The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  The other big challenge—not nearly as pressing, but just as vital to the success of their mission, was manufacturing pumps. While the first stage of a Titan II rocket could be powered by kerosene, the second and third stages needed a fuel with a higher specific impulse in order to reach escape velocity of 25,000 miles per hour. Higher specific impulse meant more energy per pound of fuel.

  The logical choice for this was hydrogen. To be stored, hydrogen had to be cooled and pumped into tanks at very high pressure—as did the oxygen, which would be used as the oxidizer for all three stages. Cooling and liquefying gases required pumps that could produce pressures over 5,000 pounds per square inch. This was usually done with a centrifuge spun by a powerful electric motor. A team of engineers had been working on the problem for seven years, and so far had been unable to produce a pump that consistently produced over 500 psi.

  Additionally, the pumps were large and inefficient, which was not a problem at Camp Armstrong, but ultimately they would also need to build pumps with similar capability that would be carried by the Iron Dragon itself: rocket thrusters produced tremendous pressure, and the pumps had to be powerful enough to overcome that pressure to get the fuel and the oxidizer into the combustion chamber. If the pumps failed, the rocket would essentially blow itself out.

  There were other problems as well—particularly the myriad issues involved with attitude control, including the design of sensors and attitude control thrusters—but these were dwarfed by the matters of communications and propellant control.

  All of these problems had, of course, been solved before, generally hundreds of years in the past, from the spacemen’s perspective. Their wrist cuff libraries contained millions of pages of technical reference material documenting exactly how vacuum tubes, turbopumps and attitude jets were constructed. They possessed hundreds of pages on both the Titan II rocket and the Gemini spacecraft. There were, however, three main problems with trying to build a spaceship from such documentation.

  The first was that the documentation was incomplete and, in rare cases, inaccurate. There really was no manual for building a Titan II rocket. The development of the rockets—originally designed as warhead delivery mechanisms—had been a complex project involving dozens of firms and thousands of people over many years. The documentation that existed was mostly written after the fact, by third parties doing their best to reconstruct the process. It was like trying to reconstruct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by reading descriptions written by people who had attended a performance.

  The second problem was the reliance of the documentation on existing twentieth-century technology. A simple valve or switch that you could pick up at any hardware store in the twentieth century might take an engineer a week in Hell to produce. Often there was a cascade effect, where a seemingly simple part required the fabrication of several other parts, some of which required custom machines to fabricate, which required the creation of other tools, and on and on. Both the vacuum tube project and turbopump project had been prone to this phenomenon.

  Finally, there was the problem of a lack of precision in the tools and machines at Camp Yeager. Early in the project, they had standardized on the old American system of measurement—feet, pounds and gallons—rather than metric, because those were the measurements used in the documentation for the Titan II and the Gemini capsule, as well as most of the other machines they were building. This was all well and good; the problem was that an imperfectly tempered cutting edge might wear a sixty-fourth of an inch, resulting in the fabrication of parts that were slightly too large or too small. These parts would be incorporated into other machines, and so on, propagating and often amplifying errors until parts that were supposed to fit together didn’t. In one case, an early turbopump prototype seized up and exploded, killing an engineer. After that, Alma ordered an audit of all the machines, and the more egregious errors were corrected, but fabricating machines built of hundreds of interlocking parts that would work flawlessly at high temperatures and velocities was still a challenge.

  It remained a source of frustration for Alma and many others on the project that they had not yet produced a single working aircraft of any kind. From a strict engineering perspective, it could be argued that it was not necessary to master the construction of aircraft before they built a rocket. A rocket was not an airplane, and flying an airplane was very little like flying a spacecraft. In some ways, knowing how to fly an airplane would be a liability: early Gemini astronauts had failed in their efforts at orbital rendezvous because they’d expected the capsule to move like an airplane.

  Realistically, though, trying to get a craft into space without first having mastered atmospheric flight was trying to run a marathon before you’d learned to crawl. There were so many things that could go wrong with manned space flight that they wouldn’t have a clue whether they could do it until they managed to at least get an airplane to Mach one. If nothing else, it was a way of making concrete steps toward the goal of building a machine made from finely engineered components that would stand up under extreme conditions. There was a lot more room for error with a steam shovel than with a jet airplane.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  After three years at Höfn, Osric concluded that he would never be recruited Beyond the Pass. He had committed some sin in the eyes of the Dvergar that disqualified him for a higher level of service. Or perhaps he was simply too old. He watched as many younger men and women—and often boys and girls, some of whom could barely read—were selected over him. Even angry young Stephen and rebellious Nikolai had been promoted over him. In rare cases, a candidate would turn down the offer, opting to stay at Höfn, but most of the residents at Höfn seemed to view the village as a waypoint on a journey. Ironically, those who wanted it the most were usually the least vocal about it: it was well-known that the ability to keep a secret was one of the most prized qualifications in candidates.

