Grantville Gazette 38 gg-38

by Коллектив Авторов

  ****

  "It's ready," said Herr Krause with an intensity that Darius had seldom heard from him . . . or anyone else, for that matter.

  Naturally, that night the snows came. Not for the first time that winter, but a major blizzard. All that could be done was steam tests and engine tests. So, steam tests and engine tests they did. The prop spun up with incredible speed starting at full torque, and simply adjusting a lever not only stopped the prop but reversed it. Which Willem found marvelous. The plane moved with ease and panache, and they got good reads on how much fuel they needed for how much flight time. The delay caused by the weather was irritating, not dangerous. The one thing that bothered Willem about the Arrow's power plant was that it took over five minutes to build up a head of steam. There would be no jumping into this plane and being in flight less than a minute later.

  ****

  The day finally came. They had done tests. The Arrow was as ready as they could make it. Willem sat in the cockpit, reclined not for comfort but to save space. He watched the steam gauge with care and waited with impatience for the pressure to reach the levels needed for sustained flight. When all was ready he dialed the throttle up to take off power then released the brakes. The Arrow was heavier than he would have preferred, especially with the weight of the boiler and condenser. But still, according to all their calculations, it should lift off about halfway down the runway. It started quickly and picked up speed slower than he would have liked, but it did pick up the speed. He wasn't quite sure how fast he was going when he reached halfway point on the runway. The Arrow wasn't equipped with a speedometer. It was a matter of estimation and he figured he was going fast enough.

  He pulled back on the stick and nothing happened. The wheels stayed glued to the ground. He put the stick back to neutral and waited for more speed to build. It was harder to build up speed when the stick was back. He also dialed the throttle as high as it would go, full emergency power, as it were.

  Two-thirds of the way down the field he was going faster and tried again. Something was wrong. He was going faster than he had ever gone before at take off in any plane, and he was still glued to the ground. He should be getting something by now.

  He wondered if he should shut down and try again another day. He'd give it another few seconds. After all, he could reverse thrust to slow rapidly

  Seconds later he tried again. Now he was scared and angry. Too close to the end of the runway for comfort. Stick still back, he reversed thrust. The gearing took the strain, the prop and the shaft did not snap, and the prop bit into the air-backwards.

  Suddenly, with no warning, he was airborne, the nose was coming up fast. And his mind was behind the plane still trying to slow it down. He pulled back on the stick and the nose lifted faster.

  Willem had only a few hours of flight time. He had soloed once, for all of five minutes. Just enough to get his solo permit stamped. He had never been in a plane that moved like this one. No one had ever been in a plane that moved like this one. It wasn't that it was especially maneuverable, but it maneuvered differently than a more traditional airframe would. More of the lift, but also more of the weight, was toward the back of the aircraft. With the elevons flipped up and the prop reversed while still in the ground effect range, it acted like a take off ramp made out of concrete. The nose flipped up like it was giving the world the finger and the Arrow shot into the sky at something over two gs change of vee.

  It shot into the sky with its propeller spinning madly backwards. Momentum and air pressure got it into the sky, but there was nothing to keep it there. Still, it got almost fifty feet into the air. And all the way up-and all the way back down-it was flipping over backwards. For at the top of the arc, Willem pushed the stick all the way forward, just as his limited experience as a pilot told him to do. The tail hit the ground first but by then the Arrow was angled at forty-five degrees back toward the start of the field.

  Willem had a few seconds, two, maybe three, to wonder what the fuck had happened before the canopy cracked into the runway and ended his capacity for questioning forever.

  ****

  Hal Smith didn't need to be called in. First flights out of GrantvilleAirport weren't so common that he had to miss many of them, and first flights of delta-wing aircraft were even rarer. He had seen the take off run. He had seen the leap into the air. He had seen the crash.

