Ellen Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  "Work?"

  "Made to provide flames for light. Or thinking another way, to produce heat?"

  "That is certainly true, Lord. Large stones can be made smaller, all pieces making heat or light when called upon to do so."

  Golden could answer that question himself because, as a child, he had dropped a torch, its top stones falling out on hard rocks. The result: the porous stones had broken into smaller pieces. After that, each piece could be thought into light or heat. The only difference, was that there was less light and heat to be had from smaller stones, than from larger ones. Grouped back together, however, the collective bits of stone provided the same light/heat as when they had been united in a single stone. Larger stone: more light/heat. Smaller stone: less light/heat.

  All this, Golden had told to the Mage.

  "Good," said John Lyon, smiling. "What I really want to know is, can fire stones be heated enough to boil water?"

  "It is my belief they can; but I will make certain," was Golden's reply, the Mage happy with that answer, also.

  So it was down the stairs from the top floor to the underground kitchen, Golden consulting the cooking Head, the old woman annoyed to be interrupted, but paying Golden more attention when he said he came directly from the Mage; that this was the Mage's question.

  "How do you think that fish are boiled? Other meats? Vegetables?" She flapped her apron to shoo him away.

  Back upstairs, Golden had thought the Mage would be pleased, but was again mistaken. For knowing that fire stones could be heated enough to boil water only served to produce the next question.

  "And I need to know something else," said John-Lyon, in such a way that he was almost apologizing for failing to have Golden ask that question while still in the cook room. "Could a fire stone be heated enough to boil water if the stone is submerged in the water, rather than used to heat a pot of water when under the pot? Even if this pot of water was tightly sealed? And can the stone be thought into heat from outside such a pot. Through the pot itself?"

  Once more, the trip to the scullery. Again the same answer, Golden lucky this time to escape a pot thrown at his head! Of course a heated stone in the water would cause the water to boil, though it was the custom to heat water from below because of cleanliness. Better to keep foreign materials of all kinds from possible contamination of the food. As for fire stones heated through water, through any substance, drudges had been known to heat fire stones through walls, drudges often too lazy to walk from where they were helping to prepare food, into the cook room.

  Golden was growing tired, in part from forcing his way through crowds of palace fools, but mostly from running up and down stairs, and around corners, and down corridors in search of the Mage's answers, Golden breathing hard as he returned to the Mage in the invention room.

  Again, John-Lyon was pleased, but ....

  And Golden was down the stairs and -- panting -- up again.

  "Yes," Golden wheezed after Leet let him into the Mage's special room. "Even if a fire stone was submerged in water, even if the water and fire stone were locked up tightly in a container, someone could "think" the fire stone inside hot enough to boil the water around it."

  "Excellent work, Golden," the Mage said, Golden feeling that something good -- though he did not know what -- had come out of these many trips.

  What the Mage had learned, Golden didn't know. But realized from experience that the Mage's questions were not as foolish as they often seemed -- not that the Mage was so secretive he would never let others inside his thoughts. It was that, even when the Mage tried to explain why he needed to know things, understanding did not always follow. For John-Lyon used strange words in his explanations.

  About the fire stone questions, the Mage said he was seeking to understand what he called "boiling points." He then talked of "steam pressure," saying that the curling vapor coming off the surface of boiling water was called "steam." That the steam made what the Mage called "pressure." That this pressure was a pushing force that could be "harnessed" for many purposes. From what Golden was able to understand, the "pressure" could be used to transport objects, though why the Mage wished to move objects that way, was the mystery. Were there not men to carry burdens on their backs? Were not pony carts for the carrying of greater weights from one place to another? And boats to transport cargo from one band to another? All quite confusing.

  Fortunately, the answers Golden had discovered pleased the Mage, Golden glad of that, Mages known to go into rages when displeased, putting all within reach in jeopardy. Of all things desirable, pleasing a man of power was best.

  Apparently learning what he wished to know about fire stones, the Mage then asked new questions. Could containers -- pots of clay, metal boxes -- be made "air tight"??

  Risking the Mage's wrath, Golden had made so bold as to ask what this "air tight" meant.

  "What I want is a container that won't leak water out or air in."

  "I have seen pots with lids made to fit," Golden answered.

  "I have seen pots like these, also. Cooking pots and the like. What I want is lids that can be fastened down in such a way that no amount of pressure," -- there was that word again -- "could force what is inside the pot to come out, or to force anything -- even air -- to leak inside the sealed pot."

  "I do not know, Lord," Golden said, his meaning also that he knew no one who had the answer to that, strange question.

  After hearing everything Golden could find out, John-Lyon had Golden bring a great number of Xanthin craftsman to the Mage Room, John-Lyon talking with each seriously about how to make "air tight" vessels. Potters. Blacksmiths.

  It was when the Mage learned about what the metal workers called "solder" that the Mage seemed pleased.

  The Mage had gone on to ask about "welding??" -- a stronger kind of soldering, was Golden's understanding. But no one had the answer to that question.

  * * * * *

  It would work!, John said to himself after dismissing the last metal worker, then telling Golden to take a rest, Golden a little green around the gills from following John's commands. (If John had known what to ask, he wouldn't have had to keep sending Golden out for more information. But he hadn't.)

