It took a few days to replace the glass with an even tougher creation, test the bubble closure, and generally try to make sure everything would work despite the boat being out of the water in a cradle.

The test dive had given them critical data on how the machine operated, and what it could do. They still didn’t know how effective it would be against one of the giant monsters around Lobster Bay, but there was only so much they could do to get the boat ready to operate under unknown circumstances.

Benz had advised the machinists that they would need a light cutter a hundred times more powerful than what they had put on their prototype to scratch one of the leviathans swimming around his home city. Zachariah saw no reason to doubt him.

And he saw no reason to assure the man they could meet his unintended challenge.

Once a basic blueprint was created, any machinist could create the same thing over and over at any size they wanted.

Very few would want to do what he was doing. They concentrated on answers to known problems. They didn’t think about working on things that might create answers for problems that weren’t known yet.

If he could get his starcraft built, he will have created the basis for a legend that no one else would want to live up to because of what he had done. He doubted other machinists would want to leave the grip of their homeland see what others lay beyond the sky.

But it would be a great story if he succeeded.

And the boat was great for showing him what he needed to lift his starboat above the sky where there wasn’t air to breathe and armored skin had to be set to protect the crew. He had already decided to make the hull ten times as thick as his sea boat, with an increase in the gravity engine to compensate.

And he definitely needed to make sure he had enough air and water to fly to another world without dying on the way.

He had a thought of how could he measure such a journey. Nothing on the planet had ever been pointed at the sky and asked to show the actual distance of something. No one had ever thought of such a thing, or if they did, he didn’t know about it.

How could he find out about that? He would have to do more research.

He smiled to himself. He had a lot of steps ahead of him if he wanted to reach the next planet over. He could test things with the Rocket to an extent, but he could already see needing an air supply and a way to fuel the aircraft without air.

Maybe he could do something with gravity. He wasn’t sure at the moment. He

thought maybe he could push against the realm with the gravity engine, but he wasn’t sure how to finesse that.

He decided to think about all this when he was done for the day. He still had to go over all the test results. He was still ahead of schedule, but he wanted to clear the dead zone before things got out of hand.

He didn’t want to be responsible for losing this new city of his countrymen when he could do something to stop it. If they couldn’t get the sub built, he would use something more limited to try to get the job done.

He considered consulting with the Green Lights. They knew about the upper air river. Maybe some of them had gone beyond the sky. It could be a resource he could use.

He would have to visit Baldwin and talk to them. Hopefully they had information on things he could use.

Whom else could he talk to about this project? He doubted anyone else was as interested in this as he was. Lobster Bay needed machines to battle their enemies now, not fly to other places and see what people did there.

Maybe the man with the wooden dog could help him. He knew about the egg. What else did he know?

Zachariah decided to think about the light cutter array and put everything else aside. He knew he would keep coming back to his dream project if he didn’t concentrate on the real world.

Sola would not be happy about that. She kept things together better than he did. He couldn’t run his shop in Messer’s Reach without her, and he couldn’t run this project either.

She kept him on track when he wanted to spend hours searching for the right bolt.

He smiled at that.

He searched through his papers, leaving out some metal for Gold Bug to snack on as he read what the instruments had recorded. He had proven the design worked. Carson and Bolan both wanted to crew the next expedition.

He didn’t like risking both of them, but he couldn’t say no. They deserved a trip for all the hard work they were putting in. Their daemons made manufacturing that much easier than anything else they had in their shop.

They still needed someone other than Octo who could pilot the undersea boat, and train others to pilot it too. He imagined it wouldn’t be a good fishing tool, but it might scare certain monstrous fish away from the shore.

Zachariah put down the need for a secondary pilot on a piece of paper as a reminder. He thought Octo and him were good at the controls, and Bolan might be just as good.

Bolan’s daemon might also be a good pilot from the way he had hung in with them during the air race.

Part of him wanted to go back to the Steppes of Corwin and have another go at the Lord of Lightning. Examining the great air ship he had been using would give the machinist ideas on what he could do for his own designs. And that could get him closer to the places beyond the sky.

The Rocket would need a lot more weapons added on if he wanted to do something like that.

