by Mark J Rose
He had to rest there for longer than he wanted. Once he caught his breath, he put his head over the opposite side of the wall to confirm he wouldn’t be dropping into a moat, but it was cobblestone, the same as the other side. Matt eased himself over and dropped onto the ground between the wall and the warehouse. He landed on crouched legs but still made a loud thump. He squatted there to listen.
Not seeing or hearing any commotion, he stood and began a calm and purposeful walk around the perimeter of the building, searching for an open window, door, or some alternate access. He checked the ground floor first, but the doors were solid oak and shut tight, and the three windows had thick iron bars. Discovering nothing at ground level, Matt started walking the perimeter of the building a second time, now looking upward. He had almost completed inspecting one side when he spotted an open window. Matt groaned at the prospect of having to scale another building just so he could fall into another trap.
The open window was on the moonlit side of the building and exposed to anyone watching from the river, but the light would show ledges and footholds to aide his climb. It was late, the river was quiet, and there looked to be no additional entrance. Matt measured his position, paced along the building until he was underneath the open window, and hoisted himself back up onto the outer wall.
Matt wobbled there for a moment to gather his strength, placed his left foot low on the building side of the slant and thrust his right foot out to a narrow ledge of a barred window on the side of the warehouse. He had misjudged and was now in an uncomfortable forward split between the wall and the building. Matt teetered, trying to adjust his footing and then pushed with his back leg to reach the brickwork and pull himself flush to the wall. He hung there, barely, by his fingertips.
Bracing himself with one hand, Matt reached down to this lower barred window but it was solid. Conscious that he was now fully visible against the wall, he committed himself to make a rapid climb to the open window. Matt worked his way up ledges and extended bricks. His path turned out to be relatively simple, but his arms were still aching by the time he reached the opening. Matt rested again to catch his breath and regain enough strength to finish.
He tilted the window as far as possible, pulled himself through the open portal and then stepped onto wooden rafters that were three stories above an expansive room that filled half the warehouse. He could see the floor from the bright moonbeams that projected through the skylights and glass windows. Tall dividers that defined different workspaces separated tables, benches, and machines.
Matt was anxious now to see what was below, so he charted a path down. The rafters were series of interlocked wooden beams that supported the ceiling and skylights and extended all the way to wide struts anchored into the floor. Matt’s muscles were already burning from the climb up, so he swore quietly at the long path to the floor, knowing it would take most of his remaining strength. He swung to grab the first rafter, shifted, and then repeated this motion about twenty times before he finally could drop safely onto the floor. His arms were on fire.
Matt braced himself against a thick wood support, stretching his muscles to flush the lactic acid that had gathered. When the soreness had subsided, he looked around trying to identify the objects in this largest room. Ferguson was a mechanical engineer and a soldier, so advanced weapons were the most natural thing for him to “invent.” Matt wasn’t surprised, then, to see a cannon in the closest room.
At first, the field gun was only partially visible through the fort of sandbags that surrounded it. Some bags were neatly stacked, but others looked pulled aside and never touched again. When Matt walked up to the weapon, he had expected something modern and futuristic, but it was a standard cast-iron cannon like onboard the Norfolk. Looking closer, he saw that the breach, the very back of the cannon, had separated from the barrel. The metal had grey charring where the hot gas had escaped. There was dust on the cannon, so it looked like it hadn’t been touched for a long time.
It was common for cannons to weaken and crack with time, but something about this one made Matt look a second time. The fissure was charred where the gas had leaked but it wasn’t rusty. No corrosion. Smokeless powder! Smokeless powder was vital if you were interested in creating advanced weaponry. As likely as not, the formula for smokeless gunpowder was in the chemistry book that Ferguson had stolen.
The story of gunpowder among chemists was well known. It was an example of the iterative nature of science and the incubating effect of human conflict on scientific innovation. Black powder was the most advanced propellant used in firearms in the eighteenth century, but it was inefficient and corrosive. It is classified as a “low explosive” since it burns at subsonic speeds. It also produces byproducts that result in thick white smoke. The white smoke was a huge liability since these clouds lingered around the weapons, gave away their position and obstructed the view to be able to fire again. Also, the chemical components of black powder, charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate, gradually corroded and pitted even well-maintained weapons.
Smokeless powder, in contrast, is a “high explosive” meaning that it burns at supersonic speed. If you touch a match to a pile of smokeless powder, it makes a bang, while black powder only makes a whoosh due to its slower burn rate. Black powder has to burn in a closed space to build up enough energy and pressure to explode, the simplest example being a firecracker.
As Matt examined the damaged cannon, he tried to remember the components of smokeless powder, but nothing came to mind. He remotely remembered something called guncotton accidentally discovered by a scientist who had used a cotton cloth to clean up an acid spill. Matt thought Ferguson’s experiments with smokeless powder might be a plausible explanation for his interest in Thomas Mifflin’s cotton. While Matt couldn’t remember the exact formula for gun cotton, he did recall that quite a few men had blown themselves up trying to perfect its manufacture and storage.
