Zachariah wished he had put in more windows. He would have loved to have seen the ocean as the boat sank below the waves. He and Gold Bug walked the decks, checking for leaks as they went.

He conceded it had been too risky for the design. The one for the pilot at the bridge area, and the gunner in the nose, were weak points of defense if some of the ocean predators decided to take the boat on.

He didn’t envy the pilot having to abandon his post if the bubble of glass over his compartment exploded somehow. He had to pull on the shutter stop, and wait for precious seconds as the metal sealed the open spot off from the water. While that was going on, he had to hope that the chair and control assembly pulled him out of danger.

Zachariah worked his way to the gunner bubble. No one was inside. They had

brought a machinist to run it, after Octo had approved the construction. The machinist was just making sure that the wiring and ventilation were doing what they were supposed to be doing with Carson’s scrubbers and small fans moving the air around.

Zachariah opened the gunner’s bubble up and sat down in the chair. Gold Bug perched on his shoulder. He buckled into the chair, but kept his hands away from the controls.

The last thing the maiden trip needed was an accident with the weapons firing for no reason.

He had so many ideas for improving the design now that it was afloat. He could build a city under the sea and take it anywhere he wanted to go with a big enough version of the gravity engine.

Flying to other spheres didn’t seem that insane now that had this new data he could build into his design.

Lights from the body of the boat picked out fish ahead of them. The animals swam away from the strange thing in the water with them. He smiled as he watched them go.

The boat turned and sped up. He watched as the landscape changed around him. Octo seemed to have the controls in hand.

He would have preferred to be in the pilot seat himself, but Octo had to evaluate the performance for Lobster Bay. They would decide if they wanted to buy the manufacturing rights on his and Benz’s recommendations. That part was out of his hands.

“It’s wonderful that we made a dream a reality,” Zachariah said. Gold Bug shifted on his shoulder to agree silently with him.

The boat dropped down toward the bottom. Zachariah looked around as the gunner’s bubble moaned. How deep could they go before the boat broke open? He didn’t want to find out while he was onboard.

A small crack wrote on the bubble. The ocean started to press in on the weak spot. A drop of water appeared inside the glass.

“I think we should do something about this before it becomes worst,” Zachariah told his daemon.

He pulled some chips of metal out of his pocket and let Gold Bug take as much as it needed. The ant climbed from his shoulder and plugged the small hole first before reinforcing the inside of the bubble with a fine web across its surface. It covered that layer with another layer. The machinist put the insect’s fuel where it could reach it inside the window sill instead of having to climb up and down his arm.

Gold Bug assessed its work when it was done. It wasn’t a shield, or heavy shutters, but it should keep the water out long enough for the gunner to get out. And it was nearly transparent.

If they had a way for the gun controls to see, they wouldn’t need a window at all. They could use the guns to watch everything.

“I think that was close to a failure,” said Zachariah. “We’ll need to reinforce the windows if we want to dive deeper. Until then we need to make sure there is a warning about the safety limit for any other sea craft that is built.”

Gold Bug waved its antennae in agreement.

“Let’s go up and talk to Octo,” said Zachariah. “We should make sure the pilot’s window hasn’t started breaking at the very least.”

He unstrapped himself from the chair and turned the bubble so he could leave. He made sure to dog the hatch closed. If the bubble cracked open, they didn’t want to fill up the rest of the boat with water by accident.

Hopefully the rest of the cruise would be without incident. They needed to make sure that it would function under the water as naturally as possible. Things breaking were signs that something needed to be rethought, but they were so close he didn’t want to lose the prototype on the maiden run.

On the other hand, he had built enough things to know that sometimes you didn’t always get it right in the first place. You had to go back to the drawing board and look at where you made your mistakes before you could fix things.

Zachariah climbed up to the pilot’s bubble and stood outside of the small chamber. Cracked lines ran through the window. Octo had the stick back to lift the boat toward the surface.

“Went down too deep,” the pilot said. “The glass still isn’t tough enough to take it to the bottom.”

“I can do a makeshift repair for the moment,” said Zachariah. “Carson will find us some tougher glass for the bubbles.”

Zachariah put his daemon to work fixing the window with the remains of the metal chips he was carrying. The insect quickly filled in the lines and covered the inside with the metallic resin it used to build things. It climbed back up to the machinist’s shoulder when it was done.

“That should get us back to the dock,” said Zachariah. “We’ll have to take the

bubbles apart and reinstall the glass windows with tougher glass. There may be a point where nothing we can do will fix the problem.”

“I marked where I noticed the cracks appearing,” said Octo. “That will give us a ballpark of how deep we can go without the new windows.”

“If we had some way of seeing things without actually having to see them, that would be better than the windows and lights we’re using right now,” said Zachariah.

“If you come with something, I’m sure Lobster Bay will pay you for it,” said Octo. “That would help flying blind in bad weather immensely.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Zachariah. “I have to go back to work. Just bring us in to the cradle, and we’ll go over any problems that we saw.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Octo with a grin.

Zachariah descended and walked the rest of the ship. He didn’t spot any more leaks. The windows were the weak points of the design like eyes in a man’s head. If they had something that could mimic the eye, that would be better than the glass they were using now.

He needed to think on that for a bit. Maybe he and Gold Bug could come up with something after they docked.

Bolan and Carson might be able to help him with that. They were far more practical than he was. That was what was needed at this stage of things.

A bigger ship might be able to stand the stress of the dive better. That might be something to think about once they were done with this job. Maybe they could reinforce things to carry citizens to look around the bottom of the sea for things that needed doing.

Maybe they could arrange tours for machinists who wanted to explore the water safely.

Most people didn’t care about fish except on how to put them on the table. Looking at them in their natural habitat didn’t seem like anything anybody would want to do at the moment.

And some of the beasts like the ones around Lobster Bay were too dangerous to even think about capturing for a false sea for people to look at when they wanted.

Zachariah put the thoughts away as he went through his checklists. He thought that people in Baldwin or Messer’s Reach would love such a thing as long as the monster fish weren’t too large. They were landlocked and miles away from either ocean.

If he did want to set something like that up, he decided that he would get the Baldwin Green Lights involved to ensure the safety of the city from any predator he might dredge up for them. Everything would be easier to do with a Green Light on the job.

He wondered if they had thought of such things and thought it was too much of a risk to their city to have such a thing. He had only been there a brief time during the air race. That hadn’t allowed any real time to sight see while he was trying to beat those machinist brothers from Lobster Bay.

He and Gold Bug had taught them a thing about cheating during the air race.

Zachariah felt the boat shudder as it broke the surface of the water. He checked the engines as Octo brought them to the shore. Everything was in the green. The dry run was mostly successful.

If the windows cracked in the dead zone, it could kill the pilot and any crew trying to take over for the pilot. The dark water had killed the local fish. Killing people was just as possible.

If they killed the egg, would that clean the water with its absence. Would they have to do more to get rid of the dangerous water? Maybe they could freeze it and move it somewhere that wouldn’t be affected by it.

He just couldn’t think of any place that wouldn’t lose all life with that stuff dropped down on top of it. It was better to wall the area up and let it sit there until someone with a bigger brain could think of a solution.

Festus might want it pulled out of the water and used as a border marking on land somewhere. If the holder cracked, only the local people and wildlife would be impacted.

That would be a solution but maybe not the best solution.

Zachariah felt the boat shudder to a stop. He had to let his other thoughts go until he was on dry land again.