by David Weber
Jathmar heard a faint mechanical click.
That was all.
Jasak stood uncertainly where he was, not sure what to do next. He glanced over one shoulder, carefully keeping the muzzle pointed down range.
“Jathmar? What happened? What did I do wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, genuinely baffled. “From what I could see, you didn’t do anything wrong. Work the action to eject the cartridge, then lay the rifle on the firing bench and bring me the cartridge case.”
Jasak nodded and followed his instructions meticulously. When Jasak handed him the unfired cartridge, Jathmar frowned. So did Shaylar, peering past his shoulder.
“That’s odd,” she said, gazing down at the cartridge on his palm.
“Yes. It is.” Jathmar scratched the back of his neck. “I’m damned if I can figure it out.”
The firing pin had punched a neat divot in the primer cup, a small metal cup inserted into the base of the cartridge case. Just as it should have done. But the primer had failed to ignite the powder.
“Maybe there was no priming compound in the cup?” Shaylar suggested.
“Maybe.” Jathmar was dubious, despite its being the likeliest explanation. Their ammunition was one thing on which Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl had refused to cut corners when it came down to supplying his crew. Ternathian Imperial Armory case-stamp was the only ammunition he’d allowed them to carry. And Jathmar frowned as he met Shaylar’s perplexed gaze.
“If this was one of those fly-by-night Uromathian brands, slopped together by a manufacturer more interested in profits than turning out a reliable product, I’d suspect something like that. But this is Ternathian Imperial Armory.
“It’s the civilian case-stamp, not the military, but I’ve never—not once—seen a TIA cartridge misfire. Neither had Ghartoun. That’s why he insisted we carry it. Even Barris Kassell agreed, and he’d been in the military before he joined our crew. That’s why most survey crews carry TIA cartridges and reloading supplies: primer cups, powders, and bullets.”
“Well, something went wrong, love,” she pointed out practically, and he nodded.
“Yes, it did,” he agreed, and turned back to Jasak. “Pull five rounds of the correct caliber from five separate boxes of ammunition, Jasak, just to be sure we haven’t got a bad batch. If the rifle doesn’t fire, work the action to eject the cartridge and pull the trigger again.”
Commander of Twenty-Thousand Sogbourne stared intently at Jathmar.
“You think like a soldier,” he said.
“A soldier?” Jathmar echoed. “Hardly, Sir. I don’t know the first thing about the military. Faltharia doesn’t even have an army. We’ve never needed one,” he added, as shock detonated in Sogbourne’s eyes—and Jasak Olderhan’s, as well. Jathmar shrugged. “I’m a good outdoorsman, is all. I’ve spent most of my life in wild country, whether it was a major wildlife park on Sharona or the wilderness of a barely settled or newly discovered universe at the frontier. When your life depends on attention to your equipment, you’re careful with everything related to the weapons you count on. You develop the same careful habits I’ve seen in Hundred Olderhan when it comes to caring for and using a tool as important as a sword and arbalest…or a rifle.”
Sogbourne’s eyes narrowed slightly. “There’s a great deal of interesting information in what you’ve said. Very well, Hundred Olderhan, pull the ammunition from different boxes and let’s see the results.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jasak returned to the shooting bench. He pulled out the ammunition. Loaded the rifle with great care. Lifted it to his shoulder. Took careful aim. Pulled the trigger. Worked the action. Pulled the trigger again. The result was five mechanical clicks, five perfectly punched primer cups, and zero fired rounds. When Jasak recovered the rounds from the ground and brought them over to him, Jathmar stared at the unfired cartridges in baffled consternation.
“It can’t be the ammunition,” he frowned. “Did you bring any of the reloading tools out here with you, Jasak?”
“We brought one of everything we found in your camp. Including the loaded gear bags.”
“Good. I need to see them.”
