time thinking about while trying to figure the

dimensions they needed.

He felt sure that the gravity engine would work underwater just as well as in the sky.

All he had to do was duplicate the engine for the new shell.

“We’re ready,” said Bolan. “All we need is a referee to wave the flag for us.”

Zachariah looked up and nodded. The patch job Gold Bug had done was still holding.

He wondered if his daemon had made the patch out of the shrapnel that it had taken

from the skin of the ship.

That would explain the unexpected toughness of the patches.

Zachariah looked across the field. Brother Rabbit and Pearl stood at the starting

takeoff position. Gear Octo, the Lobster ace, had rolled his flying machine behind the

pooka. The referee watched the last racer climbing away from the field.

He climbed up and took his position. He started the engine, but didn’t direct power

to the jets yet. Rabbit had to take off before he could get in line behind Octo.

“Everything looks good,” said Bolan. “Everything is green from what I can see.”

“The maps look good too, Da,” said Sola. “We’re ready to go when we get the flag.”

“My board looks good too,” said Zachariah. “What kind of heading should I have,

Sola?”

“Southwest into the Desert, and then straight west toward the other side of the

continent,” said Sola. “I didn’t see any natural obstructions.”

“We’ll probably be sailing below the end of Corwin’s Mansions,” said Zachariah.

“The Desert will hopefully be free of sandstorms when we start sailing by. The only

thing we will have to worry about is the local empire down there.”

“There’s an empire in the desert?,” asked Bolan. “What kind of empire?”

“There is a small country built in the desert,” said Zachariah. “They are fighting the

nomads over control of giant creatures that live underground. Apparently you can

boost your mental ability with something taken from those creatures. The empire uses

it create artifacts that run on mind power. The nomads prefer that doesn’t happen.”

“Has either side interfered with the air race?,” asked Bolan.

“No one knows,” said Zachariah. “If we have to land in the desert, we are going to

have to avoid either side. Otherwise the Rocket will be up for grabs.”

“Have you dealt with these people, Da?,” asked Sola.

“No,” said Zachariah. “Everything I know is rumor and suspect. If we have to touch

down for any reason, we’re going to try to avoid both sides. Nothing can happen to

the Rocket while we are racing.”

“All right,” said Bolan. “We should be okay. The engines and fuel supply are good

on my board.”

“Keep an eye on it,” said Zachariah. “We’ve seen enough trouble that we can’t get

overconfident now.”

Zachariah watched as Brother Rabbit threw Pearl in the air and the fairy dragon

expanded. Pooka and flying monster climbed into the sky.

Gear Octo rolled into the starting slot. The pilot gave the referee the thumb’s up while

waiting for approval to launch.

Zachariah opened the belly jets up and lifted the Rocket off the ground. He directed

the flying machine behind the Lobster machine, and dropped it back down on its

skids. He waited for Octo to be cleared to be launched.

The Kellers piled into their own machine and closed everything for their own takeoff.

They seemed worried about their plane.

Zachariah wished them the best of luck.

The referee waved Octo into the air. He fired the jets built into the wings of his

machine. The aircraft rolled down the runway and then lifted off. It banked and

assumed a course to take its pilot to his next destination.

“All right,” said Zachariah. “Time to fly.”

He lifted the Rocket in the air when the referee waved his flag. He directed the thrust

through the main engine when he was high enough and roared over the ocean and

turned to get on course toward the desert.

Lobster Bay held a small fleet of boats in the protective arms of its harbor. Lobster

Castle rested in the center of things. Its long body pointed toward the mouth of the

harbor. The tower of the keep formed a tail, while claws hovered over the water.

“At least now we know why they call it Lobster Bay,” said Sola.

“I’ll say,” said Bolan. “It looks just like a lobster from the air.”

“What are those?,” asked Sola. She pointed to golden fins breaking the water as the

Rocket turned to head inland.

“Guppies,” said Zachariah.

