The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “The construction itself, yes. But I’ve got two acres of land to clear and level. I don’t have the manpower to do that by hand. At least not before winter.”

  Reyes nodded. “Give me an estimate on how much coal you’ll need, and we’ll prioritize it with the other requests. If we have to, we’ll double up in the community housing for another year.”

  “Even so,” Nestor said, “we’re going to have to tap into the winter heating supplies. If the new mine isn’t up and running by winter…” He trailed off, but everyone knew the implication: the community housing relied on huge coal furnaces. The buildings were uninhabitable without heat. Hundreds would die from the cold.

  “The mine will be producing by October,” Reyes said, with a glance at O’Brien. He nodded, trying to appear confident.

  “Sounds like we need two mines,” Gabe said. “If an accident like this can shut us down for months at a time, some redundancy would seem wise. It’s not a good time to expand in Britain, given the near-future history of the region, but there are coal deposits in Denmark, aren’t there?”

  “This was something of a fluke,” O’Brien said. “We used more coal than budgeted because of the cold spring, and we weren’t up to full production at the mine because we reassigned a dozen men to Camp Glenn when we ran short on lumber for building. This accident just happened at the worst possible time.”

  “We’re like a fat man pulling on a blanket that’s too small,” Joseph said. “No matter which way we pull it, something is exposed. Another mine means more risk, and more personnel than we have at present.” Joseph Poncella, the Jewish merchant O’Brien had recruited in Constantinople, was the Secretary for Intelligence and Diplomacy. He cared little for the technical side of matters, but he was intimately familiar with the political factors affecting Pleiades and each of its satellite locations.

  “We have a bigger problem than that,” Alma said. All eyes turned toward her. Alma had been recruited by Helena from an orphanage in London a few years after the settlement of Höfn. Originally assigned to assist the engineers in creating blueprints for the Iron Dragon—as well as a hundred other machines that would need to be built first—she had proved to have a preternatural knack for scientific thinking as well as unparalleled creative problem-solving abilities. After toiling away in Hell for several years, she was promoted to the newly-created position of Secretary for New Technologies. In reality, most of what she did was rediscover and implement technological advances that were ancient history to the spacemen, but often her lack of twenty-third century biases allowed her to solve problems in ways that would never have occurred to one of the spacemen. Thanks to terabytes of data on the spacemen’s personal computers and her own insatiable thirst for knowledge, she no possessed the equivalent of master’s degrees in chemistry, electrical engineering, and probably a half-dozen other fields.

  “What do you mean, Alma?” Reyes asked, when Alma paused for dramatic effect. Reyes would have barked at anyone else just to get to the point, but Alma was a special case. Her sheer intellect caused the others on the committee—even Reyes—to give her a lot of leeway.

  “Molybdenum,” said Alma. She paused again, clearly relishing the attention. The others waited patiently for her to expound on her point.

  “Molybdenum’s a catalyst,” O’Brien said at last. “I assume this is related to your efforts to liquefy coal into petroleum?”

  Alma nodded. “Several processes for converting coal into petroleum were invented in the twentieth and twenty-first century,” she said, “so we know it’s possible in theory.”

  Groans went up from around the table. Such a huge gap existed between medieval technology and the science of the twenty-third century that possible in theory had become a sort of shorthand for something that was never, ever going to happen.

  Alma went on: “The most feasible solution is called hydrogenation. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that it requires molybdenum. Molybdenum is not particularly rare, but it was basically unknown in medieval Europe. Its name comes from the Greek word molybdos, meaning lead, because medieval alchemists didn’t know the difference.” Alma, who hadn’t left Svartalfheim in fifteen years and tended to spend her days contemplating theoretical scientific concepts, tended at times to lapse into the past tense to describe current goings-on in the world. To her, Svartalfheim existed as a sort of twenty-third century island surrounded by a planet that happened to be stuck in the Middle Ages.

  “There are molybdenum deposits in Norway, aren’t there?” O’Brien asked. “We could work something out with Harald.”

