Asimov's SF, February 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And the crust of the earth broke, just as if a mighty fist had punched upward and out of it, and I saw pillars of ice slide into the air. Then the dome rose, the icy carapace of a Phoebean soaring upward along its slim legs. So this was how James Watt used the Phoebeans—this was how they made his mines for him! But this beast had erupted right beneath the French party, and they were raised up and scattered, and when they fell those wretches hit hard with screams and the crack of bone.

  Denham shouted: “At ‘em, lads!” And the marines dashed over the English mud, muskets and sabers ready, to finish off the Phoebean's work.

  But I thought I saw a French naval officer, burly and pigtailed, running off into the dark.

  * * * *

  XII

  We returned to the Great North Road, passing through Durham and Gateshead and on to Newcastle, where the Roman route cuts through the city walls to cross the river Tyne. We arrived just six days after leaving London. By now every town and village we saw was in a ferment of preparation and evacuation, and that was nowhere more true than in Newcastle, where that late December Thursday a row of ships of the line were moored at the Quayside, their sails neatly reefed, and they were being unloaded of their guns.

  We did not stop, but we were inevitably slowed by the bustle, and I looked around with some curiosity, for this was the site of my own ancestor's escapades during the Ice War—where the main force of Phoebeans, marching south around a tremendous Queen, was resisted by the townsfolk. I saw the ruins of the castle, smashed to splinters by a Phoebean. Collingwood himself pointed this out to me, for he was traveling with me in my battered London cab now that my companion Clavell had been left in his grave at Darlington—and Collingwood, it turned out, had been born in that city, in a cut not far from the Quayside. Well, that day the city was battening down for another siege, with every man and woman carrying guns or powder pouches or barrels of provisions, and small boys knocking holes in house walls with broom handles.

  But Newcastle was also the eastern terminus of the Wall that the Romans built to span the neck of the country and keep out the hairy Caledonians. And when we left the city, following the road through a northern gate, Collingwood bade me look to the west to see what I could of the preparations being made there. Since the Ice War, the Wall, which was now called the Geordie Wall, had been extended and heightened, and turned into a mighty barrier against the advance of any Phoebeans who might come strolling this way from the north. The old Roman mile forts had been turned into gun towers and ammunition dumps, and before the Wall's northern face the Roman vallum, a huge ditch and earthwork, had been deepened and spiked with blocks and iron bars. All this was decades old and dilapidated, but now frantic work was going on all along the Wall.

  Collingwood said, “They're turning the Wall around. Can you see? They have stripped the ships on the river of their big guns, and are fixing them here to replace the rusting veterans of the Ice War. They're digging out a new vallum before the southern face, too. It's here that Wellesley plans to make his stand—or specifically further west of here, near a fort called Housesteads, where the Romans built their Wall to follow a natural ridge. Wellesley believes in using the land as an ally, and in that, evidently, he has the instincts of the Caesars’ generals."

  "There are worse plans, no doubt,” I murmured. “But I can see one obvious flaw—which is that if I were Napoleon, I would try to flank Wellesley by sending a corps or two through the Wall's obvious weak point—Newcastle itself !"

  Collingwood nodded soberly. “The man will surely have a go. But he won't find much of a welcome in Newcastle, any more than in London. The Geordies will fight, Hobbes—every wall will be loopholed to facilitate musket fire, every street barricaded, every house will hide an assassin. We have learnt the lesson of you Americans and how you have resisted the French. Now it is our turn.” He said this with a cold certainty, all the more impressive for its lack of passion—I reminded myself that this area was Cuddy's own, and he knew the grit of the people.

  But we, intent on our own mission, pressed on north.

  In the country north of Newcastle I saw more evidence of the Ice War of ‘20. The ground was slashed by a vallum they called Newton's Dyke, but it was overgrown now and bridged to take the road. And the ground here was cratered, as if mighty rockets had fallen; these pits had been left by Phoebeans, birthed in the ground and bursting thence. It must have been a tremendous sight!