Jasak escorted Shaylar and Jathmar out to the shooting benches, since she insisted on coming along. Commander of One Thousand Solvar Rinthrak, another of the officers from Jasak’s court-martial, also insisted on following them, and while the others watched closely, Jathmar used the tools in the reloading kit Jasak had brought to pry the bullets out of the cartridge cases. He tipped out the powder, piling it up on the table, then used a punch to remove the priming cups. He felt squeamish about doing that to “live” primers. There wasn’t enough explosive compound in a primer cup to do real damage, but the very idea of hammering on a primer that hadn’t been fired went against the grain.
Once he’d removed all five primer cups, he tipped them over in his palm and examined them closely. There was nothing wrong with them. The dried film of liquid explosive used as priming compound coated their interior exactly as it was supposed to. That film was shock sensitive, igniting under the sharp jolt of a firing pin, and he could see the primer painted into the cups. There were no voids, no spots where the coating was thinned out to let bare metal show through.
They should have fired.
Shaylar echoed that thought aloud. “They should have fired, Jathmar.”
“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a hell of a lot, considering where we’re standing, right now.”
Shaylar had the temerity to chuckle, which startled Sogbourne into staring at her.
“Well, it is funny,” she told him, meeting his rather hostile scowl with a smile. “We see things that are flat-out impossible every day. Every hour. Even the way the bathroom works is weird enough to raise gooseflesh. But even with all of that, I have to agree with my husband. Those cartridges should have fired. But they didn’t. And that’s just as impossible as anything we’ve seen in your civilization.”
Sogbourne’s scowl shifted into a thoughtful frown.
“Maybe I did something wrong?” Jasak suggested.
“I was watching you very closely and I didn’t see you do anything wrong. Certainly not wrong enough to cause this.” He held up the five unfired cartridges, then added the first one Jasak had tried to fire to the pile. “One might be a fluke. But six…” He shook his head. “I don’t know why, but they simply failed to fire, and they should have.”
Gadrial, who’d been sitting quietly in the row of chairs reserved for witnesses, called out a request to join them.
“Yes, please, Magister Gadrial.” Sogbourne nodded. “Perhaps you can explain what’s going on.”
She crossed quickly to the shooting bench and stood beside Jasak while Jathmar explained the problem.
“How are they supposed to work?” she asked.
Jathmar glanced at Shaylar, who shrugged. He started to refuse, but then he returned her shrug, instead.
Why not? he thought. They can’t duplicate a formula that tricky to make from a generalized description.
So he explained the process of manufacturing the liquid explosive, explained how and why the spark from a tiny, controlled explosion caused the powder charge to burn, generating gas that was confined in such a small space that it pushed with terrific force against the place of least resistance: the bullet, which was merely held in place by a small crimp in the metal rim of the cartridge case. The one thing he didn’t explain was the ingredient list for the priming compound and powder. He preferred to keep that secret for as long as he could.
“It’s a very simple, very basic process of chemistry and physics,” he finished the explanation, “but the manufacturing process is something I don’t understand very well. I’m told it’s difficult to make some of the ingredients and the steps in combining them are very complex. Even small variations can ruin a batch. But I’ve given you the basics as I understand them.”
When Sogbourne glanced at Shaylar, she sa
id, “Don’t look at me. Jathmar knows more about it than I do. I can shoot a rifle or a handgun and I’ve learned how to reload cartridges, but I don’t have the slightest idea how they make the components.” When Sogbourne looked at her with a clearly skeptical frown, she said, “Does a non-Gifted person have to understand how the spells that operate a cook stove are put together? How and why they work? Does a non-Gifted person need to know every single line of the incantations that run a slider chain or operate the controls that heat or cool your house?”
“Point well taken,” Gadrial nodded. Then she grinned. “Very well taken, in fact.”
Sogbourne glared at Gadrial and Shaylar with a belligerent air, then he muttered, “Oh, all right. Point taken.” But his eyes remained suspicious.
“So the primer explodes, which causes the powder to burn, which creates pressure?” Gadrial asked.
“That’s right.”
“How much pressure?”
“It varies from one type of gun to another and it varies from one type of ammunition to another.”
