there to do you as much good as you’d like,” Morrell said into the quiet of his barracks room. Still, the design was interesting. It had room for improvement.
He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started sketching. Whoever designed the first U.S. barrels had thought of nothing past stuffing as many guns as possible inside a steel box and making sure at least one of them could shoot every which way. The price of success was jamming a couple of squads’ worth of soldiers into that hellish steel box along with the guns.
If you put the two-inch cannon into that turret instead of a machine gun, you got a gun firing every which way all by itself. You’d still want a machine gun in front. If the cannon were in the turret, the driver would have to go down into the lower front of the machine. Could he handle a machine gun and drive, too?
“Not likely,” Morrell muttered. All right: that meant another gunner or two down there with him.
You wouldn’t always want to use the turret cannon, though. Sometimes that would be like swatting a fly with an anvil. Morrell sketched another machine gun alongside the cannon. It would rotate, too, of course, and the gunners who tended the large gun could also serve it.
That cut the crew from eighteen men down to five or six—you’d likely need an engineer, too, but the machine had better have only one engine, and one strong enough to move at a decent clip. Morrell shook his head. “No, six or seven,” he said. “Somebody’s got to tell everybody else what to do.” A boat without a commander would be like a boat—no, a ship; Navy men would laugh at him—without a captain.
He was forgetting something. He stared at the paper, then at the plain whitewashed plaster of the wall. Forcing it wouldn’t work; he had to try to think around it. That was as hard as
not
thinking about a steak dinner. He’d had practice, though. Soon it would come to him. Soon…
“Wireless telegraph!” he exclaimed, and added an aerial to his sketch. Maybe that would require another crewman, or maybe the engineer could handle it. If it did, it did. He’d wanted one of those gadgets in his barrel during the war just finished. Controlling the mechanical behemoths was too hard without them.
He studied the sketch. He liked it better than the machines in which he’d thundered to victory against the CSA. He wondered what the War Department would think. It was different, and a lot of senior officers prided themselves on not having had a new thought in years. He shrugged. He’d send it in and find out.
“Miss Colleton”—the broker in Columbia sounded agitated, even over the telephone wire—“I can do only so much. If you ask the impossible of me, you must not be surprised when I do not hand it to you on a silver platter.”
Anne Colleton glared at the telephone. She could not exert all her considerable force of personality through it. But she could not leave St. Matthews, South Carolina, to visit the state capital, either. And so she would have to forgo the impact her blond good looks had on people of the male persuasion. She’d manage with hardheaded common sense—or, if she didn’t, she’d find a new broker. She’d done that before, too.
“Mr. Whitson,” she said, “are the Confederate dollar, the British pound, and the French franc worth more in terms of gold today, January 16, 1918, than they were yesterday, or are they worth less?”
“Less, of course,” Whitson admitted, “but even so—”
“Do you expect that these currencies will be worth more in gold tomorrow, or less again?” Anne broke in.
“Less again,” Whitson said, “but even so, you are gutting your holdings by—”
She interrupted: “If I convert my holdings in those currencies to gold and U.S. dollars and German marks while the C.S. dollar and the pound and the franc are still worth
something
, Mr. Whitson, I will have
something
left when the Confederate States get back on their feet. If I wait any
He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started sketching. Whoever designed the first U.S. barrels had thought of nothing past stuffing as many guns as possible inside a steel box and making sure at least one of them could shoot every which way. The price of success was jamming a couple of squads’ worth of soldiers into that hellish steel box along with the guns.
If you put the two-inch cannon into that turret instead of a machine gun, you got a gun firing every which way all by itself. You’d still want a machine gun in front. If the cannon were in the turret, the driver would have to go down into the lower front of the machine. Could he handle a machine gun and drive, too?
“Not likely,” Morrell muttered. All right: that meant another gunner or two down there with him.
You wouldn’t always want to use the turret cannon, though. Sometimes that would be like swatting a fly with an anvil. Morrell sketched another machine gun alongside the cannon. It would rotate, too, of course, and the gunners who tended the large gun could also serve it.
That cut the crew from eighteen men down to five or six—you’d likely need an engineer, too, but the machine had better have only one engine, and one strong enough to move at a decent clip. Morrell shook his head. “No, six or seven,” he said. “Somebody’s got to tell everybody else what to do.” A boat without a commander would be like a boat—no, a ship; Navy men would laugh at him—without a captain.
He was forgetting something. He stared at the paper, then at the plain whitewashed plaster of the wall. Forcing it wouldn’t work; he had to try to think around it. That was as hard as
not
thinking about a steak dinner. He’d had practice, though. Soon it would come to him. Soon…
“Wireless telegraph!” he exclaimed, and added an aerial to his sketch. Maybe that would require another crewman, or maybe the engineer could handle it. If it did, it did. He’d wanted one of those gadgets in his barrel during the war just finished. Controlling the mechanical behemoths was too hard without them.
He studied the sketch. He liked it better than the machines in which he’d thundered to victory against the CSA. He wondered what the War Department would think. It was different, and a lot of senior officers prided themselves on not having had a new thought in years. He shrugged. He’d send it in and find out.
“Miss Colleton”—the broker in Columbia sounded agitated, even over the telephone wire—“I can do only so much. If you ask the impossible of me, you must not be surprised when I do not hand it to you on a silver platter.”
Anne Colleton glared at the telephone. She could not exert all her considerable force of personality through it. But she could not leave St. Matthews, South Carolina, to visit the state capital, either. And so she would have to forgo the impact her blond good looks had on people of the male persuasion. She’d manage with hardheaded common sense—or, if she didn’t, she’d find a new broker. She’d done that before, too.
“Mr. Whitson,” she said, “are the Confederate dollar, the British pound, and the French franc worth more in terms of gold today, January 16, 1918, than they were yesterday, or are they worth less?”
“Less, of course,” Whitson admitted, “but even so—”
“Do you expect that these currencies will be worth more in gold tomorrow, or less again?” Anne broke in.
“Less again,” Whitson said, “but even so, you are gutting your holdings by—”
She interrupted: “If I convert my holdings in those currencies to gold and U.S. dollars and German marks while the C.S. dollar and the pound and the franc are still worth
something
, Mr. Whitson, I will have
something
left when the Confederate States get back on their feet. If I wait any
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