A wicked smile came to Matt’s face as he examined the cracked breech. Ferguson had learned the hard way that iron and bronze were usually not of sufficient strength to withstand a series of supersonic explosions. Matt appraised the cannon again and felt a sense of relief. Ferguson had a long way to go if he wanted to harvest the potential of smokeless propellants. This invention, at the least, was far from changing the balance of power in the Atlantic.
Finding nothing else of interest in this room, Matt followed its perimeter to a door that led to the center of the warehouse. There, he found eight different and oddly configured rifles on a rack. Unlike the cannon, which looked abandoned, the rack of muskets was dusted and orderly. Matt pulled the rifles from the rack, one by one, to inspect them in the moonlight. Truthfully, he didn’t know much about small arms, but it did seem that Ferguson was making progress.
British Army Manual Illustration
The second weapon he picked up could be loaded through the breech using a simple rotating mechanism. Another had a percussion cap to ignite the powder rather than a flintlock, and a third had a revolving cylinder that could be preloaded with powder charges and balls to offer the ability to fire five shots in rapid succession. The barrel was similar to the Brown Bessie that Benjamin Franklin carried on wagon trips, but the trigger and revolver assembly looked like a primitive version of one of the six-guns from America’s Old West. One musket was still strapped to a test rack surrounded by sandbags.
Matt walked softly into another area of the warehouse. This one was larger, and it was immediately obvious why. It had three prototype carriage frames suspended on different kinds of wheels. Each frame had a unique construction. Only one of the frames had the conventional wood-spoked wheels, while the remaining two had iron wheels that looked like they were made of the strapping used for wooden barrels.
The springs and suspension systems on the carriage frames were like nothing Matt had seen in the eighteenth century. He was curious enough to walk to them, step up on the frames and use his weight to bounce them slightly. All three were solid under his feet and
gave in a controlled fashion as Matt shifted his weight up and down. He believed that any one of these frames would work for a London carriage.
In the other corner of this room were bike prototypes. Three were displayed on racks in the middle of the floor, while others were casually leaning against the wall, almost as if they’d been discarded and never touched again. For some reason, these discarded bikes attracted Matt’s attention, and he walked to them first before inspecting the working prototypes. Something subconscious made him reach out with his finger to wipe the dust from the seat of one of the discarded frames. Noticing the swath he had made, he used his handkerchief to roughly dust the seat and obscure the mark.
Matt then walked to the bikes in the center of the room. Three were there, held upright in slotted stands. The frames were shaped like a modern mountain bike, but each was a different material. One appeared to be cast iron, another constructed of ground-steel tubes, and a third, oddly enough, used bamboo. The bamboo frame had shattered front forks and was missing a front wheel. The pedal, gear and chain mechanisms were similar across the bikes and the same as those on the “Fergusons” that people were pedaling around London.
Matt had not thought much about the bikes up to this point, but his close inspection made him realize the number of components that went into making a bicycle. The wheels in each case were miniaturized versions of those he had seen on the Ferguson carriages. The bamboo-framed bicycle had a back wheel coated in a thick substance that was the color of rawhide. It felt like rubber to the touch. The Ferguson bicycles Matt had seen so far relied on either bare steel or a rawhide strap to contact the ground. The steel wheels worked fine where the roads were mostly unpaved and compacted dirt, while the rawhide-strapped wheels worked best on London’s cobblestone streets.
The use of rubber, if Ferguson were able to perfect it, would be a significant advancement. Matt imagined that the chemistry book Ferguson had stolen might also contain the primary process for making rubber. Matt didn’t know much about rubber, but he had not seen it since he had arrived in his new time. The thoughts of it took him back to his teenage years in Philadelphia growing up with his father. His dad drove a cab in the city of Philadelphia. It didn’t pay much, so they were always struggling for money.
Matt accompanied his dad on his regular visits to the junkyard to buy used tires for the cab. Matt and his father would walk to the back of the yard to unstack and restack tires until they found matching pairs to fit his father’s cab. It was rare to see four matching tires, but they could usually find suitable pairs, and these worked as long as they went together on the front or the back.
They’d usually pick out two pairs on each visit. Three could fit in the trunk of the cab, and the last went in the back wrapped in an old beach towel to keep the seat clean. Matt’s father had an old tire machine in their garage that he’d use to put them on his cab. Unfortunately, though, there was no convenient way to dispose of old tires, so his dad had a stack of bald tires in the back of the garage that went up to the ceiling and then another up against the fence in their tiny Philadelphia backyard.
Matt pulled himself out of his daydream. He had seen all there was to see in this half of the warehouse. The inventions in these rooms were respectable, but nothing that brought Great Britain into a “new age.” The carriages were high quality, the bicycles were useful, and the new formats for muskets might help armies incrementally, but none of these things in themselves could fuel an empire.
Now Matt found himself up against a wall that went all the way to the top of the ceiling. Two double doors led into the second half of the building. Something about these particular doors made him uneasy. The nearest analogy to the feeling was that it was exactly like what Spiderman meant when he said that his “spider sense was tingling.” Matt smiled thinking of his childhood comic book hero. Like Spiderman, despite the overwhelming sense that the odds were against him and that he should run away very, very fast, he’d open these double doors and confront what was behind them.