  What John had found was an alternate method (to gunpowder) for producing an explosion. All that was needed was an airtight canister of pottery or metal. Put a measured amount of water inside, also an exact weight of fire stone, seal up the container, and you had a steam powered bomb. With water and a piece of fire stone inside a crucible, all someone on the outside had to do was think the fire stone inside to boil the water, rising steam pressure eventually blowing the vessel apart, putting the hurt on anyone or anything near it. Some experimentation was all that was needed to find out how much water and how big a fire stone you needed to put inside.

  After that, you just catapulted a steam activated bomb onto a Malachite ship, and boom! (As for timing the explosion, it would be something like pulling the pin on a hand grenade, counting to five, before tossing it. Bang! Before the enemy had time to throw it back.)

  Not that John was under the illusion that his steam powered bombs would break the blockade. All the Malachite ships had to do, after all, was stay out of range of Stil-de-grain's land locked catapults. He could get more distance with a steam driven cannon, like the one Leonardo DaVinci had sketched ......

  No. On second thought, John realized that the Malachite ships could back out of range of either catapult or cannon, and still stop all merchant ships with supplies bound for Xanthin. The steam bombs were more a matter of Stil-de-grain morale than anything else. (Like the wildly inaccurate anti-aircraft fire gave courage to Britains during World War II.)

  The bomb soon to be in the testing stage, John now had to find a way to slip out of the harbor without those super-fast Malachite cruisers running him down.

  Once before, when the Mage/King Auro had caused a wind to blow in this windless world, John had made a sail boat, to be specific, a catamaran. Using the wind,
he'd first outmaneuvered, then outrun enemy warships. But with the defeat of Auro, the wind had stopped. Forget sail boats in a dead calm.

  Thinking of traveling by water, one of the oddities of this world was vast moving currents in the sea, each like a giant, but gentle, whirlpool, one going clockwise, its rim touching the next one, the next swirl rotating counterclockwise. No one seemed to know what caused the sea to revolve in this way; only that that's the way it was. (John doubted that many people in his own world understood elementary forces like why the wind blew, what factor made summer and winter, or the facts behind sun "rise" and sun "set" -- the most basic of knowledge. So he couldn't fault this world's folks for their lack of knowledge about the way their world worked.)

  Back to those whirlpools in the sea. What sailors in this world did to go in a given direction was to catch the rim of one of the circles of water, each gyration maybe two miles in diameter. Drifting around the edge of the slow whirlpool, sailors would row/steer to change over to the rim of the next, counter rotating circle, drifting around the edge of that, until "jumping" to the rim of the next swirl. This was much like tacking against the wind in a sailboat, "zigging" left for awhile, then "zagging" right -- but always making way in a given direction in the middle. Or it was like these rotating sea-circles were gears in a gear train, a bug jumping from one gear to the next at the appropriate time, to circle this way and that toward his objective straight head.

  John had once thought about creating underwater "sails," moving them like rudders to "tack" across the circles of water, instead of drifting around their rims.

  It was just that he hadn't devised a way of doing that.

  Rowing to one circle rim, drifting around it until rowing to the next rim was still the best way of getting anywhere -- short of sailing, something you couldn't do without wind.

  If the sea was shallow everywhere, he could save time by using steam power to blast an anchor on a rope in the direction he wanted to go. The anchor holding at the bottom of a shallow sea, its rope stretched back to the ship, sailors might winch the ship in a straight line, dredging up the anchor when reaching it, to blast it ahead again. This would be like a kid on roller skates, throwing a weight on the end of a rope, the weight wrapping round a tree ahead, the kid pulling himself on the rope until he reached the tree, unwinding the rope, and hurling it ahead to fasten around another tree.

  Impossible, since the sea was shallow only near the shore.

  John knew of an ancient Roman drawing of oxen walking round and round the bottom of a boat, pulling a merry-go-round device geared to paddle wheels fitted over the sides of the boat -- much like boats that plied the rivers of the U.S. around the time of the Civil War. Just an idea, the Romans never building an ox powered ship. Why? Because it wouldn't work.

  Meanwhile, the Malachites were improving their naval cruisers by adding a second bank of oars, doubling their sailor's pulling power, such a ship in the 600's B.C. called a bireme. In the 500's, warship were improved further by adding a third set of oars, becoming triremes. Finally to reach the quinqureme class -- five banks of oars to the side seeming to be the limit of oar power.

  But to build a trireme in the three months before Xanthin's food supply ran out? Impossible.

  What about small, paddleboats? The kind tourists played with in warm water resorts? Too little power.

  Another way to "drive" a boat (if you didn't mind adding countless miles to your journey by following every inlet and bay of the shore), was to harness a pony-team to the boat, the ponies on the bank pulling the boat along. In the early days of the industrial revolution when iron ore was needed in great quantities at some distant point, horses were used to drag boats along a canal, the Erie Canal only one example.

  What had replaced canal traffic, were trains, trains a fast way to haul heavy cargo.

  Steam trains!