“Why?” Sogbourne asked, frowning again.
“When the length of the cartridge case changes, you can either pack in more powder or be forced to put in less, depending on whether it’s larger or smaller. The size of the grains of powder and the number of those grains determines how much pressure will develop inside the case. Beyond that, some gun types are more robust than others, which means you can safely add more powder to a cartridge, generate higher pressures, and end up with higher speeds for the bullet when it leaves the gun barrel.
“When you start reusing them in the field, you also have to take into account how old your cases are. If a case is new or nearly new, you can put more powder into it than into an older case. Older ones are more brittle from the heat generated by repeated firing, which can cause them to split or tear apart inside the chamber if you load them as heavily as you would a new case.
“You also have to consider how high the metal quality is to start with. The metal in the gun, itself, is a factor. An old gun that’s been fired thousands of times is more likely to crack or split during use than a new gun. If the metal quality’s lousy to start with, you can create problems from the very outset. I’ve seen guns with parts that sheared off, from cheap metallurgy and shoddy manufacturing and poor maintenance, and a couple of those broken guns caused serious injury to the men shooting them. So you see, there isn’t an easy or definitive answer to your question.”
“Well,” she responded reasonably enough, “what about this gun?” She pointed at the rifle Jasak had tried to fire. “With this ammunition?”
“That combination would yield about forty thousand pounds per square inch of pressure inside the cartridge case and the rifle’s chamber. That kind of pressure would propel a bullet of this size, shape, and weight at a bit over two thousand feet per second at the muzzle. The speed drops, of course, once it leaves the gun, but it’s still moving fast enough to kill a man a mile or more away.”
Sogbourne stared at him, his horror at the weapon’s power once again clearly evident. “No wonder those accursed things blow flesh apart!”
“Yes,” Gadrial said, but she was frowning thoughtfully. “But if this is merely a physical process, a simple burning of natural compounds that works in your universe, but not in ours, we need to find out why it doesn’t work here. It may be that some step in the manufacturing process used to make these cartridges renders them inoperable here, although I can’t imagine what that might be.”
“Neither can I,” Jathmar agreed.
“I find it interesting that your Talents don’t work as well here and your weapons apparently don’t work at all. It’s odd…very odd.…”
Her voice trailed off, and then a sudden flare of inspiration lit her eyes. She met Sogbourne’s gaze. “I want Jathmar to try shooting the rifle.”
“What use would that be?” Sogbourne asked sharply. “And I still don’t want a prisoner to handle a weapon.”
“If it doesn’t function in our universe,” Gadrial said in a patient, reasonable tone, “there’s no risk in letting him hold it. It wouldn’t be anything more dangerous than a simple wooden stick. Speaking as a scientist, Twenty Thousand Sogbourne, I want as complete a dataset as possible. Right now we have only one set of data to work with: the priming compound doesn’t ignite the powder, or it doesn’t ignite the powder because Jasak Olderhan is operating the rifle.”
Sogbourne stared at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. So did Jathmar. Even Shaylar was astonished. He could feel it even through their malfunctioning marriage bond.
“Frankly, Sir,” Gadrial went on, raking one hand through her hair, which promptly rearranged itself into the sleek coif she’d laid a spell to create this morning, “that’s seriously insufficient data. Scientific research demands that we find a way to prove that something will work. We already know this weapon works under some conditions. What we need to know is how to make it work under our conditions. That’s the basis of good magisterial science.”
Jathmar blinked in surprise. “Your science is based proving something can work, instead of looking for conditions that prove it doesn’t?”
Gadrial blinked in turn. “Your scientists look for ways to prove a theory doesn’t work? How in the world do you ever manage to invent anything?”
“I don’t mean inventing technology,” Jathmar tried to explain. “I mean coming up with ways to explain how the universes work. You start with a hypothesis, an idea. You test it every conceivable way to see if any of those conditions cause the idea to fail. If it fails, your hypothesis was wrong. Only after multiple people have tested it in many different ways, over a long period of time, does everyone assume it’s true, that it’s an accurate description of how the universes work.