  And he knew exactly what had happened. Knew that he had told Willem Krause the right thing, but for the wrong reason. That he had never thought of the true reason that the centered prop was such a bad idea. Hal had never been a great fan of deltas. He'd never designed one and never flown one, so he had never thought about what would happen if you put a prop at the back of a delta wing with half its sucking power contained by the ground and the body of the plane.

  To make a plane go forward, you push air backward. When you push air in one direction, you're pulling it in from all the other available directions. That mostly doesn't matter because it is all the other directions. There is no restriction on where the air comes from to replace the air your prop displaces. Not, however, when that flow of air is blocked by the body of the airplane above it and the ground below it. When that happens you get a vacuum.

  Well, calling it a vacuum is overstating the case. The low pressure zone produced is to a vacuum cleaner what a vacuum cleaner is to a vacuum tube. Not even in the same range. The pressure deferential is only a few ounces per square inch, less even. But there are a lot of square inches on the under-surface of a delta wing thirty feet wide by thirty feet long.

  The pressure deferential is the same thing that lets planes fly, but in this case it glued the plane to the ground as long as the prop was pulling air out from between the wing and the ground. Hal Smith knew all that the moment the Arrow lifted off. He prayed in those moments that Willem Krause would push the thrust back to full forward. It hadn't happened and he couldn't blame Herr Krause for not realizing what had happened in time. The only person that Hal found to blame for the death of Willem Krause was Hal Smith. He fell back into his chair by the tower and felt the cold wind and every day of his seventy-one years.

  There were too many gaps in the knowledge brought back, too many errors. Not from lack of knowledge but from lack of understanding of the knowledge they did have. He wanted to quit then as he had wanted to quit at each of the deaths that had, over the last year and more, followed the introduction of flight into this century. He knew he couldn't quit, for his quitting wouldn't prevent a single death. The young men and women who dreamed of flight and dared turn their dreams into reality wouldn't stop. Not if God Himself came down and told them to leave the heavens to him. They couldn't . . . and Hal couldn't blame them for that.

  Epilogue

  Darius stood next to Gemma as they watched the ceremony. Willem Krause had been buried three days before. This was different. A small plaque made of bronze with the name Willem Krause engraved on it. Above the name were the wings of a pilot and a compass and a square on the right and left to symbolize an airplane designer. It looked like a Masonic symbol to Darius and he almost smiled at the thought that someday this would be taken as proof that the Masons, even in the seventeenth century, were secretly trying to introduce a new world order. Herr Krause would have laughed his ass off at that, Darius was sure.

  That wouldn't stop the questions, though. Willem Krause's room had been cleared out the day he died, before anyone had thought to look. No one knew who was financing him. For all Darius knew, it was the Masons or the Illuminati, though they weren't even supposed to have started till next century.

  It didn't matter. Willem Krause had built an airplane. He had flown it, if only for a few seconds and had died providing a bit more understanding of what conquering the skies cost and how it was done. His wasn't the first name on the wall of the Grantville airport tower and it wouldn't be the last. But this was the first time that Darius or Gemma had known the person behind the name on the wall.

  Darius held Gemma's hand and
thought about flying. About how the Arrow might be modified and made to fly. It should be possible.

  ****

  Mitzi the Kid

  Kevin H. and Karen C. Evans

  Southeastern Poland

  Summer, 1634

  The sun rose toward high noon. A buzzard circled slowly over his head as the gunfighter stepped from the saloon. Red dust puffed up from each step, and the sneer on his face was even more twisted than before.

  Mitzi the Kid stood up from the chair in front of the Marshall's office. "Black Bart, what are you doing in town? Didn't I throw you out yesterday?"

  Black Bart spit into the street. "You're nothing but a sniveling little mouse, and I never listen to mice."

  Mitzi stepped into the middle of the street. Women grabbed their children and hid inside shops. Black Bart's eyes were like flat river rocks. "Draw, you lily-livered coward." Mitzi stood and watched him for a movement.

