Conundrum

Chapter 4

Normally, they would not have drawn much attention passing through the streets of the port city of Pax. Gnomes were a common sight here. They had their own shipyard, such as it was, though they didn’t just build ships there. The shipyard was located at a safe distance from nearly everything else of importance in the city, including the dump. Once upon a time, the dump had been much closer to the shipyard, but a gnomish milk-freezing experiment gone horribly awry had set the dump on fire, and it burned for forty days. The citizens relocated the dump closer to their city’s walls, while the gnomes spent the next eight years trying to perfect the garbage-burning steam-driven sugared milk freezer.

But it wasn’t every day that the citizens of Pax witnessed four gnomes and a kender leading a beer wagon horse, astride which sat a Knight of Solamnia in full battle armor, bound upright in the saddle by an intricate web of ropes. The first real Knights of Solamnia they met upon entering the city tried to arrest them and free their captured “brother.” Only when they sliced through the ropes and their restrained and heretofore silent fellow Knight toppled in two pieces from the saddle did they believe the gnomes” protestations of innocence. Sir Grumdish was especially vociferous, demanding satisfaction with an immediate formal joust in a nearby rutabaga patch. Commodore Brigg and the others helped him set his armor back in the saddle while the offending “churls” rode away, scratching their heads.

“I told you we should have thrown a blanket over him,” Razmous said as the street ahead grew thick with curious citizens. People hung out of the windows that crowded close along the narrow lanes. Whole taverns emptied into the street. Fishwives gawked and jeered noisily from the stalls in the market. Sir Grumdish gnawed his beard and eyed the crowd nervously, as if he might lay about him with his sword at any moment.

They were followed most of the way from the city gate to the gnomes” shipyard by a concerned contingent of grim-faced Knights of Solamnia. It was apparent they believed that Sir Grumdish’s mechanical armor, though it contained no dead or captive brother Knight, was the ill-gotten booty of shady adventures, and they wondered if some law or other was being broken. That a kender was involved did not lighten their moods. Commodore Brigg’s obvious military rank held them at bay-for the moment-until their lawyers and clerks could scour the Measure and the city laws for some rule by which they could clap the five diminutive miscreants in irons.

In any case, the gnomes and kender arrived at the shipyard without serious incident. Most of the curious citizens eventually dispersed. The Knights stopped at a safe distance, then posted a guard before returning to their duties. Meanwhile, Commodore Brigg and his companions paused on the overlooking bluff to take in the marvel and majesty of the scene spread below them.

The bluffs dropped steeply down into the water, providing Pax with its famous deepwater harbor that brought ships from all over Krynn during the balmy months when the seas allowed travel between Ansalon and Sancrist Isle. However, no foreign vessels crowded the quays of the gnomes” shipyard, as it was located across the bay from the city. Instead, each berth held its own peculiar addition to the Maritime Sciences. At one dock, several dozen gnomes were busily installing a giant six-bladed, steam-powered fan into the hull of what appeared to be a large, flat-bottomed ship. Commodore Brigg explained that this ship, the MNS Blowfish, was a Class A prototype of a self-powered ship that would create its own wind to fill the sails. The fan was being mounted onto a hydraulic elevating swivel base that would allow them to change the direction of its airflow, to take advantage of the wind for drying laundry and sea soaked cargoes, and other such menial tasks. They had been forced to invent hydraulics first, of course, before they built the hydraulic elevating swivel base, but this new technology promised all sorts of uses, like keeping doors from slamming shut or for crushing garbage into neat little easy-to-burn cubes.

“In fact,” the commodore continued proudly, “hydraulics is also the primary technology behind our newest secret weapon, the Underwater Arrow of Epic Proportions-UAEP, for short. You can see one being loaded into the Indestructible now.”