  “Yes. In fact, the first working molybdenum mine in history was at Knaben, in southern Norway. The land is probably uninhabited at present. We could establish a mine and build a processing facility to extract the molybdenum from the ore, then transport the ore my mule cart or by boat down a river, load it on ships, and transport it to Höfn.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Gabe asked.

  “How many men do we have to spare for another mine?” Alma asked. How many for the processing facility? How long will it be before the operation is producing? What new technologies does molybdenum processing require? How much will the operation produce per month? How much additional risk are we taking on with another regular shipment from Norway to Höfn? How long will we have to keep this whole operation running? Who’s going to manage it?”

  O’Brien nodded, understanding now what Alma was getting at: the problem wasn’t molybdenum, per se. It was these rabbit holes they kept finding themselves going down while trying to solve some problem or other. When Pleiades started, Reyes had predicted they’d be conducting their first rocket launch tests in twenty years. They were past that deadline, and they hadn’t flown so much as a glider. The engineers had built several diesel and gasoline engines, including a mockup of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine that powered World War II era fighter planes, but had not been able to get any of them to run reliably on fuel derived from vegetable oil.

  “And after molybdenum, it will be something else,” Alma said. “Gallium or lithium or aluminosilicates. It’s endless.”

  “What’s the alternative? Reyes said. “It’s the tenth century. We have to get our technology up to the twentieth century, at a minimum.”

  “No, we do not,” Alma said curtly. “We need to drop this idea that we have to recreate every technological milestone since the invention of the wheel. What we need is a single unifying goal. Everything we build, everything we teach the new recruits, should be in service of that goal.”

  “We have a goal,” Reyes reminded her.

  “Do we?” Alma asked. “Because I don’t see any spacecraft. I don’t even see any airplanes. If somebody needs a steam-powered rocketship, though, we’re the go-to operation on Earth right now.”

  “All right, Alma,” Reyes said. “We get the point. What do you suggest?”

  “Forget coal-mining,” Alma said. “I mean, yes, dig the new mine. Hoard enough coal to keep people from freezing for the next couple years. Then shut it down.”

  “And convert to what?” Gabe asked. “Hydrogen?” Alma’s engineers had had some success splitting seawater into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis. The process was slow but required no external resources except the seawater itself, as the generator was driven by a geothermal steam engine. Ultimately, the hydrogen and oxygen could be used as rocket propellant, but for now their usefulness was limited. The facility currently had no use for pure oxygen, and while hydrogen could theoretically be burned for fuel, it needed to be stored in pressurized tanks. Pressurization required powerful centrifugal pumps that they didn’t yet have.

  Alma shook her head. “We won’t have the turbopumps ready for another couple years, and pressurized hydrogen is too dangerous to be used as a portable fuel source. We need petroleum.”

  “Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding,” Joseph said, “but aren’t you contradicting yourself? I thought the rocket was going to be fueled by hydrogen. My under
standing is that humanity had transitioned away from fossil fuels by the twenty-second century. Why are you focusing on nineteenth century technology?”

  “The Titan II rockets used liquid hydrogen for the upper stages,” Alma explained, “but they used kerosene for the first stage. We’re going to need a few million gallons of it.” The Committee had decided early on that it would model the Iron Dragon on the Titan II rockets that had powered NASA’s Gemini missions in the 1960s. Later rockets were more efficient, but they also relied more heavily on advanced technology and materials that would be difficult to come by in medieval Europe. Reyes had had the foresight to download the specifications for the rocket—as well as several terabytes of additional technical information—to her personal cuff before Andrea Luhman exploded. “Kerosene is a product of petroleum distillation,” Alma went on, “along with diesel, gasoline, various oils, asphalt and other hydrocarbons. We can hoard the kerosene while burning the diesel in heavy machinery and using gasoline for smaller engines. We can use oil rather than animal fat or vegetable oils for lubrication. We’ll need asphalt for paving. Other hydrocarbons can be used for making rubber, vinyl and plastics. In short, petroleum distillation is a necessary step in the building of a rocket. Coal mining is not.”

