The Flying Sorcerers

Three days later, Grimm finished the first of the giant airbags and began working on the second.

Shoogar and Purple, Wilville and Orbur had already claimed the first one and folded it carefully over the giant filling framework that Wilville and Orbur had built so many hands earlier. Three other filling frameworks waited empty nearby.

“Only four windbags?” I asked.

“No,” said Purple. “I hope to use more. But we will probably only need four frameworks. We can only fill one bag at a time, and it will take a while to lay each empty one on a framework. While we’re doing that, we can fill the others. We’ll do it in rotation.”

“Oh,” I said. “What is this trench that runs below?”

“That’s for the water — instead of using water pots, we are going to use a trench. See these funnel affairs on the side? That’s where we will attach the hydrogen-making wires — the airbag mouths will attach here. The oxygen-making wires we will put down at the other end of the trench. We won’t need them.”

“By using a trench,” said Orbur, “we will be able to generate much more electrissy —”

“No,” corrected Purple, “we will be able to make better use of it. It will fill the balloons faster.”

“We can fill four balloons at once,” said Wilville, “or one balloon four times as fast. It all depends where we put the wires and funnels.” He held up an odd-looking aircloth bag, a collection of sleeves. “We can attach this to several gasmaking funnels, and lead all their hydrogen into one balloon.”

“It looks as if you have been doing a lot of work,” I said. “All you need now is the electrissy.” Purple winced when I said the last word. He always did when I spoke of electrissy. I asked, “Have you and Trone succeeded in making a magic maker?”

Purple sighed. “Yes. Elcin’s wrath, but that gave me trouble! Trone did everything right, mind you, but I wound the wire wrong, and then it took me a while to figure out a commutator —”

“A what?”

“Alternating current, Father,” said Wilville. “We can’t use it.”

“We have to change it to direct current,” said Orbur.

“Never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask.”

“Okay,” said Purple. “Anyway, it’s working now. It doesn’t make as much electrissy as I’d like, but Trone is building the bigger machines and hopefully, they will be ready before the airbags are. Would you like to see them?”

He didn’t give me a chance to refuse, but led me up at the slope to where one of the ever-present apprentices was sitting on a bicycle frame and pedaling wildly — but getting nowhere.

“What is he doing?” I asked.

“Look,” said Purple. “Isn’t it obvious? He is making electrissy.”

I looked. All I saw was a complicated arrangement of cranks and belts and pulleys making a spinning thing turn as fast as it could. Two wires led from the spinning thing to Purple’s battery.

“He is restoring its power?” I asked.

“Oh yes — he could never restore all of it,” said Purple, “but he can make enough electrissy so that it will not run out on the journey.”

We trudged farther up the slope. We found Trone and half a dozen other men, working with some giant frameworks of iron and copper. I had never seen so much metal in my life. “Where did you get so much?” I asked.

“We practically had to ransack every smith on the island,” he grunted. Apparently he wasn’t too happy about it, but then Trone was rarely happy about anything.

“When will the bicycle frames be ready?” he asked.

Purple groaned. “Oh, no — I knew I forgot something.” He looked at me. “Your sons have been building bicycles and bicycles — all without wheels. They have built them to power the airship, and to make electrissy for my battery — now they will have to build more, many more. As many as possible to power these spinning things.”

“How many will you need ?”

“At least ten or more for each spinning thing. If we have more, we can turn them faster.”

“And how many spinning things are you hoping to build?”

“At least four — but we won’t have to wait until they are all through before we can use them. As each one is finished we will put it to work storing power in the battery.”

I nodded. I was doing some figuring, “But, Purple, you are asking for forty bicycle frames — without wheels. That’s a lot of bicycles. It takes time to build that many machines.”

“I know, I know. We had better go back down and talk to the boys. We may have to start another put-it-together line. This time for bicycles.”

As we trudged downslope, I noticed that a different apprentice was on the bicycle now. The first was resting. “It is very tiring work,” explained Purple.

“Oh, come now,” I said, “I’ve ridden bicycles —”

“It’s not the bicycle,” said Purple. “It’s the generator. Try turning that crank on its other side.”

“All right I took the handle in both hands. I waited while the apprentice dismounted from the bicycle. He was panting heavily.

The crank did not look that hard to turn. I pushed on it.

The crank turned easily when I moved it slowly, but the faster I moved it, the more it fought me. An invisible spirit was pushing back. I felt my fur trying to stand on end.

I let go of the handle and backed away slowly. The crank whirred to a stop.

“There — now you see why we need a boy on a bicycle. Legs are stronger than arms. Even so, they still get tired. Can you imagine how hard it will be to make a big machine spin?”

I nodded my head. “I can see, I can see. You will need more than ten bicycles to a machine.”

“Right,” said Purple.

When we explained the problem to my sons, they nodded understandingly. “We may have to recruit every free man in the village to make a bicycle put-it-together line.”

“Do it,” said Purple. He turned to me, “You will have to make some more spell tokens, won’t you ?”

I nodded.

Wilville and Orbur did not seem as depressed as I had thought they would be when Purple told them of the number of bicycles they would have to build. Apparently they had been talking about their bicycle put-it-together line for some time. This would give them a chance to try it out sooner.

Purple began talking over the details with them, “Of course, we will want to fill all the airbags at one time — that means we won’t launch the flying boat until all four generators are working. But as each one is finished we’ll put it to work storing power. My battery will hold as much electrissy as any of these machines can turn out. The best part about it is that we can use it to supplement the power from the generators when we are ready to launch the boat and fill the airbags that much sooner.”

“Won’t you run the risk of making it dead again?” I asked.

“Not really. It has a power meter on it. That tells me how much power I have left. I have figured out how much we will need to be sure of making the trip north safely. As long as there is that much in the battery, we are okay. Anything over it we can use for the launching. I can regulate the outflow of the power, Lant, so as to fill the balloons as fast as I can on launch day.”

I nodded knowingly. I hadn’t understood a word he had said — but I felt he needed the reassurance.