  And we passed through another town in a ferment of preparations, called Morpeth—where Collingwood had his home, and I imagined how Anne's heart would skip a beat at the closeness of her family. But even here we did not stop. Instead we followed a minor track out of town to the north-east, until we came to a village called Ulgham, a little rural place with nothing remarkable to it but an inn run by the local blacksmith. And from here we turned down a lesser track yet toward what appeared to be the head of a small coal mine.

  That name, by the way, which I prevailed upon Anne to spell for me, is pronounced “Uff-am,” and it comes from a rather lovely Saxon phrase meaning “a vale haunted by owls.” And you might remember it, unless I and Collingwood and Miss Caroline Herschel are all incinerated in the next few hours, for by the time you read this it has probably become the most famous name in the world.

  For it is here, in that small mine, that Collingwood had built his Cylinder.

  We clambered down from our carriages, relieved to have stopped moving. Miss Herschel seemed barely conscious, and poor rheumatic Collingwood could hardly walk, but he went stomping off in search of managers and staff—and William Herschel, who should have been here.

  We had already completed a long journey. But when I was taken into the installation—guided by an enthusiastic James Watt, who would not allow me to rest before seeing his works—I learned that a much longer jaunt was planned.

  I call it an “installation.” What word would you have me use? Was it a mine? Shafts had been dug into the earth, and indeed a little coal extracted, but the pits were needed for their subterranean climate of cool and damp—and, it seems, to contain the tremendous explosions that were to be generated here.

  Was it a factory? It had the trappings of one, with workshops for the working of metal and rubber and glass and the manufacture of engines, and stores of provisions such as sheet metal and iron ore, and rutted trails where wagons had repeatedly passed, and a multitude of workers who dwelled in poor-looking huts, and young women working as clerks and secretaries in the offices. Watt introduced me to more toiling troglodytic engineers here, with names with which you may be familiar if you are a student of such industries: Richard Trevithick, the Cornishman who had once built a road carriage pulled by a steam engine, and John Wilkinson, known as “Iron Mad,” said Watt, the ironmaster who made the first iron boat, and would be buried in an iron coffin! Thus, so Watt said, the industrial genius of the nation had been concentrated in this place.

  And Watt proudly showed me an engine that made ice, with a series of pumps that expanded and compressed vapors, thereby removing heat from a volume—a process, he said, he had got from an American engineer called Oliver Evans, who I met once, but who unfortunately did not patent his work before he shared it with Watt! Manufacturing and engines, then—but clearly this place was not just a factory.

  Was it a farm? Watt took me along galleries that overlooked pits where Phoebean eggs nestled and ice crabs scraped, watched over by boys with sticks in case any of those unearthly beasts began to grow unwieldy. Watt himself had his main office here, with a wall of windows overlooking the largest pit. Yes, a farm of Phoebeans.

  But it was only as James Watt led me toward the heart, babbling in his rich Scots brogue, that I saw the true nature of the place.

  One last gallery opened out into a pit, tall, roughly cylindrical, wide, with ladders fixed to its faces, and a disc of December sky above. And here stood an engine—or so I thought of it at first glance. Picture the boiler of some great steam engine, sat on its end; it was perhaps
three yards wide and six tall. I could see it was constructed much as the hull of my Nautilus had been, of copper sheeting laid over ribs of iron, and there was the hand of Fulton. It was capped by a conical section, crudely welded in place, and metal vanes protruded from the lower hull. The walls were pierced by discs of glass, securely bolted. And at the cylinder's waist were hatches, almost like gun ports. All this buried in the earth!

  Watt, not a natural orator, directed my attention to points of detail. “The nose cap is to deflect the flow of the air, much as the nose of your Nautilus pushed the water around her slim body. Of course it will only be necessary for the first miles of the ascent, and then may be discarded to afford a fresh observation port, forward-looking. The vanes too will act like rudders during those crucial first minutes, but will have little utility later, in the outer void—"

  "What ‘outer void'?” But I already knew the answer. “This isn't a steam engine, is it, Mr. Watt?"