  “I think we all understand that, Alma,” Reyes said. “We knew eventually we were going to have to convert to petroleum, one way or another. But you know the challenges we’re facing when it comes to crude oil production.”

  “There are oilfields in Europe, are there not?” Joseph asked. “Perhaps not as vast as those in Arabia, but there must be some.” Petroleum was basically unknown at this time in Europe, but Joseph had spoken in the past of its use in the Middle East. Baghdad’s streets had once been paved with tar, and the Byzantines used a petroleum-based substance called “Greek fire” in ship-to-ship combat. Joseph’s knowledge on these matters arose partly from his own travels and partly from extensive reading. He and the others on the Committee had read a great deal of Earth’s history, both past and future, thanks to the printing press that had been set up in Hell some twelve years earlier. Dozens of books from the spacemen’s digitized personal libraries had been reproduced in bound volumes and were available to be checked out in Svartalfheim’s library.

  “There are some petroleum deposits in southern England and a few other places,” O’Brien said. “The problem is that nobody in western Europe currently has any concept of petroleum production. Even if we could arrange for a lease on the land—a tricky proposition, considering that Edward is in the middle of taking the Danelaw back from Harald’s cousins—we’d be drilling for oil in a country where nobody has ever seen an oil well. If you think a coal mine in remote Scotland is going to be tough to keep under wraps, try a fifty-foot-tall oil derrick in medieval England.”

  “What about Norway?” Reyes asked.

  “Norway was an oil-producing powerhouse in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” O’Brien said, but as near as I can tell, all of their facilities were offshore. The exception is Svalbard, an island far north of the mainland, but it’s very remote and the sea is full of ice for over half the year. We’d need much bigger ships, probably steel-hulled, and it would still be risky. There are basically no suitable oilfields anywhere in Harald’s area of influence.”

  “Plenty of oil in the Middle East,” Gabe said. “How hard could it be to buy a few square miles of worthless desert?”

  “Not hard, but you’re talking about transporting oil 4,000 miles, not to mention first carrying it overland across some pretty heavily disputed real estate.”

  “Sounds like we only have one option,” Reyes said. She paused for objections, but no one spoke up. Everyone at the table knew what she meant, and they all knew it would come to this eventually.

  “All right,” Reyes said. “How long will it take to organize an exploratory mission to Vinland?”

  Chapter Eight

  The meeting went almost two hours, but it was still light out when Reyes exited the building. This time of year, it never really got dark in Iceland. The sun would dip below the horizon for a few hours and then pop back up again. It had taken Reyes a few years to get used to it; in the beginning she often worked herself to exhaustion, finding it difficult to sleep when her eyes told her it was still daytime. Realizing that at the rate her health was degrading she wasn’t going to be around for Iron Dragon’s first test launch, she eventually managed to force herself onto a more regular schedule. Lately, though, she’d been swamped with work, trying to balance all the project’s logistical concerns, and the disaster at Camp Yeager had only made matters worse. By the time Reyes she got home, she was exhausted. Sigurd met her at the door.

  “Are they asleep?” she asked.

  “I put them down half an hour ago,” Sigurd replied, embracing her. “They might still be awake.” Three years earlier, she and Sigurd had moved from a longhouse they shared with another family to this private house on the outskirts of Svartalfheim. Their three daughters—Astrid, Leah and Dagny—slept on cots in a single small bedroom, while Reyes and Sigurd shared a foldaway bed in the main room, next to a peat-burning stove. It was, by the standards of Svartalfheim, a mansion.

  “It’s okay,” Reyes said. “I’ll see them in to morning. I just need to lie down. My head is killing me.”

  Sigurd obliged by pulling the bed down from the wall. Reyes flopped onto the lumpy, straw-stuff mattress like a corpse.

