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Chapter 6: Rotation Without Steam

  Starwitch was back in space, after the Docking Witch of Sixty-Eight had hurled them out of the docking bay. Amelia watched the rear view crystal as the huge slab of ice that served as the port’s docking bay door slid downward on metal tracks, feeling a sense of sadness. She’d had high hopes of finding refuge there, since Orgic liked them so much.

  She got out of the pilot’s seat and passed into crew quarters on her way to the spell-core, pausing by the table, where Marta had been since before the Newt Witch had arrived.

  “Have you got any idea where the Queen’s ship is?” Amelia asked.

  Marta nodded and spoke as she yawned, “She just left Junkshop.” Seeing Amelia’s confused look, Marta explained, “Ice Palace Seventy, the one owned by the gnomes.”

  “Ah, thank you.” Amelia nodded and continued toward the spell-core.

  She laid a hand on the enchanted device and used it to cast a scrying spell, which she’d always had trouble with on her own, at least if she wanted to scry something further away than a few inches. She’d always been able to see extremely minute detail with such spells, including down to the cellular level, but distance was what she needed at the moment.

  With her eyes closed, she was disturbed to see the exterior of Junkshop, which was full of deep cracks and pockmarks, almost like someone had been mining its surface. Smaller chunks of ice freely floated in the void. In short, the port was badly damaged.

  That sent a pang of guilt through Amelia, because the Queen likely wouldn’t have attacked the place if the sisters hadn’t stolen the spell-core of the Queen’s monolith.

  Junkshop was also drifting out of position and some quick calculations told Amelia its orbit had become slightly elliptical, which would make the navigation tables of the Ice Palaces incorrect for the port. Most star ship crews could manage adjustments for a small orbital change, but that would cost them extra fuel on every visit, unless they were skilled enough to manage by solar sail, alone.

  Pushing past her guilt, she scanned the surrounding space for the Queen’s monolith, eventually spotting its distant bulk on the move. She ran the numbers and determined the Queen was headed for Black Palace. Foundation Stone was accelerating under full power from the granite of the body, which was probably maxing out the spell-core that had likely been stolen from Junkshop. It was possible for the ship to produce more thrust, through the Queen absorbing the waste magic, but for the moment, she clearly wasn’t doing that, likely because she wanted to concentrate on her mental battle with Marta, who’d been giving her trouble from nearly the start.

  “Gotcha.” Amelia spoke softly, her mouth twisting into a devious grin.

  The Queen had taken the bait and was going to follow Starwitch for a few circles around Junas, while Amelia spoke with friends and spiraled toward Katuna. The numbers required danced through Amelia’s mind, lining up absolutely perfectly.

  Still holding the spell-core, she used it to erect an illusion of sails made of diamond between the masts of the ship, which extended outward for hundreds of miles, then poured a bit more magic into gravity manipulation, to keep Starwitch moving faster than Foundation Stone. With any luck, they would stay just ahead of the old bat for the next three weeks, leading her on a merry chase, while the mental battle kept her off balance.

  It was going to take perfect scheduling, calling in every favor the Blackwell sisters were owed and a lot of luck, but Amelia was hopeful the Queen would find an armada waiting to ambush her in orbit of Katuna.

  Amelia left the propulsion spells running and headed for the witchpit, pleased to see the rainbow pattern produced by the sails splitting light like a prism. Illusions could only interact with light, but the mere act of splitting it was enough to provide thrust in space. She took a moment to confirm they were on course, then headed back through the ship, toward the workshop.

  As she passed through crew quarters, she noted the fact Marta had fallen asleep. Amelia considered waking her, but decided against it. It wasn’t healthy to avoid sleep and with weeks of travel ahead, it wasn’t possible to stay awake the whole time. Amelia also had great confidence in Marta’s strength of will.

  Amelia took a moment to look down at Iris, who was mumbling her name, rank and serial number.

  “Will you be okay for a few hours, Iris?” Amelia asked.

  Iris opened her eyes and muttered, “Yeah. It hasn’t gotten bad yet, but tomorrow might be different. Just check on me from time to time, okay?” Her eyes teared up, “I’m starting to feel really lonely.”

  “You know I will. If you need anything, I’m just a shout away. I love you.”

  “Thanks. I love you, too.”