  "No, Ben, she is not,” said Anne Collingwood, and she slipped her hand in mine; I had not noticed her approach, so absorbed had I been. “I think you know what she is—don't you?"

  This place was a mine and a factory and a farm—all of these things. But it was also, I saw now, a graving yard. “This is a ship,” I breathed.

  "Yes. A ship of Space. And in this ship my father, for he will command her himself, will sail to Mars, and study the Phoebean nest there, and return in glory to report to the King himself on their activities! Come—let me show you inside—and you will know what we want of you."

  I was too astonished to resist.

  * * * *

  XIII

  A hatch was set in the ship's midriff. To get to it we walked around a gallery, and crossed by a ladder that bridged the gulf between pit wall and Cylinder. I had a bit of vertigo for I am no lover of heights, but I suppressed it, driven by curiosity, and a desire not to appear weak before the lovely Anne.

  When we reached the ship I noted that the hatch opened outward, and would be sealed by a rubber collar. Inside, the Cylinder was indeed like a greater version of my Nautilus, with the same reassuring smell of copper and rubber and oil—but much wider and turned on its end, and illuminated throughout by lanterns. The interior was divided into decks by sections of open mesh flooring, although a solid deck of polished oak blocked off the bottom of the compartment. Oddly, there was carpet affixed to some of the walls, and bits of furniture bolted to the decks—chair, tables, hammocks, cupboards, even a big navigator's table of the type I had seen on the Indomitable. In a middle deck, I saw a ring of guns, naval weapons surely but of quite small bore, and sacks of shot and powder fixed to the walls nearby. These guns faced outward, their muzzles set against the hatches I had spotted in a ring around the hull, and I wondered what enemy ships they were meant to repel.

  Thus, a ship designed to swim in Inter-planetary Space! I had never conceived of such a thing. But I was an engineer, and I inspected it and tried to understand how it would work.

  Anne was watching me. “What do you think of her?"

  "I think she looks mighty expensive. I can see where the money has been spent that might have built the navy ships to turn the war...."

  "You can see the hand of your mentor Fulton."

  I grunted. “I immediately see he has left issues to resolve."

  "Such as?"

  "This hatch, for one thing.” I pushed it back on its hinges. “My understanding is that the worlds swim in a vacuum—is that not the best philosophical thinking?"

  "Else the planets through friction would spiral into the sun.” She rapped on the hull. “The vessel is meant to contain its air."

  "Then this hatch is a weak point. Anne, what do you understand of pressure? My Nautilus was built to withstand the greater pressure of the water outside its hull, which would overwhelm the air pressure within.” I mimed squeezing an orange. “But in the case of your Cylinder, the greater pressure will come from the air within—the hull will seek to pop like a soap bubble. And here you have a hatch that longs to blow outward, on its hinges! Have your engineers rebuild this, Anne. Have the hatch open inward—and let it be shaped to sit in its frame so that the outward pressure of the air forces it closed, not open.” I glanced around at the small portholes. “I may take a look at those windows too, before we're done."

  Again she took my hand, and the simple physical touch thrilled me. “There can scarcely have been a stranger ship built in all human history. Yet you grasp her essence, immediately. This is precisely why we needed you here, Ben—for just such insights, once we lost Fulton. Please, let me show you more...."

  So we clambered up and down ladders affixed to the interior of the curving hull. I was struck again by the squares of carpet affixed to the walls, and the way every chair and couch and cot was fitted with harnesses, and how there were little latches on the tables that could be used to fix plates and cups in place. At first I imagined that these were precautions in case this ship of Space should roll and pitch like an invasion barge in a Channel storm, but Anne tried to explain to me that while there are no storms in Space (or so the philosophers opine) a much stranger phenomenon will occur. “The Cylinder will be beyond the clutches of the gravity of earth, Ben. The engines’ push will be brief—like the great thrust applied to a cannonball in the breach.” She said no more, for now, of how that great thrust would be generated. “But after that the Cylinder, and all her contents, will fall freely between the worlds. And a crewman will bounce around inside this hull like a mouse in a hollow cannonball! It's all to do with Newton's calculations ... Now can you see why there is carpet on the walls?"