  “Rough day?” Sigurd asked. These days he was largely out of the loop on the day-to-day operations of Pleiades, preferring to spend his time working in the garden or building furniture, like the ingenious folding bed. When their daughters weren’t in school, learning arithmetic or reading books that wouldn’t be written for another six hundred years, they often helped him. After the death of his son, Yngvi, and the brutal siege of Paris, he had little interest in great projects. He had done his part to save the human race; now he was content to do what he could to keep his wife from having a nervous breakdown.

  “Cave-in at Camp Yeager,” Reyes said.

  “Gods have mercy,” Sigurd said. “Fatalities?”

  “Four,” Reyes said, lying on her back with her eyes closed. “O’Brien got there just after it happened. He managed to get most of them out, but the mine is ruined.”

  “Going to be a tough winter.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Can we import coal from another mine? There have to be other people mining coal in Britain or Normandy.”

  “Assuming we could even buy the quantity we need, it would attract too much attention. We have to try to put an expedition together to North America.”

  “Nova Scotia?”

  “No,” Reyes said. “Farther south this time. Probably the Gulf of Mexico.”

  The oil-seeking expedition would not be their first foray into North America—or Vinland, as the Norsemen referred to it. Because of the dearth of trees on Iceland, they’d needed to secure a source of lumber for ships, buildings, and tools early on in Pleiades. The first lumber operation they’d established, with the blessing of King Harald, was Camp Glenn in Halogaland, in northwestern Norway. They’d soon begun to consume so much lumber, however, that Harald had difficulty suppressing the locals’ interest in the operation. Importing lumber from Normandy and England posed similar problems. Eventually it became clear that the only way to secure all the lumber they needed—as well as pitch, pine tar, and other materials—was to expand beyond Europe. In the spring of 892, they sent an expedition of five ships to Nova Scotia, the nearest location of dense forests in North America, led by the warrior-monk, Aengus Ó Floinn, who had grown restless at Höfn.

  Two of the ships were lost in a storm en route, and the expedition spent three weeks lost in the Atlantic before sighting land near Maine and then backtracking to their intended destination. Aengus and his men set up a camp and spent the next year surveying the area and negotiating with the Mi’kmaq Indians, who occupied much of the land along what was to beco
me the eastern coast of Canada. Aengus had studied the Mi’kmaq culture for nearly a year before the expedition, poring over the accounts of fifteenth- and sixteenth century explorers like John Cabot and Jacques Courtier, as well as later settlers, in an attempt to gain some familiarity with the Mi’kmaq culture, even procuring a rudimentary understanding of their language. Despite these efforts, as well as historical evidence indicating that the Mi’kmaq were a peaceful people who were amenable to trade with foreigners, it took Aengus nearly two years to earn their trust. It was three more years before they had a sizeable lumbering operation in place. Now, fifteen years after that first expedition, Camp Orville was their second-largest facility after Svartalfheim, producing several thousand board-feet of lumber every month. For the first several years, most of the wood was shipped directly to Höfn, much of it for building ships. In 899, they began construction of a shipyard in the harbor a few miles downriver from Camp Orville. At first a modest endeavor, this shipyard could now churn out a snekkja or knar, or two smaller ships, every week. These days they didn’t bother to build ships at Höfn anymore; it was more efficient to build them where there was already a lumber mill.

  “Makes sense to dig another coal mine in Virginia,” Sigurd said. “It will take longer to get here, but it’s unlikely the Cho-ta’an or their agents are monitoring the north Atlantic.”

  “Not coal,” Reyes said. “Oil.”

  Sigurd sat down beside her, putting his hand on her thigh. “So this isn’t going to help us survive the winter.”

  “No. Alma thinks this is the only way to move the project forward.”

  “Is she right?”

  “She’s right that if we don’t start taking bigger risks, we’re all going to die before we launch a single rocket.”

  “Do we know how to dig for oil?”

  “Drill,” Reyes said. “And no.”

  “That seems like it could be a problem.”

  Reyes sighed. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” she murmured. “Alma and the others.”