  Amelia headed into the workshop and sat down at a bench she’d set aside for use as a drafting desk. She considered a simple machine she’d seen in an Ice Palace, a bicycle, which had been used for delivering messages. The bicycle had been based on some simple and amusing physics that made it more stable the faster it moved, because the two wheels acted like a pair of gyroscopes, while the contraption had used rather wide rubber tires with a strong grip pattern, to increase traction on the icy floors of the place.

  She’d been so fascinated at the time, she’d asked to try out the little vehicle and the young man had been happy to oblige. He’d laughed his head off at the wobbly way Amelia rode, but she considered it an invaluable experience, because she’d always thought the minimum number of wheels a useful vehicle might have to be three.

  She started with a protractor, to draw the wheels, then drew a rough sketch of the little vehicle’s frame. Next, she calculated all of the forces on the frame and used an eraser to wipe away portions of it, to makes some refinements. After performing the calculations again, she was satisfied.

  Next, she modified the frame to make room for a steam engine, because she had no desire to pedal her way through the Queen’s massive star ship, linking it to the bicycle’s rear sprocket with a drive chain, something else she’d picked up from the bicycle and been itching to use. To one side, she drew the links for the chain, which were fairly simple, though they would be time-consuming to make.

  She drew a little control cable that ran from the engine to the left handle, where she added a little lever that was operated by a thumb. After a little more thought, she added a pair of handles for brakes, one for the front wheel and one for the back, which seemed like such an obvious addition; she’d seen the poor messenger on the bicycle crash multiple times, just because it had no brakes.

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  With the simple design complete, she ran through the force calculations again, adding the weight of the engine she had in mind, happy to realize it would make it even more stable, since she’d put the engine at the bottom of the frame, below the center of both wheels.

  She looked at the design and tears blurred her vision, because the last vehicle she’d designed had been the war wagon the Queen had recently blown to bits and the task of designing a new vehicle reminded her of the day she’d drafted the plans for the final version of the wagon.

  She’d worked on it with Dawkin and she badly missed him. Amelia had tried to put him from her mind after leaving Cakana behind, but after all the trouble with the Queen, the troubles back home seemed so much smaller.

  “I wish I’d known how I felt before that last day, before it was too late to bring you with us.” Amelia lamented.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and turned away from the new plans, because she could hardly bear to look at them. Instead, she headed over to The Book and flipped to the page she’d last read, using one of the built in marking ribbons to get there quickly.

  It seemed like ages since she’d last done any reading, because she’d been so busy building cargo racks for the ship, calculating courses for rush-order deliveries and generally, just living life, right up until the troubles with the pirates, after which she’d been so busy with repairs and mere survival, she’d let reading fall by the wayside.

  She’d been reading about the subject of magnetism, which she’d always considered fairly boring, because magnets just attracted ferrous metals, which could be done far better with magic, though she’d used some magnets in the boots of her pressure suit and made use of some magnetite to hold things to the hull of Starwitch, during space walks.

  She finished the chapter and considered how she might apply what she’d learned, only to find her mind wandering to the design of a steam engine suitable for her bicycle. She’d been using the same basic design for steam engines since she was fourteen, with a set of metal plates enchanted with runes to boil steam, used in place of a firebox.

  Her mind wandered back to the subject of magnetism and she idly wondered if she could make a metal rod spin using magnets, only for an inevitable idea to hit her square in the head: why bother with magnets at all?

  She rummaged among her supplies, producing a small, round metal rod and a bearing to mount it to, as well as a pipe the right size for the bearing to slide into. She found herself a small, square rod of metal and cut off a piece of it sized to fit inside the pipe, horizontally. She drilled a hole through that at the right size for the round rod to fit inside, then threaded the interior. Next, she threaded the end of the round rod.

  She inserted the round rod into the bearing and tapped it to the right location on the rod with a hammer, then put the small, square rod onto the round rod, via the thread, until it was thoroughly locked in place.

  More rummaging produced a roll of specialized marking tools Amelia had used extensively during the construction of Starwitch, one each for every letter of the alphabet and every rune she was aware of. Each of those tools was made of the hardest of tool steels and bore a head that formed a symbol, which had been inspired by the movable type of a printing press. Pressing one to a surface followed by hitting it with a hammer usually left a noticeable dent in the shape of the symbol, which was all a runic enchantment needed.

