much about the humidity. Make it worse, maybe. Didn’t matter. The pyres had long since ceased, but black smoke piled into the hazy sky, and the industrial smoke they were making now, combined with the humidity, made every breath an effort. He coughed. Damn, he wished he had a cigarette.
He sighed and took a pouch out of his pocket, stuffing some of the yellow leaves within into his mouth. Chewing vigorously, he tried to get through the waxy, resinlike coating to the genuine tobacco flavor within as quickly as he could. “Gotta be a way to clean this stuff off,” he muttered. So far, everything they’d tried to remove the coating so the leaves could be smoked had failed. The native tobacco could be chewed, but it was practically toxic when lit.
The nearest sources of the choking smoke were a pair of crude, but functional locally made boilers. They’d been leveled atop layer upon layer of good firebrick on the once damp shore, but they’d long since cooked all the moisture from the ground around them. They roared and trembled with power in the red light of their own fires that seemed to diffuse upward around them. Dozens of ’Cat tenders tightened or adjusted valves, checked gauges, or scampered off on errands at the monosyllabic commands of another scrawny human, Isak Rueben.
The boilers powered several contraptions-none exactly alike, since each was virtually a handmade prototype- that chuffed along amiably enough, their twin pistons moving methodically up and down. Gouts of steam added even more humidity to the air with every revolution, but at least it was honest steam-not the useless, invisible kind the sun cooked out of the ground. The end use of each machine was a series of shafts, or in one case, a piston- pitman combination. One was a small, prototype ship’s engine they were testing for durability. The others spun large generators in crudely cast casings that supplied ship-standard 120 DC electricity to various points.
More engines were under construction that would eventually supply electrical or mechanical power to the pumps that would drain the nearby basin. The mechanical pumps were of a remarkably sophisticated Lemurian design. The electric ones were, like everything else electrical, experimental models Riggs, Letts, Rodriguez, and Brister had conjured up. If Gilbert had any money and if anyone would accept it, he’d lay every dime that the electric pumps would croak the first time they tried them.
Tabby, the gray-furred ’Cat apprentice to the two original Mice, ran lightly up behind him and playfully tagged him on the shoulder, then scampered to where Isak was standing. Hands in his pockets, Gilbert sauntered over to join them. “How they doin’?” he asked, when he was near enough to be heard over the noise.
“Fair,” Isak replied skeptically. “Fair to middlin’. They ain’t turbines,” he accused no one in particular, “but they’re engines. Least we got a real job again.”
Gilbert nodded. They’d finally trained enough ’Cat roughnecks to take their places in the oilfields, both near Baalkpan and on Tarakan Island. The relief was palpable to them both. They hated the oilfields. Their time in the oilfields back home was what drove them into the Navy in the first place. They’d become firemen, and that was all they really wanted to do. Everyone called them the White Mice, because before the event that brought them here, they never went anywhere but the fireroom and they’d developed an unhealthy pallor as a result. They actually resembled rodents, too, with their narrow faces and thin, questing noses. Nobody ever liked them before, but now everyone treated them like heroes-which they were-Tabby included. First, they’d designed the rig that found oil when the ship was completely out. Then they’d managed to maintain enough steam pressure to get Walker to the shipyard after the fight. They were remarkably valuable men, but all their popularity hadn’t changed them much. Everyone liked them now, but they still didn’t like anybody, it seemed. Except for Tabby.
They’d originally treated the ’Cat like a pet, even though she’d proven herself in the fireroom. She’d even saved both of their lives at the end, by pulling them out of the escape trunk as the ship settled beneath them. Now she was one of them, another Mouse, even if she didn’t look anything like one.
“I think they swell,” Tabby said, referring to the engines in a passable copy of their lazy drawl.
“Yah, sure… for a myoo-zeeum. They’re a hunnerd years outta date.”
“Buildin’ a pair of ’em with three cylinders, triple-expansion jobs-ten times as big-for Big Sal, I hear,” Isak said.
Tabby’s eyes blinked amazement. “Be somethin’, to be chief of that.”
“You expectin’ a promotion?” Gilbert asked accusingly. “Hell, they’ve made gen’rals an’ ad’mrals outta ever’body else, why not you?”
“I never be aahd-mah-raal,” she retorted, angry enough to let her language and accent slip. She looked at the engine. “But chief be nice.” She turned on Gilbert. “But only if you two be chief-chiefs.”