  There, Black Bart's finger twitched. Mitzi's gun cleared leather and started firing before Black Bart could get his gun out. The man in black fell to the ground, and there was silence . . .

  Broken by whistling.

  Mitzi sat up, suddenly aware that he had fallen asleep with his precious book on his face. He definitely didn't want to be caught with the book again, not when he should be picking rocks. He hid the book under a couple of rocks on the sledge, and hurried over to the first furrow from last fall. He would have to get the rocks out before they could plow and plant this spring. He found a rock, and tossed it to the pile at the edge of the field before the whistler could top the hill behind him.

  Mitzi bent over, grabbed another chunk of rock, and with a quick twist of his shoulders threw the rock to the pile. At least he was still close enough to the edge of the field that he didn't have to use the sledge. Dragging a sledge full of rocks was one of Mitzi's least favorite activities. He bent, threw another rock, bent, threw rock, then more of the same.

  He kept working as the whistling stopped. Then he heard a familiar voice. "Mstislav, I see you're picking rocks."

  Mitzi looked over, and it was Aleksy! "I'm Mitzi. I'm fourteen, great-grandfather was Mstislav. And shouldn't you be at your duties? Were you dismissed? Are you back for good?"

  Aleksy laughed as he gave his little brother a hug, and pounded him on the back. "No. The count declared a break. I think it is a new mistress. And while most of my workmates could only talk about having parties and entertainment, I'm here to see what you've been neglecting."

  Mitzi grinned as well. "And you walked the whole eighty miles?"

  Aleksy shook his head. "No, I was able to ride part of the way. Otherwise, I'd still be on the road."

  Mitzi and Aleksy sat down on the sledge and pulled grass stems to chew on. Mitzi leaned back on his elbows. "I was sad to see you go. How long will you be home? Now that you're gone, it's been my job to pick the rocks before the first plowing. I was hoping you were back for good."

  Aleksy laughed and leaned on his elbows as well. "Wishful thinking, brother. Even if I were back for good, I'd get a different job than picking rocks. That's yours!"

  "I've been reading that book you brought. I've read it through twice already. Who is this man, the author? He sounds like some Frenchman, with a name like L'Amour."

  Aleksy tousled Mitzi's hair. "From what I could find out, he was an American, but he doesn't live here in Europe. He was from before the miracle." Aleksy pulled a little booklet from his shirt. "But I learned about something even better than L'Amour. I brought it home to show the village elders. They probably will want to have a meeting tonight, so I don't think anyone else will have time to come out here and catch you sleeping again."

  Mitzi blushed, but his discomfiture was quickly forgotten. "What is it? Is it a story as well?"

  "No, it's in good German. It's just a couple of pamphlets. They're about something called the grange."

  ****

  Mitzi arrived at the village meeting early, so he could get a good seat. He was perched on a barrel very close to the front. As always, the gathering was in the open area between all the houses.

  With only seven extended families, and nine houses, this wasn't the largest village in the district. There wasn't a shop of any kind, so nobody sold spices. That meant that they were not a town. They had their own small scriptorium, but it wasn't really large enough for the meeting, so they met in the courtyard.

  In the old days, when Uncle Olek was a young man, the village had been the direct support of the manor. But when the manor house had burned down twenty years ago, the Olbermann family moved off to the town and left the village elders in charge of making sure that the fields were planted and rents were paid. Even the manor was twenty minutes walk from the village. And so the village became sleepier and less exciting week by week and month by month.

  He smiled as he saw Frau Walczak, bustling around in the cobble-stoned space between the houses. She always called it a courtyard, saying that even castles did not have so fine a space for their activities. It was not quite like a plaza or courtyard in a town. It really was just a wide space, with houses on all sides.

  Herr Piotroski supervised the setting of planks on top of barrels to make the head table. The preparations were finished, and Old Uncle Olek came out of his house, and sat down at his seat. That was the signal, and the rest of the village council, all the heads of households, gathered around the table.

