The Arrows of Hercules
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Arrows of Hercules». Краткое содержание книги:
“Exciting and quite believable adventures.”—Classical World
“Rousing piece of fiction...pace is rapid and unrelenting.” —The Arizona Republic
Drakon, the master of the Arsenal, sat at a table on one of the balconies, whence he could see everything on the floor below. A small, knobby, wrinkled man, Drakon sat quietly while Zopyros explained his mission. At length he said:
"Let me explain how we operate. The workers in the Arsenal are divided into teams, each with an engineer—when we can find them— at its head. The teams are of two kinds. I suppose you'd call them— ah—let's see—production teams, which turn out weapons of kinds already known, and—what would be a word for inventing new things on purpose?"
"Hê exetasis?" said Zopyros. "Research?"
"That's it! Research teams. As far as I know, this is a completely new idea of the boss, to hire men in time of peace and set them to inventing things against the time of war. Even in the Punic cities and the lands of the Great King, where they have brilliant engineers, the rulers never do things like this. If a man can make arms and engines of the old kinds, they're satisfied, and he has to work like a helot to get his employers to try anything new.
"Now, our President stimulates competition among the various teams, by raises, bonuses, and medals. He's generous with those who really produce, believing that a good race horse deserves to be pampered. But you'd better bring out something that works, and not be too long about it. We've had too many starry-eyed, self-styled geniuses trying to build flying chariots that won't fly and diving ships that won't dive—or, if they do, won't come up again.
"The first thing you'll need is drawing materials: papyrus, charcoal, compass, straight-edge, strings, and so forth. Make out a list on this t tablet, give it to me to sign, and take it to Achilleus, in stores ..."
By the time Zopyros had obtained his materials, it was too late to start work. He found Archytas outside the Arsenal playing ball with three small boys; for Archytas had a way with children. Together the two young men watched the sunset across the Spring of Arethousa. In a rocky pool fringed by feathery papyrus reed and sundered from the nearby sea by a natural rampart of rock, the fresh waters of the spring churned and eddied.
"Do you suppose this water really comes all the way from Hellas?" said Archytas, dangling his feet.
Zopyros shrugged. "I suppose one could find out by clumping dye into the waters in Hellas and waiting to see whether it appears here. How did you make out with Pyres?"
"No difficulty, although there's not much scope for mathematics in planning this castle. I did pick up some gossip, however."
"Trust you. What did it say?"
"It seems there's bad feeling between the teams that produce old stuff and the teams that invent something new."
"Drakon and I," said Zopyros, "call them production teams and research teams respectively."
"Yes, illustrious sir. Anyway, the research men consider the production men a lot of stupid stick-in-the-muds, while the production men call the research men a band of lunatics wasting the city's money on ridiculous ideas. Each tries to steal away the other's men and materials. Since I'm in production and you are in research, we're supposed to be like Athenian and Spartan. And speaking of fantastic ideas, do you think you can really make this missile thrower?"
"Yes."
"But how? How will it work?"
"I don't know. Curse it, I had to say something when the boss looked through me with those piercing gray eyes! All I could think of was my dream of Herakles and the Kyklops. Still—
I suppose the first thing to try would be a simple flexible pole, like the one in my dream."
"What would you make it of?"
"I don't know, yet. Most woods are too stiff and brittle."
"They make bows of elm, ash, and yew," said Archytas. "They're not so good as a first-class horn bow, but horn is impractical for anything of the size you have in mind."
"Now all we have to do is find a supply of elm, ash, or yew within fifty leagues of here. I don't even know if these trees grow in Sicily."
"Hadn't you better start with a small model and go on from there to a full-sized one, as the man with the armored chariot was doing?"
"I suppose I had." Zopyros sighed deeply, wondering what he had let himself in for. "The shadow stands at ten feet, so we'd better start looking for dinner and a room to rent."
"Especially dinner," said Archytas. "I starve."
A ten-day later, Archytas found his friend on the archery range, with a carpenter and an apprentice, trying out a model missile thrower. This test had been held up for several days by a southerly duster, which had swirled the sands of the African deserts across the archery range with such violence as to make any sort of missile work impractical. The model consisted of a slender wooden rod, about three feet long, standing erect on a three-foot-square wooden platform and held upright by bracing at its base. The rod had a small fork at its upper end.
Into this fork, Zopyros was fitting the shaft of an arrow, just back of the head. Then he pulled the arrow back, bending the upright rod and trying to sight along the arrow. He released the arrow, and the rod snapped upright, tossing the arrow twenty feet or so.
"How goes it?" said Archytas. "Well begun is half done, as Pythagoras used to say."
"I don't know," said Zopyros. "It works well enough in the model, after you learn not to pull back too hard and break the mast. But in a full-sized engine ... The trouble is with the auxiliary devices, to make it possible to load, aim, cock, and discharge the device. Every plan I try to draw breaks down on those details."
"I should think you could simply bend a rope around the mast, pull it back with a windlass, and cut the rope."
"All very well for the first shot, but the boss will want something you can shoot over and over. You'd have to tie a new rope to the mast with every shot. After a while, you'd have a mass of short ends of rope flapping from the top of the mast like the hairs on a Celt's head. But wait—you've given me an idea. If there were a kind of trough, with a groove in its upper surface, along which the missile could slide, you could tie the rope to the missile—"
"And how would you get it to untie itself just as the mast snapped upright?"
"Out upon you! You spoil all my divine inspirations, Archytas. How would you do it?"
"I've been thinking along different lines. I'd make a kind of giant sling, attached to the rim of a chariot wheel, whirling round and round ..."
He went into an excited description, which Zopyros soon demolished by showing that the device would have to be mounted on top of a tall tower, to clear the ground in its swings, and would therefore be of little use. Back and forth they argued, throwing up one idea after another and knocking them all down again.
Suddenly Archytas clapped a hand to his forehead. "Herakles, I almost forgot! The President is giving a banquet for his engineers in the town hall tonight. We're invited."
"Then we had better leave a little early, to visit the bathhouse."
In the town hall, Zopyros found the tyrannos moving affably among his guests. However, he still kept a soldier on each side and another at his back, so that he could not circulate so easily as an ordinary host. Dionysios knew the name of every engineer and had some idea of how each project was going: "How is that design for a fourer coming, Alexis? ... Have you finished the first story yet, Pyres? ... I like that new shield design very well, Hippias ... How about the missile engine, Zopyros?"