  Osric never spoke of his own desire to be promoted, but sometimes he would overhear his students whispering about it or speculating about what went on Beyond the Pass. It was clear that most of them had no idea what the Dvergar were up to; speculation ranged from the scandalous to the absurd. Still, the desire to be promoted could not be extinguished: everyone knew the Dvergar were engaged in something very important, and that Höfn was merely a front for it. They saw the ships arriving, almost daily now, and the mule carts loaded with barrels or crates of cargo, and they saw strange men and women passing through their village, and they wondered what it was all for. Once you knew that your life was a façade, it was difficult not to pine for the real thing, even if you had no idea what the real thing was.

  The beautiful Greek woman, Helena, had come to interview him once a year for three years. She had been charming and pleasant and had asked strange and interesting questions about his life before Höfn and what he saw in his future. He had always been honest with her, except for the lies he had been instructed in Rome to tell. He told her that he had been called by God to minister to His sheep, and that he tried to do that in his work at Höfn. He also told her he believed God had plans for him beyond this place, but he could not say what those plans were. Each time Osric thought the interview had gone well, but Helena never returned to inform him he’d been selected, as she did for so many others.

  Osric thought he had an idea what the problem was: the Dvergar thought his loyalties were divided. They thought that if God or Rome gave him orders that conflicted with his obligations to the Dvergar, that he would obey the former—and of course, they were right. He’d received no orders from Rome but to minister the miners and, if possible, to their masters, but he did not pretend to be able to divine or control the will of God Himself.

  That said, he’d begun to doubt his early, naïve belief that the Dvergar were wicked people. They were, he knew, outside of the salvation of God, but as he’d told young Stephen, even heathens were allowed a measure of grace. The Greeks and the Chinese had both built great civilizations, despite being heathens. Virtues
were, to some extent, self-reinforcing, and perhaps certain groups of heathens, having been granted a supply of piety by their Creator, managed to multiply their talents and produce something of worth despite remaining in a state of sin. Conversely, evil was destructive: the tower of Babel fell because the corrupted motives of the builders turned them against each other. Perhaps, he thought, I am called to turn the Dvergar’s tower of Babel into a temple of God.

  He felt, though, that he was in an impossible situation: to be of use to the project, he needed to remain pure of motive. But as long as his loyalty was to God, the Dvergar would not select him. It would take a miracle to prove his worth to them, the way God had proved Daniel’s worth to Nebuchadnezzar, but there was no lion’s den at Höfn—just a classroom of frightened peasant children.

  By the time of his fourth interview with Helena, he had made peace with his situation. Perhaps he was meant for greater things in the future, but he would not get there by worrying about the present.

  “You can still kill me, you know,” he said to Helena, as they stood on the beach watching barrels being unloaded from a knar. She had asked whether he resented them for bringing him to Höfn.

  Helena, for once, was speechless. “What did you say?” she said after she had recovered.

  “I apologize. I did not mean to shock you. I meant that if I cause you trouble, you could have me executed. I will not resist. It is considered a great honor in my religion to be martyred for the faith.”

  “We aren’t going to execute you for your religion.”

  “I was brought here under penalty of death.”

  “Not for your religion.”

  “Then I wasn’t brought here for fear that I might report what I have seen to Rome?”

  “Fair enough,” Helena said.

  “Forgive me, I know I am not supposed to speak openly about such things.”

  “It’s all right, Osric. Speak what’s on your mind.”

  “We both know what these interviews are about. I have been here four years. I see people disappearing Beyond the Pass.”

  “You want to see for yourself.”

  “No. Well, yes. But that is not the main reason I want to be selected. I think that I may be of greater use closer to the heart of your organization.”

  “To us or to your God?”

  “I serve God by serving my fellow men.”

  “But you hope to transform our project.”

  “It is the mission of every Christian to transform the world around him. Surely I wouldn’t be the first Christian to be selected?”

  “No. Nor even the first priest. There are three others, that I know of. But you are different, Osric. There is something about you that I can’t quite pinpoint.”

  “You still think I will somehow report to Rome about all I’ve seen? I assure you I have neither the desire nor the means. My mission is here.”

  “It’s not that,” Helena said. “I have excellent intuition about people. To be honest, I think you would tell your superiors in the Church everything, if you could. I suspect you’ve already told them what you saw at the mine.” Osric opened his mouth to protest, but Helena held up a hand to silence him. “You do such things not out of malice, but because you sincerely believe, all evidence to the contrary, that the Church is the manifestation of God’s will on Earth. You believe you would be doing us a favor.”

  “I would see all earthly powers bow to Rome,” Osric replied cautiously.

  “Yes, and it’s that untainted idealism that makes you dangerous, whether or not you have any contact with the Church.”

  “I mean no harm to you or your people,” Osric said. “I will submit to your authority, and if I find that my conscience will not allow me to fulfil the duties you’ve given me, I will decline respectfully and candidly and accept whatever punishment you consider appropriate. You needn’t worry about me grumbling in secret or fomenting unrest.”