“But it’s still considered only a theory. If any new data come to light that causes the idea or even part of the idea to fail, then the theory has to be revised or eliminated and replaced with a new theory that includes the new discovery. Then that new idea is tested again and again before it’s assumed to be valid.”
Gadrial looked stunned. “That’s…my God, Jathmar, that’s backwards, totally opposite of the way magisters approach scientific research—”
“I fail to see the need to discuss this nonsense,” Sogbourne growled. “We’re here to demonstrate Sharonian battlefield equipment, not develop new explanations of science! We don’t have time to waste on folderol and curiosities of the magisterial mind!”
Gadrial’s eyes glinted. “Oh, really? Then you’d better resign yourself to losing this war.”
“Why?” Sogbourne demanded.
“Because this,” she pointed at the malfunctioning rifle, “is the greatest scientific mystery to come along in two centuries. Their Talents don’t work properly in our core universes. Their military technology doesn’t work properly here, either. If their technology doesn’t work in our universes, it’s logical to assume our technology won’t work in theirs.”
Sogbourne swallowed hard. “Oh, dear gods…”
“Yes. This isn’t some mere ‘curiosity of the magisterial mind.’ It’s a matter of Arcana’s survival if we can’t find some way out of this shooting war with Sharona. This,” she touched the rifle, “is simply an object. It either works or it doesn’t work. It worked in the battle of Toppled Timber, in a pristine universe. It worked on the way back to Arcana, when Jasak and Otwal Threbuch and I fired them at targets made of paper. But it doesn’t work now. To find out why it doesn’t, we have to start testing it under as wide a variety of variables as possible, to see if we can find a condition under which it does work. The most obvious variable is also the easiest and fastest to test. Jathmar’s people built this object. Jathmar’s used it many times, and so has Shaylar. Let one of them operate it and see what does—or doesn’t—happen.”
Sogbourne frowned. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “You don’t hand a prisoner a weapon.”
“There are enough armed soldi
ers here to turn Jathmar into a crisped pincushion if he tries to attack one of us. Are you planning to stand there quoting regulations or do you intend to try winning this war?”
“Magister Gadrial—” Sogbourne glowered at her. “You’re obviously going to be as great a pain in the arse as Magister Halathyn ever was. Maybe greater. Oh, all right, I withdraw my veto. Conduct your research. I just hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”
“I haven’t a clue,” she said brightly, “But I mean well. And I guarantee I’ll know more in just a few moments.” She rested a hand on Sogbourne’s arm and said more seriously, “You have your duty to Arcana, Sir, and I have mine. You may trust that I’ll take that duty very seriously, indeed.”
He sighed and nodded. “Very well, let him proceed.”
“Thank you, Commander.” She turned to Jathmar. “All right, Jathmar. Let’s find out what happens.”
Jathmar turned to Jasak. “Will you go with me to the firing line, please? I’d like someone from Arcana to observe closely what I do. I don’t want anyone to doubt my actions—or my intentions.”
The request caught even Jasak by surprise, but the hundred’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Of course, Jathmar. That’s a very accommodating request. In fact, I’d like to ask an officer of the court to accompany us to the firing line, if you don’t mind?”
“That’s a good suggestion,” Jathmar nodded.
Sogbourne stepped forward briskly. “Let’s go,” he said, eying Jathmar with curious speculation.
Jathmar pulled ammunition from several boxes, as he’d asked Jasak to do, then loaded carefully. “Very well, gentlemen, shall we see what happens when I try to fire it?”
Sogbourne nodded.
Jathmar lifted the rifle with care, moving slowly enough to keep the suspicious guards satisfied that he wasn’t going to shoot any of the officers or ministers of Parliament. He sighted carefully, acquired the x-ring on the paper target, and squeezed gently on the trigger. He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect, having witnessed that inexplicable series of misfires.