  Taking care to examine the direction of the thread first, Amelia put the device into a vise before hammering the runes for ‘repel’ and ‘metal’ into the little square rod with the round rod through it, at a ninety-degree angle to the round rod. She was amused to feel the resistance of the fresh enchantment as she drew her tools away. She flipped it over and hammered the same runes into the other end, facing the exact opposite direction.

  Holding the bearing attached to it, Amelia inserted the end with the enchanted metal on it into the pipe and watched as the round rod began to spin, smiling at the result as the runes repelled the pipe and forced the shaft to spin.

  She like what she’d built, but currently, it had no means of control whether it turned or not, aside from not putting the pipe over it. She didn’t want to leave it running all the time, because that would hasten wear and tear. She also didn’t want to leave the runes exposed every time she wanted to turn it off.

  She considered for a time and hammered a third rune between the first two, which changed the meaning from ‘repel metal’ to ‘repel same metal’. She tested the new enchantment by putting the pipe over it, which produced rotation, followed by putting a copper pipe over it, producing no rotation, ensuring it would only run when shrouded in an alloy that was identical to that used to hold the runes.

  Amelia removed the bearing from the rod and selected a slightly larger one, plus a larger pipe for a casing, then a length of copper pipe that would slide freely inside the larger pipe, without ever being in danger of touching the spinning, enchanted device. She assembled everything and even tapped the bearing into the outer casing, for a more permanent fit.

  After that, she played with it for a while, removing the copper pipe or putting it back, every so often, while she considered what to call it.

  The Book’s current puppet didn’t notice, because her back was turned, but The Book of Newts was glowing from a particular spot between two pages. She would have been quite startled to discover a new page had appeared just after the end of the chapter on magnetism, as the first and only page of a new chapter about the application of attractive and repulsive forces, which described her new invention. Like all other devices described in The Book, the original inventor was mentioned at the bottom of the page, by name.

  The Book was briefly pleased with its puppet, for once, because she’d invented something entirely new. Her other devices had been combinations of things that had previously been recorded, based on the experiences of previous puppets. Her particular combination of techniques was usually new and ground-breaking, but this was the first occasion in which she’d contributed something unique to The Book’s knowledge, that it hadn’t encountered in the past.

  Perhaps The Book’s current puppet wasn’t so bad, after all, despite the fact it could only barely influence her mind. The Book had been considering escape, but this changed things and it decided to be patient a little longer. After all, this was the first bit of new knowledge it had encountered in more than two-thousand years.

  The Book’s puppet declared aloud, “I think I’ll call this a rotational motivator.”

  With a feeble flash of light, the name was emblazoned at the top of the page describing the device.

  “No, that’s a better name for the little bit that causes the rotation.” The puppet muttered, “Maybe an ambulator?”

  Another flash changed the title at the top of the page and added a note naming the individual part.

  “No, that’s almost as bad.”

  Yet another flash removed the title from the page and The Book returned to its accustomed annoyance with its puppet.

  “How about…a motor?” The puppet tried another name aloud, “That’s nice and short. Yeah, this is a motor.”

  There was a final flash of light as The Book recorded the new name, hoping its puppet would stick with it.

  After a few more hours, Amelia had moved on from her prototype to a more practical model designed for a heavier load, with heavier parts and an entire series of rotational motivators. The device was controlled through a throttle that withdrew or returned the copper pipe, with all of it in a very compact casing. It was about a foot long and three inches wide, which had all the power of one of the smallest steam engines she used to run the machinery of the workshop, at only a twentieth the weight.

  She decided to test the new motor by using it to machine parts for another.

  She was halfway through the process, without a single hitch, when Iris cried out, “Amelia! Help!”

  Amelia stopped working and shut down the motor running her drill press, then rushed to her sister’s side.

  Iris turned out to be asleep and had cried out as the result of a nightmare.

  Amelia laid down beside her sister and put her arm around the shoulders of Iris, softly whispering, “You’re okay. I’m right here.”

  Without waking up, Iris rolled over and hugged Amelia fairly tight. Tears rolled from her eyes for a time, but she was soon sleeping more peacefully, with a more relaxed grip.

  After half an hour, Amelia carefully got up and headed for the witchpit, to confirm they were still on course, then took a moment to adjust the winches for the masts.

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