The two men remained apologetically silent for a moment. It was their version of abject contrition. Finally, Isak spoke: “Bosun been to talk to you two?” he asked. Gilbert and Tabby both nodded. “One of us gots to go on the mission they’re cookin’ up, he says, since they’re takin’ the first new steam frigates.” He pointed at the engine. “They’ve got one like that, only bigger. That’s why we been testin’ it to failure.” He grunted. “Least this time they’re lettin’ us decide.” He looked at Tabby. “An’ this time she’s in the pool as deep as us. Metallurgy aside, Tabby prob’ly knows these jug jumpers better than us. Bosun’d have to find a three-sided coin to make up his mind.”
“You just said it,” Gilbert accused. “It don’t matter what we decide. They’ll keep her here just because o’ that!”
“Maybe we oughta go ahead an’ tell ’em we’re sorta related after all,” Isak murmured. “Tell ’em we can’t bear to be apart.” He snickered at his own remark. He and Gilbert had never let on that they were half brothers. There was a certain resemblance often remarked upon, but usually in a mocking fashion. Besides, their last names were different. They’d never told anyone, because not only did they have different fathers, but their mother never married either man. In a sense, they figured that made them each kind of a bastard and a half. Things like that didn’t seem to matter as much to them as they once had, but they still saw no need to brand it on their foreheads. “Hell, if it comes to it, I’ll go,” Isak said. “Kinda got the wanderlust flung on me the last time they busted us up.”
“You didn’t do any wanderin’,” Gilbert accused. “You just stayed on that damn island while me and Tabby went a-wanderin’.”
Isak nodded. “Yep. That’s what I mean.”
“Well,” said Gilbert, clearly relieved, “just don’t get ate.”
With a look around the noisy ordnance shop to make sure no one was paying any particular attention, Dennis Silva clamped the brand-new musket barrel in the mill vise. The barrel was made of relatively mild steel plate, about three-eighths of an inch thick, taken from Amagi ’s superstructure. Dennis figured they could ultimately salvage enough of the stuff from Amagi alone to make millions of barrels, if they wanted. The plate had been cut and forged around a mandrel, reamed to its final interior diameter, and turned to its finished contour. Finally, it was threaded and breeched. It was a simple process really, with the equipment they had, but it had just been perfected, and only a few of the barrels were complete. Dennis figured the odds were about even that Bernie would have a spasm when he noticed one missing.
So far, the Captain and “Sonny” Campeti hadn’t insisted that Dennis return to his duties full-time-they must have understood he had issues to sort out: some physical, a few domestic. He doubted their forbearance would last much longer. He was malingering, in a sense, and even he was beginning to feel bad about that. There was a lot he could be doing, after all. Should be doing. But he was a blowtorch. He’d go full-blast while there was fuel in the tanks, but when they were empty, they were empty. He’d needed this time to refuel, not only physically, but mentally-to put the “old” Dennis Silva back together. The time was just about right, and if the truth were known, he was actually starting to get a little antsy to return to duty. Besides, he had some ideas.
Carefully focusing his one good eye on the neatly scribed lines he’d drawn on the breech end, he cranked the table up and powered the mill. The cutter spun up and he turned a valve that started misting it with the oily coolant Spanky had devised. Slowly, he turned the crank in front of him. The cutter went through the breech like butter and he turned the other crank on the right side of the table and pulled the cutter back through the breech, widening the gap. Half a dozen more passes gave him the rectangular opening he wanted in the top of the barrel’s breech.
“Oops,” he mumbled happily, “I guess this barrel’s ruined!”
He brushed the chips away and replaced the cutter with another that would leave a rounded, dovetail shape. He measured the depth, traversed the table, and made a single pass at the front of his rectangular cut. Changing the cutter again, to one with a slight taper, he made a final cut at the breech. Looking closely to make sure he’d hit all his lines, he switched off the machine and removed the barrel from the vise.
“God damn you, Silva, what the hell are you up to now?” came an incredulous bellow. A lesser mortal might have at least flinched just a bit despite the almost plaintive note to the shout.
“Goofin’ off,” Dennis replied mildly. “Cool your breech, Mr. Sandison. Ol’ Silva’s just keepin’ hisself ‘occupied,’