  I saw, and I was astonished anew.

  That navigator's table was an expensive affair, and though a big compass was set in its surface I saw there were fine-looking Harrison chronometers, and that cupboards nearby were stocked with sextants and other equipment of the type, which the sailors use to measure the angles of the stars in the sky. “Nobody knows if a compass will work between the worlds,” Anne said. “Or what meaning ‘north’ or ‘south’ may have! But the navigator will be able to track the curving path of the ship as she sails from Earth to Mars and back again, by mapping the shifting positions of the stars—and indeed Sun, Moon, Mars, and Earth itself."

  "But why carry a navigation table at all?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It would be futile to spread canvas in the windless vacuum of Space—wouldn't it? Then I cannot understand the good of all that patient charting and star-bothering if the ship cannot be controlled."

  "Ah,” she said, smiling. “A good question. And that is why this ship of reconnaissance has a gun deck."

  Now I learned that the cannon mounted amidships were not, after all, for fighting Martian men o'war, but for steering! The Cylinder would have no rudder. But to deflect her course the crew would fire a cannon shot, in the opposite way she was desired to turn, and the recoil would do the rest—I myself had seen the violence of recoil of a cannon fired in anger. Of course this was a rough and ready method of steering, for a cannon's fire is scarce repeatable one ball to the next; but after such a shot you could take more measurements of the stars, and fire again, to tinker with your course in a secondary way. And thus the Cylinder would be steered to Mars and back, to the put-put of cannonballs fired off into the endless immensity of Space! All of this the architects of this strange mission were quite confident about, it seemed.

  The cupboards were well stocked with clothing and blankets and the like, but I did wonder how the crew would keep warm in Space, for everybody knows how cold it can be if you climb a high mountain. But Anne explained that the problem would be to keep cool, rather than hot; the sunlight, to which the Cylinder would be exposed continually, would be more intense than on the clearest summer day. There was, however, an ingenious little heating system devised by Watt that ran on the combustion of oil; this at least would suffice to boil a kettle!

  The galley, by the way, was a cleverly compact affair, and quite well stoc
ked with meat and beans in sealed cans, and dried fruit that would keep, and such familiar comestibles as ship's biscuits. The crew would be three, Anne said—and the stock of food was intended to support them for a journey that might last years!

  Regarding the more delicate matter of what emerges daily from the other end of a human being, Anne showed me an ingenious closet fitted with valves and levers, which should suck one's daily offering out into the vacuum of Space, without exposing tender flesh to that airless condition. I made a mental note to check the integrity of the gadget. With liquid waste the situation would be different. It was recognized that a water tank sufficient for the trip would fill the hull and beyond, and so there was an elaborate system of filters, of sand and fine cloths and other materials, that would enable the urine produced on Tuesday to be drunk again on the Wednesday! This was based on systems developed over the years by desperate miners stuck down the shafts by rock falls and the like. I admit I gagged at the thought, and even Anne, who never liked to show weakness, wrinkled her pretty nose at the idea. [This last detail is entirely the author's invention.—A.C.] That business of the water, though, prompted me to think about the air that would be needed to keep that brave crew alive between the worlds.

  She led me at last to the lowest deck of that copper hull, and we stood on the stout oak bulkhead. I saw three big brass bolts set on threads that penetrated the bulkhead, the bolts to be turned by twisting wheels. “And this,” she said, “is the Cylinder's greatest marvel of all—the secret of how she will be able to thrust herself out of the atmosphere. All the crew will have to do is turn these wheels."

  For this marvel we had to thank the restless brain of James Watt. It had been Watt's suggestion to use the Phoebeans’ brute strength in mining. But he became intrigued as to how that great strength was generated, and to what further uses it could be put.