Chapter 62
Enlightenment
Matt reached tentatively to the handle of the door. He found himself almost hoping that it was sealed, impenetrable to anything weaker than the cannon he had just inspected, but when he tried the brass latch, it clicked open. He pushed it cautiously, ready for anything, but no dragon attacked. The room was pitch black. He reached up for the latch that locked the second double door and opened it, letting in a paltry amount of light. The windows were shuttered.
As he stepped through the door he heard switches, and bright lights flooded the room, blinding him. He stepped back into the doorway to make his escape. Spider sense, indeed!
“Mr. Miller,” Ferguson called from somewhere in the ceiling. “Come in, please! Shut the doors behind you. With all the light leaking into the night, London may think the place is on fire.”
Matt smiled and shook his head, thinking with some chagrin, “What would Spiderman do?” He stepped into the light and turned to close and lock the doors. Seamus McCalla, his fighting instructor in Philadelphia, had taught him never to sit with his back to the door, especially an unlocked one. Matt heard footsteps descending stairs as he slid the latch into place. He turned to see Ferguson appear through a double doorway opposite the doors Matt had just locked.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Ferguson said. “You must be tired.” He pointed to a table and a bar cart lined with crystal decanters. “Scotch?”
Matt nodded, smiled, and moved to the conference table. He stood with his hands on the top of a chair back. Ferguson’s civility was unnerving. “You sound like a James Bond villain,” he joked.
“Ah, that,” Ferguson said. He was now at the liquor cart. “Peaty or no?”
Matt put his thumb and forefinger together. “Not too much.”
“Old men like peat,” Ferguson said.
“Something about taste buds disappearing with age,” Matt agreed. “I think they stop regenerating somewhere around your fifties.”
“Aging can be—what do you Americans say—a drag,” Ferguson replied. He turned back to the crystal bottles and spoke towards them. “At least there’s whisky.” Ferguson selected a bottle from the five and poured two glasses. He brought them over and slid one toward Matt. His eyes traveled over Matt’s clothing. “Looks like you were in a bit of a tussle. You don’t have a gun on you, perchance?”
Matt shook his head. He opened his coachman’s jacket to prove that there was nothing there, and then he returned his hands to their resting place on the chair back.
Ferguson opened his own jacket, revealing a muzzle-loaded pistol in his belt, and then he pointed to a chair. “Have a seat.” He took a sip of his scotch before he sat. He rolled it around in his mouth. “Speyside single malt from an area known as Dalwhinnie. Maybe you’re familiar?”
“Like as in Dalwhinnie scotch?” Matt asked as he pulled out the chair and sat down. He picked up the chiseled crystal glass, tasted the whisky and nodded his approval to Ferguson.
Ferguson smiled. “Hard to tell. It’s as capable a guess as I have. I’ve been there. . . small distillers and such. I buy what I like. You should see Loch Ness. It’s easy to imagine a monster in those waters.”
“I wouldn’t mind going up there with you sometime,” Matt said, still standing.
“Our relationship grows increasingly complicated,” Ferguson replied. “Some pieces on the board I control, others, you, and the balance, well . . .”
“How’d you know I was coming here tonight?” Matt asked.
Ferguson smiled his reply.
Matt looked away, scanning the enormous room lit brilliantly by electric bulbs. He remained jealous that Ferguson had sorted out electric lighting while he was still struggling with oil lamps back at his Richmond factory. “How long do the batteries last?” Matt finally asked, breaking the silence.
“Most of the night. We’ve primitive generators to charge them.”
Matt stood slowly and moved closer to one of the egg
-shaped bulbs on the wall behind him. The glass was yellow, thick, and flawed, but still a technical marvel for 1772. “What’s the filament?”
“Carbonized bamboo, like Edison,” Ferguson replied. “Resistance is key. They don’t last long, and I don’t have time to perfect them. Either the vacuum is poor from the beginning, or there are leaks.”
Matt returned to his chair and faced Ferguson. He picked the whisky up again, took another sip, and noted the cascade of warmth that moved along the top of his tongue. “I thought about making a light bulb when I first arrived,” Matt explained. “Nowhere to plug it in.”
“Our challenges have been similar,” Ferguson said. “Inventions come when the world is ready, and not a moment sooner. I could make the best glass bulbs London has ever seen, but until she has an electrical grid, they are but curiosities that make a fascinating pop when you smash them on the cobblestone.”
“You could build a grid.”
Ferguson brushed him off with a slight wave of his hand. “My focus now is on building human capital.”
“So no superweapons anywhere?” Matt gave Ferguson an emotionless smile. “Something that’s, maybe…part of your backup plan.”
“If you were curious enough to inspect my project rooms as you walked through my building, you’ve gotten the picture, though I’m quite proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
Matt nodded trying to acknowledge this commonality between them.
Ferguson answered him with a steely look of contempt
“I didn’t kill your wife,” Matt said, looking directly into Ferguson’s eyes. Ferguson fixed Matt with a hard cast, caught himself, dropped the emotion from his face, and then leaned back in his chair.