  The meeting started. Mitzi let his mind wander as Herr Piotroski gave the same old announcements. Finally it was Aleksy's turn. Aleksy took out the pamphlets and put them on the council table. "Here are the basics for organizing our village into a grange. The grange will protect our farms and families by making us part of a larger coalition. More, it will get us access to The Grange Proceedings, which are newssheets about the advances in agriculture, and broadsheets on how to make improved tools that will work for us."

  After he sat down, there was a moment of silence, then the talk began. In the tradition of the village, all the adults seemed to be talking at the same time, and as loudly as possible. Everyone, at one time or another, pointed at the pamphlets laying on the table and waved their hands in the air to emphasize some point or other. As it grew darker, lanterns and torches lit up the area, food and drink were brought out from the houses, but the discussion never stopped.

  Uncle Olek waved his cane at Herr Piotroski. "But it's not new! This sounds just exactly like what we've been doing all along."

  Herr Piotroski ducked, and nodded. "Yes, I agree. But if we form an organization, one that is bigger than just our village, we can get better prices and what money we do get will go farther."

  Mitzi's father, Hans, picked up the pamphlet, and looked at it as the others shouted. Then he stood up, and raised his hand for silence. "It says here, if we set up this organization, we can have a voice in politics. And I like what it says about cutting out the middleman. It means that we could get more money, and even the people we sell to would get more."

  As the night wore on, formidable quantities of both beer and bread were consumed. To Mitzi, it seemed that all the wrangling was really more about making sure everyone knew that everybody else had heard them, and that they had heard everybody else. The real selling point had been that everyone had heard about villages in Germany which organized and were having great success.

  The last holdout was Herr Grabowski. He stood up and shouted, "You all sound as if we will have to pave the courtyard with gold bricks just to use up all the money we will make. You all act like enthusiasm will solve all your problems. You need to know, that if you're not willing to work this idea won't work for you."

  Herr Piotroski banged his cane on the table when the whole village tried to shout down Herr Grabowski. When it was a little calmer, Herr Piotroski said, "So you're saying you don't think we should try this?"

  All eyes went to Herr Grabowski. He frowned under his heavy black brows. "No, I'm not. I'm saying that if everyone is willing to make this work, I'll try it too."r />
  ****

  The Duroski manor had fallen to hard times. It lay on the side of a valley closer to holdings of the Polish nobles. The family was almost nonexistent now. The only living heir when the old man died was his son, Jarusz. He was a bully and a wastrel, but the old man had no other choice. There were not even nephews he could leave it to. So the manor fell into disuse as Jarusz Duroski spent his inheritance on anything and everything except proper maintenance.

  Now Jarusz was home and out of money. He and his band of lowlifes were camped at his old manor. The house itself was still standing but most of the outbuildings were collapsed and decaying. There were no servants, just he and his men.

  Jarusz and his men were drinking in the old dining room. The table had been hastily repaired with a mismatched leg, and it was not strong enough to lean on, but it was able to hold the leather jack full of beer, and the map spread out in the middle. He leaned over and examined it for a moment, then placed his finger on an area next to his land. "And who owns this land here?"

  Boris, his second in command, replied, "That land belongs to the Olbermann family. It is part of an inheritance that went to a German cousin about ninety years ago. They moved to town when their manor house burned. It has been almost twenty years since they have been in residence on that property, but I don't think that the land belongs to anybody else."

  Jarusz stroked his beard. "So the family has not been there? That just may be the answer to our supply problems. There's nothing else here we can forage. Perhaps if we occupy the ruins of the manor, we can claim that we were just protecting the property from the bandits and thieves."

  That brought a laugh from the men in the room. Jarusz laughed as well. They would really be "protecting" the land from themselves. He pulled his knife from the scabbard and started picking his teeth. "With a little effort perhaps we could convince the Olbermann factor that it should really be ours, and not belong to someone who abandoned it more than a decade ago."