To the left of the Blowfish lay a vessel nearly twice its size, but of curious dimensions and features. It actually looked rather like two ships that had been placed deck to deck, like the two halves of a clam shell, hammered together, then covered from stem to stern and keel to keel with iron plating. Amidships, a conning tower had been built, and behind this a deck of sorts, where ropes, lines and anchors lay amongst piles of boxes and stacks of barrels. Two footrails leading forward from the deck allowed access to the bow of the ship, so that the sailors wouldn’t have to navigate the sloping hull just to secure a bowline or the rigging that ran from the bow to the short mast around which the conning tower was built. From the top and bottom keels, just forward of the mast, projected two pairs of curious fan-shaped structures (not unlike fins), while at the stern, enclosed inside its D-shaped rudder, was a large six-bladed fan much like the one being installed in the belly of the Blowfish. Near the bow of the ship, below the craft’s midline, there was a closed round door, shut like a great eye in sleep.

Presently, several dozen gnomes could be seen lowering, by way of an enormous, six-armed crane, a very large catapult arrow through the open hatch in the stern deck. Nearby, three other UAEPs stood in racks along the wharf, awaiting loading. One important-looking gnome wearing a white jumpsuit sat astraddle the upper keel fore of the mast, shouting directions into what appeared to be a large beer mug. Strangely enough, his voice was amplified many times by this curious device, loud enough to be heard by those standing at the top of the bluff. He directed operations with a large heavy wrench, wielding it like a conductor’s baton.

“Be careful with that, you slack-jawed sons of a kender and a gully dwarf!” he shouted at the crane operators. There were six of them, one for each arm. “Numbers Two, Three, and Six, swing her a little more to starboard. Starboard, not larboard, you misbegotten spawn of an Aghar! Ahoy, beware below!” This to those gnomes employed in various tasks near the bow of the ship.

The UAEP began to swing crazily under the opposing directions of the crane’s six arms, sweeping the stern deck clean of its barrels and crates and boxes. One wild gyration sent it careening through the workers at the bow, knocking more than a dozen from perches along the ship’s sloping hull, which had been precarious to begin with. The remainder leaped for their lives into the sea.

“The one shouting directions is Chief Engineer Port-lost,” Commodore Brigg explained, pointing out the gnome with the mugraphone and the wrench. “He’s our mishaps officer.”

“How… um, how do they-meaning the UAEPs-work, exactly?” the professor asked while rubbing his bearded chin.

“It’s quite ingenious, actually,” the commodore said. “They were invented by the Plumbers Guild, which was trying to find a way to supply water to the upper levels of Mount Nevermind. The theory was based on the old water-in-the-cheeks trick, only many times amplified. Water is pumped into a tube until the interior pressure of the tube is sufficient to launch a column of water up the central shaft of the mountain, where it is caught by a cauldron swung out from the level requiring water. Different pressures are used to reach different levels. One day, a plumber sent to work on a leaking launch tube unknowingly placed a length of filling pipe inside another launch tube while he worked on the faulty tube, not knowing that the second tube was about to be used. When they launched the water column with the length of pipe inside it, the pipe acted like a stopper. So they continued to pump more water into the tube, trying the free the obstruction. Finally, it went off like a cork from a bottle of gigglehiccup. The pipe penetrated the bottom of the cauldron, which was accidentally (but fortuitously) swung out a moment too soon to catch the water, thus inventing the UAEP and the funnel at the same time.”

“Its uses as a weapon were immediately obvious, especially where there is an abundance of water-like aboard a ship,” Snork added. “That’s why Chief Portlost included the UAEP in the design of Indestructible. It should come in handy for battling leviathans, giant squids, velorptamanglers and whatnot.”

“That’s more like it! I confess, I grow more enthusiastic with such weaponry aboard. How soon do we leave?” Sir Grumdish asked. “And what am I to do with my horse, Bright Dancer?” He stroked the massive beast lovingly on the knee.

“Er… I’m sure some useful occupation can be found for your loyal warhorse here in the shipyards,” Commodore Brigg answered. “And as for leaving,” he added quickly, noting Sir Grumdish’s look of dismay, “we don’t