“Guppies?,” said Sola. “They’re humongous.”

“Years ago something was spilled into the water off Lobster Castle,” said Zachariah.

“It creates giants. Sometimes they are aggressive. I thought about trying to do the

same, but my speciality is mechanics and not alchemistry.”

“You wanted to make giant monsters?,” asked Bolan.

“I was thinking about creating bigger food for the city,” said Zachariah. He checked

the course, and his position on it. “A few of my friends said I should stick to building

things no one knew how to operate.”

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” said Bolan. He exchanged glances with Sola who

shrugged. “What else were you working on?”

“Sara and I had a widget we thought could help sailors at night,” said Zachariah. “We

worked on it and had it ready to test when the city was ruined.”

“What did this widget do?,” said Bolan.

“It listened for fish and told the helm where he could go to throw his net,” said

Zachariah. “The testing was in the control sections. If the helm could spot the fish and

tell the captain where they were, then the widget passed the test.”

“Do you still have it?,” asked Bolan.

“The working model was destroyed when the shop was destroyed,” said Zachariah.

“Maybe Gold Bug could make us a copy.”

“We can put it on the Rocket and use it to monitor other flying machines in the air,”

said Bolan.

“Probably,” said Zachariah. “I never thought we could use it for that.”

“Air travel is only going to grow when people realize that we can put these machines

into the sky on a regular basis,” said Bolan. “Being able to see other machines is

going to be necessary.”

“No one is going to want to fly across the world,” said Zachariah. “No one but

racers.”

“Eventually people will want to move across the country faster than what they can

now,” said Bolan. “They are going to want to move cargo up and down the coast

faster than what they do now. If you show that you can fly from one spot to another

faster than you can sail, they will use your service to do that.”

“We would have to build bigger aircraft than the Rocket for that,” said Zachariah. “To

turn it into a commercial venture, we would need more machinists on the payroll.”

“We would have to operate at a loss for the first few years,” said Sola. “We would

need a lot of capital to build a bigger machine than the Rocket to haul cargo around.”

“We would also have to train pilots to fly any aircraft we build,” said Bolan. “Right

now, Lobster Castle has a lot of them working for them to protect the castle.”

“They also have the best weapon engineers,” said Zachariah.

“We should have asked them for design notes for the undersea boat you want to

build,” said Bolan.

“I know,” said Zachariah. “I’m an idiot. I could have asked if anyone had built one

as a test case. I just assumed that I was asked to build one because there wasn’t one

built yet.”

“There’s also the fact that even if one is built, the owner might not want to let us use

it,” said Sola.

“Especially if he is a pirate of some kind like what we saw in the Mansions,” said

Zachariah. “But it would have been a great shortcut if we had thought of it.”

“We can recruit some of them to help us design and build the submarine,” said Bolan.

“If you can sell it as something we can give to Lobster Castle, they might even help

us with the material and stuff we’ll need.”

“And they want an airship to match the pirates,” said Zachariah.

“So we ask them to provide support for the underwater boat first, then we get their

support for the sky boat,” said Bolan.

“Maybe,” said Zachariah. “It sounds doable. We might be able to get help from

Riordiana once we let them know that we suspect something is in the water.”

“There are daemons who can hunt and find things underwater,” said Sola.

“I think that it would be bad if anything living had contact with the water,” said

Zachariah.

“What do you mean bad?,” asked Bolan.

“Whatever is there might be able to kill daemons in the water,” said Zachariah. “We

can’t ask the king to send someone into danger to check if something is possibly in

the water if we’re not sure if that something will kill the person, or daemon,

checking.”

“So something not alive should be used,” said Sola.

“Exactly,” said Zachariah. “We don’t want to lose anyone when we can just come up

with our own version of that lightning gun and put it to use.”

The Keller boys passed them so close the Rocket shook in the passing of air.

Zachariah smiled as he opened up the throttle. Whatever happened, they were not

going to win this race.