Zachariah and Carson One Thumb walked the building area two weeks later. The crews had gone home for the day. Sola was in the office, going over the books. Gear Octo had the drawings for the controls and was making notes on improvements somewhere on the grounds.

“What do you think, Zach?,” asked the older machinist.

“We have a design we can put together in a few weeks, way ahead of our deadline,” said Zachariah. “We’ll know more when Gear Octo is done with the controls. Obviously there will be room for improvement once we have it in the sea, and start the test run.”

“Still not sure the window will hold in the pilot compartment,” said Carson. “We might have to think of something else if it doesn’t hold.”

“We should probably have some way to seal the pilot compartment from the rest of the boat in case the window breaks,” said Zachariah.

“Your pilot would need some way to breathe if the window broke and dumped sea water on top of him,” said Carson. “Not to mention what the water would do to the controls.”

“Maybe the pilot compartment needs to be a bubble inside the bubble that is the piloting view,” said Zachariah. “At the very least, we might need backup controls in case the helm is rendered useless.”

“We could just put in a peephole,” said Carson. “That will keep the damage down until we get it looked at in the dock.”

“The pilot wouldn’t be able to see,” said Zachariah. “The main problem is we don’t have any way to cloak everything in metal and still have a way for the helm to perceive the world around him. So we need a window and lights, and we need them to be excessively thick in case some of the sea life bumps into the window.”

Carson nodded. The sea life that went for the window would be among the bigger fish in the water. And they would love to eat a man swimming in their hunting ground.

“Solid slugs powered by their own engines have been mentioned as secondary weapons,” said Zachariah. “What do you think about that?”

“How do they hit the target?,” asked Carson.

“I have no idea,” admitted Zachariah. “Do you?”

“We might need some way to guide them through the water unless we set some kind of timer so they explode when they travel the maximum amount of distance,” said Carson.

“That’s a good idea,” said Zachariah. “We certainly don’t want them to be confused and come back to the Sea Rocket.”

“A projectile will need the engine to move under the water,” said Carson. “I doubt we can make them smart enough to chase something, but maybe we can make them fast enough to move away from the boat before they explode.”

“We should hand it off and see if the weapons crew can do something with the idea,” said Zachariah. “They might like the challenge of another underwater weapon to be put on the boat.”

“I’ll put it on the list,” said Carson. “We can check the planning in a couple of days. The imaging looked good the last time we got together.”

“Can we use the design to fly?,” asked Zachariah.

“Sure, but we would have to install lifting jets to get it into the air, maybe some

wings.” Carson shrugged. “We would have an easier time retrofitting the original Rocket for high flight if you want to head for a moon.”

“We would have to add on fuel tanks and make sure we had an air supply, and maybe another engine to give us a bigger boost,” said Zachariah.

“Why?,” asked Carson.

Zachariah thought about the race where he and his kids had flown to victory. He couldn’t count on air between the worlds to help boost the Rocket across the gap. Maybe the temporary booster built for the race could make a difference.

“Because above a certain height, there’s no air to run the engine,” said Zachariah. “Trying to fly up there would cut the engine until it fell back below that threshold. And without an air supply, we would suffocate before we reached any type of goal.”

“How far do you think you would have to travel to reach a moon?,” asked Carson.

“I have no idea,” said Zachariah. “We don’t know what physical laws exist up there, just like we don’t know what is going to happen when we set sail. We could lose both prototypes while trying to explore.”

“Too bad Old Herman isn’t still around,” said Carson. “He wasn’t much of a new design type machinist, but he knew his way around quick fixes.”

Zachariah nodded in agreement.

Old Herman had been a machinist with a shop a few doors down from his old one. When the city was destroyed, it was assumed he was killed in the fighting like so many others caught by the loathly tower.

His daemon had been some kind of animal Zachariah had never seen before or since. It looked like some type of dog. The older machinist used his daemon to find imperfections in design work and fix them. He didn’t work on his own ideas, but he could look at someone else’s and tell you what was wrong with it.

It made him valuable for checking your work and making sure it did what you

thought it would.

“Any thought about the flying battleships Lobster Bay wants?,” asked Carson.

“I am thinking about just constructing a bigger version of the Rocket and adding on weapons and bigger jets to handle things,” said Zachariah. “Benz and Octo are going over what they want as they help us with the boat design.”

“I assume the lightning guns will be the thing for that,” said Carson.

“I don’t know,” said Zachariah. “Their Lord of Lightning is pretty much immune to that with his own battleship having guns, shields, and a support air crew.”

“So we’ll have to think of something bigger to handle him,” said Carson.