And he doubted Sola and Bolan would be behind him. He could already see their reaction at just plunging into danger just to see what some other machinist had accomplished.

Seeing what a rival had done might help him refine his own ideas, but he didn’t want to dodge lightning while he was doing his survey.

And his children wouldn’t want it either.

“Da?,” said Sola, looking around the workshop. “You’re sitting in the dark again.”

“Just thinking,” said Zachariah. He roused himself and looked around his workspace. The sun had gone down on his ruminations. “What do you think of the tests?”

“I think that you might be changing the world more than you thought when you were asked to deal with this problem,” said Sola. “People will be praising and cursing you at the same time after I am old and gray.”

“That bad?,” said Zachariah.

“I don’t know,” said Sola. “Being a legend is harder than just making things with no expectations.”

“You’ll be the legend’s daughter,” said Zachariah. He put on a smile.

“No one will even remember me,” said Sola. “I’ll be some detail at the back of the book that will just be Sola was Zachariah’s daughter. We don’t know what she did.”

“You and Bolan will have years of fame ahead of you,” said Zachariah. “I’m sorry about being focused on my own goals these last few years. Do you want to do something else other than look after me?”

“What would happen if I didn’t look after you?,” asked Sola.

“You could be your own machinist,” said Zachariah.

“I don’t have the imagination for that,” said Sola. She smiled. “And Hardy is not anything like Gold Bug or Knife. He is strong, and fast, and can fly, but he can’t make a part with his appendages.”

“I could make him something to help with that,” said Zachariah.

“I think that would be wasted,” said Sola. “Let’s go have dinner. Everyone says the boat is ready to be taken on a maiden voyage now that most of the problems have been worked out.”

“There are some complications but I think it will do what we need it to do,” said Zachariah. “Machinists from Lobster Bay can build better versions when they have the first model.”

“You could give them something better if you wanted,” said Sola.

“I can’t give them a lot better,” said Zachariah.

“Don’t fool yourself,” said Sola. “You’re the best machinist in the world.”

“There are plenty that are better than me,” said Zachariah. “Carson is one of them.”

“And he would have never thought about a boat that sailed under the water,” said Sola. “Let’s go, Da. We can argue about this over dinner.”

“No arguing over dinner,” said Zachariah. “I need to think about how we can fly beyond the sky without air, or supplies.”

“I think you’re going to have to find a way to look at the conditions before you can think of what kind of ship you need,” said Sola.

“Obviously there is no air,” said Zachariah. “We proved that with the Rocket. So we’re going to need a good amount of air for us to use before we think about how we’re going to fuel anything like the Rocket. Without air, she would just stall and drop like she did during the race.”

“Not to mention how cold it got the higher we flew,” said Sola. “What if it gets so cold that the crew freezes in flight?”

“So we need to do more research before we try to reach our goals,” said Zachariah. “We’ll have to start with something small.”

“We can start with the buoys you wanted to plant for the wind river that we used,” said Sola. “Maybe we can build a platform to look at things from a sensible place before we invest in a machine to take us further.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Zachariah. “We can use the Rocket to supply us with material and food while we try to figure things out.”

“We would still have to build things on the ground,” said Sola. “There’s no way we could build something like your boat in the sky.”

Zachariah wrote down notes for what he had decided to call Stepping Stone. He glanced at them before drawing a set of squares on gravity engines. He nodded to himself.

“You were just going to launch in the Rocket and see how far you could go, weren’t you?,” asked Sola.

“No,” said Zachariah. “I have been thinking about things for a long time. I just

realized that a medium stage is what we need since we don’t have a real way to see the stars from the ground.”

“Someone will invent such a tool,” said Sola. “I think we should go eat and let this all wait until the current job is done.”

“All right,” said Zachariah. “We do need to send something up as high as we can to take a look at things.”

“I’ll talk to Carson,” said Sola. “He’ll have something in mind while we work on

the maiden voyage of our boat. Then we’ll have to take it to Lobster Bay to hand over to their government.”

“That should be the easiest part of everything,” said Zachariah. “I’m thinking we need some kind of recorder to send up.”

“No more work, Da,” said Sola. She led the way out of the shop.