  And he was back to steam again. But could he have this island's craftsmen produce the kind of boiler, plus piston and cylinder engine necessary to make a Fulton powered boat, Fulton building a steam engine putting out enough energy to buck the current of the Hudson river?

  No. Not even if he had all the time in the world to attempt such a feat.

  Thinking of simple steam engines, the Greeks at Alexandria had built a rotary steam engine around 200 B.C., steam made to jet out of a metal ball, the ball spinning backward from the direction the steam hissed out -- much like a lawn sprinkler whirls in reverse of the water forced out of it. The Greeks hadn't used this steam engine for anything practical, though. Would have had major headaches finding a way to gear up a spinning metal ball. So this remained just a toy. Fire up the water. See the escaping steam make the ball rotate. Fun, fun, fun!

  A toy ..............

  When John was a boy, a friend of his had an antique toy boat. To make it go, you placed a lighted candle inside the boat and the boat would chug ahead by what looked like magic. A putt-putt boat was what it was called.

  As an adult, John had realized that what was making the boat move in the water, was an early, and simplistic version of a steam engine. Inside the boat was a boiler -- nothing but a couple of strips of copper soldered so close together that only a thin film of water could get between them, copper pipes trailed back from either end of the enclosed boiler to emerge under water at the stern of the boat. Place the candle flame under the boiler, and the film of water within was instantly boiled into steam, the steam putting pressure on the water in the twin pipes, forcing a little water out the back of the pipes, the pulse of water driving the boat forward. Meanwhile, the little boiler, now empty (a partial vacuum created inside by the expulsion of steam), water was sucked back into the boiler, this water to be instantly turned to steam, another pulse of steam driving water out of the back of the pipes. The boat made a "putting" sound as pulse after pulse of steam-pushed water jetted out the back, the boat driven by this most simple of steam engines -- surely simple enough for this world's craftsmen to built.

  The question was, how much "push" could you get with this primitive device?

  On the other hand -- John's mind scrambling to think of the possibilities -- if he could make a steam engine powerful enough to buck the gentle currents of this world's whirlpools, he could cut across the swirls, the shortest distance from one point to another, a straight line. If this worked, he would be going in a straight line; pursuit ships forced to drift much further around the whirlpools' rims.

  It would take some planning. First, to make a model boat to see if he could duplicate the steam powered toy of his childhood. Then to build a boat large enough to carry people.

  Time to have a serious talk with Admiral Coluth!

  * * * * *

  Chapter 18

  Coluth had never seen the Mage work like he was working now. Even in the last war when creating the sailing ship, the wind-ship that Coluth and his sailors had to handle in a new way.

  This time, with Coluth often in attendance, the Mage had three, secret projects under way, the first, making objects for catapults to hurl.

  A second weapon was much like the "cannon" the Mage had created for the last war, this one to shoot water?? (No matter how hard the Mage tried to explain how this weapon worked, Coluth failed to understand what was in the Mage's mind.)

  Of greater interest was the Mage's talk of a different sort of ship, one not rowed like most ships, or even to be pushed by the wind, the evil wind coming to an end with the defeat of Auro of Azare. But a ship that would go forward by what the Mage called "steam."

  "It makes sense to build a model, first," said John-Lyon. "I think I know how this will work, but I need to try out the principal."

  "Yes, Lord," Coluth said, in his rough, seaman's voice -- Coluth never sounding right to himself when indoors.

  So the work on the little craft began, metal workers once more involved, the Mage telling them what to do, the workers hammering and soldering on what John-Lyon called a "simple steam engine," the "engine" looking to Coluth like nothing mo
re than a thin, coin sized bottle of flattened copper, two small metal pipes coming out from either end, the "engine" fastened in the middle of the model boat, the pipes trailed down the center to the stern, ending under the water a short way back of the boat.

  The Mage then put a pebble of fire stone under the flattened copper pot -- this pot called the "boiler." Heat, said the Mage, would make the boat go, Coluth interested to see how that might be.

  After the small boat was finished, the Mage had a tank of water brought to the invention room, John-Lyon filling the boat-pipes and the "boiler" with water before setting the small boat down to float on top of the tank-water.

  But a problem arose. The small piece of fire stone created too little heat to boil the water in the "boiler" -- even though John-Lyon and Coluth together thought the fire stone into heat. What the Mage wished, he said, was for the water to get so hot that heat-bubbles swirled up from the bottom of the boiler-water, these bubbles bursting into mist, the Mage calling this mist -- "steam." It was the pressure of the "steam" that would make the boat go forward in the water. At least that was what Coluth thought was the Mage's meaning, Coluth -- and others -- sometimes failing to understand the Mage's explanations.

  "Tell me, Coluth," said John-Lyon, frustrated that the water he had put through the pipes and into the "engine" refused to boil. "When using light magic to make fire stones hot, does it matter who is doing that?"

  "I fear, that I do not understand ...."

  "By using magic and thinking hot, will the stones get hotter if some people do that, rather than others?"

  "I believe so, Sir."

  "Why?"

  "It is a matter of practice."

  "What you're saying is that the more you heat up fire stones, the better you get at it. In this case, the hotter the stones become?"

  "That is the way of the world, Sir. Everything done frequently is eventually done better."