“Maybe a flying cannon,” said Zachariah.

“Maybe,” said Carson. “I think something like a flatboat with a ton of guns will do for the initial idea phase.”

“We could try to use the ferry for a basis for their battleship,” said Zachariah. “We would just have to figure out how to place things for the best effect.”

“Let’s get this underwater boat built first before we think of building weapons that will change the face of the world,” said Carson.

“Lobster Bay does have a problem with that kind of thing among their machinists,” said Zachariah. “I often wondered how they dealt with it.”

“With projectiles and lightning,” said Carson. He gave his friend a grin. “And they haven’t dealt with them all. We’re just lucky their criminals are fixated on blowing the castle to ruin instead of crossing the continent and attempting their schemes here.”

Zachariah agreed with his friend. Lobster Bay’s machinists gave the profession a bad name, and justified the extreme measures the city state had to use to keep its people safe.

He supposed the known intolerance of his people and their daemon partners kept the mad geniuses away from Riordiana.

A city where most of the citizens carried magical living weapons could not be an appealing target to most people. But they had lost the city once, and it was up to him and his fellow machinists to not let it happen again.

“What’s next?,” asked Carson.

“We’re going to have to send some kind of test rig down into the water to make sure the poison won’t kill a crew when we do get everything together,” said Zachariah.

“Something without anything but an oxygen line can be dropped in three days,” said Carson. “I’ll have to get some shapers on it. It shouldn’t be a problem. Who’s going to go down in it?”

“I will,” said Zachariah. “I’m going to ride along in the Sea Rocket. I might as well do the test dive too.”

“We’re going to do the tests without riders first, and then something like a chicken,” said Carson. “I’m not going to risk you if I can help it.”

“I guess that sounds reasonable,” said Zachariah. He knew his friend was looking out for him. His own instinct was to risk himself to figure out what could go wrong first, depending on Gold Bug to get him out of trouble. He realized he couldn’t do that here. The whole thing would collapse if he did that and something went wrong.

Sola would never forgive him if he did something risky when he didn’t need it. And he didn’t need it with the crew of machinists they had gathered to help with his work.

“I am still going to need to go at some point to check the calculations,” said

Zachariah. This seemed reasonable. Someone was going to have to ride along to see what happened to the body inside the shell. No one had done anything like they were attempting.

“After the chicken,” said Carson. “I’m not going to make excuses to Sola if

something happens to you.”

“I guess that’s even more reasonable,” said Zachariah.

“A little patience goes a long way,” said Carson. “We’re still almost two years from the deadline. We have plenty of time.”

“It doesn’t feel like we have plenty of time,” said Zachariah. “It feels like things are moving and we don’t have enough control of how they will go.”

“And there is nothing we can do about that,” said Carson. “The crews are almost done for the day. You and Sola are welcome to eat with me and mine.”

“Tell her and Bolan to go ahead,” said Zachariah. “I still have things I have to do here.”

“Don’t stay up all night trying to figure out ways to overcomplicate things,” said Carson. “I’ll get the test ball ready in the next two days. Then we’ll see how things go.”

“We’ll have to drop it in the dead zone,” said Zachariah. “I’m not looking forward to that.”

“I know,” said Carson. “Remember what I said. Don’t add on problems before we sort out the ones we already have.”

“I will take it under advisement,” said Zachariah. He gave his friend a slight smile. “Go enjoy your dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“All right, Zachariah,” Carson said. He nodded his head and went in search of the apprentices. At least they would listen to reason.

Zachariah walked to the design tables. He went over the drawings, making notes. Testing the water was a good idea. None of this would work if they couldn’t get their machine in the dead zone to hunt their objective.

If he could the machines to work, it would change things around the world. They would be able to sail under the water and explore the bottom of the seas. Travel might be faster underwater. Maybe an undersea city could be set up when the boats were really viable.

There were so many things that could be used with the gravity engine. He couldn’t think of all the uses they would be able to discover once he had shown the thing could be done.

And if he could get air machines cheap to build and use, there was a chance that everyone would have them. Flights to Lobster Bay would be a matter of getting on a craft at one place and getting off at the other.

Why didn’t people want to do that?

He would love to talk to other machinists in a matter of hours of travel time to

compare notes. It was so much faster than the trains and personal messengers.

He wondered how the Baldwins would feel about this. Their Green Lights kept the peace, and dealt with things at the behest of their city. Would they like a world that was better connected by the machines he envisioned.

He supposed they would be called in to rein in the worse parts of new machining. There were always a few that would ruin things for the rest.

That was another thing he would have to think about while trying to build better ways of doing things.