  Helena sighed. “I know all this, Osric. You don’t see it, but it’s these very traits that make you dangerous. Our project relies on a singular sense of purpose. The greatest threat to that sense of purpose is a competing ideology.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not understand.”

  “Of course not,” Helena said with a pained smile. “Osric, the fact is, we’re in desperate need of people like you. You are an excellent teacher, probably the best we’ve had at Höfn. Your talents are being wasted here. Some of my peers have raised concerns about the religious indoctrination you incorporate into your lessons—oh, yes, I assure you we know all about your curriculum. I assured them that a little religion is a good thing.”

  “But only a little.”

  Helena shrugged. “Humans are religious creatures. Something is going to fill that space in their souls, one way or another. I only get concerned when religion overwhelms the rational faculties.”

  “Ah, now you are talking like a Greek.”

  Helena smiled. “My father was a great scientist and philosopher. I take after him in some ways. He taught me about Aristotle’s Golden Mean—the desirable state between two extremes. My interpretation is that religious fanaticism is undesirable, but so is anti-religious fanaticism.”

  “Aristotle was very wise,” Osric said, “for a heathen.”

  Helena laughed. “And you are cagier than you let on, Osric. St. Paul said that faith is the assurance of things not seen, but I have always found that faith works better when supplemented with firsthand experience. Would you like to see for yourself what it Beyond the Pass?”

  “Yes,” Osric said. “Very much.”

  “Then I will recommend to my peers that you be extended an invitation. Don’t make me regret this.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Camp Armstrong—more commonly referred to by its inhabitants as Svartalfheim—was like nothing Osric had ever seen. It was much bigger than he imagined, with its dozens of buildings and nearly two thousand residents. At the same time, it was somewhat disappointing: he had been expecting the Tower of Babel, and instead he found a scattered assortment of turf longhouses and nondescript rectangular buildings. Any ordinary village in England was more picturesque than Svartalfheim.

  His excitement at being promoted Beyond the Pass quickly turned to frustration, as he realized that he would remain in the dark as to most of the goings-on at the camp. Women and men—for there were far more of the former than the latter—walked to and from the buildings, discussing matters in hushed tones that were so far beyond Osric’s understanding that the snippets he caught were little more than gibberish. About half of these people had jobs he could at least comprehend: there were butchers, carpenters, men-at-arms, and many others, as well as quite a few teachers like himself. The rest of the inhabitants were “engineers,” of some kind or other. Osric gathered that there were many different types of engineers, and he saw that they worked and socialized in distinct groups, but in most cases he had no idea what they actually worked on.

  The one exception were the engineers who worked on the machines that were used in and around Svartalfheim. The steam shovels, of which he had seen one model at the coalmine, remained the most overtly impressive, but there were dozens of other, smaller machines that were just as ingenious and useful. There were drilling machines, sawing machines, stone-cutting machines, nail-driving machines, and several others. Most of them were powered by engines that burned a clear liquid that Osric gathered was derived from the stuff in the barrels that were arriving in shipments several times a week now. The barrels were transported by mule cart to a building called a refinery, which was surrounded by several steel tanks as large as a house. He learned that much of the work at Svartalfheim was actually done underground, in a vast cave the Eidejelans called Hell. What this work consisted of, he had only the faintest inkling.

  It became apparent within his first few weeks at Svartalfheim that much of the work that went on there was not work at all, in the ordinary sense. The engineers—at least the better and more senior ones—seemed to spend most o
f their time not actually building machinery, but rather thinking of ways to build different, or better machinery. Operation of the existing machines was left to students or less experienced engineers. There were, Helena had informed him when first arrived, three buildings full of people whose job was simply to keep track of which problems still needed to be solved and who was working on them. Osric had thought she was joking. As he continued to observe the inhabitants over the following months, though, he found that these “managers” took their jobs very seriously. He began to think of them as monks, wrestling with seemingly insoluble problems, sometime alone and sometimes in concert—except that instead of grappling with problems like free will or the existence of evil, they dealt with matters of physics and alchemy. Shortly after he arrived, there was no small amount of rejoicing over the successful development of a process to fabricate something called “vacuum tubes.” The enthusiasm over vacuum tubes, however, quickly gave way to despair over their efforts to build “turbopumps.” It all sounded like nonsense to him, and he knew better than to press for explanations.

  It was becoming more and more difficult for Osric to imagine that the Eidejelans were evil. They treated him well and were generally kind and respectful to each other, despite the fact that they obviously hailed from many different lands. Although their project was clearly of a massive scale, their day-to-day activities seemed mundane. There were no demonic rituals or strange incantations, as far as he could tell. In fact, most of the people seemed to lack strong religious inclinations. Some of the Norsemen met on occasion to praise Odin or give thanks to Freya, and their funeral ceremonies were grand affairs with much talk about gods and Valhalla, but daily life was, for Osric’s tastes, almost painfully secular. There were no Christian church services, and to his shame he had not yet broached the matter with the authorities. If the engineers were monks, problem-solving was their religion.