brass ring stuffed with gray dirt and was no wiser. Most heavy guns, the Morbin Harbor cannon among them, are barrel-loaders, and this thing had no obvious juncture between the large bore section and the end section. But it was possible that strength inherent in the unbroken nature of this instrument was worth the extra trouble inherent in a long muzzle-loader. Perhaps such a cannon might be easier to drill to specifications. More accurate.
Though a ladder would be very necessary… Powl’s parting words, that this place operated better without candles, now seemed heavily significant. The man certainly didn’t want to give me any opportunity to shoot off the huge gun at random, or to blow up the emplacement. I began to consider breaking open the crates in the storage rooms in search of black powder or gun cotton.
Destroying things seemed beyond the scope of my assignment here, and though I was more and more alarmed each minute and less at one with the purposes of a man who kept a dog with such terrible teeth, still I could not be sure. I determined to go slowly and be certain.
Next I discovered something that excited me strongly, and that was that the single attaching strut of the tube to the platform was no mere support but a complex levered pipe that would raise and lower the tube along the slot in the roof. To prove true sane intent in the construction of this mad machine, nothing more was necessary than to find that there was an awning of canvas that followed the tube down, covering the fault in the roof entirely, so that if the thing were laid flat against the bottom of the dome, the roof was impervious to rain and dew, if not to wind.
It seemed likely that the blockage in the end of the tube was a fuse, broken off below level, as so often happens with fuses. The endpiece did seem to be threaded, but I did not manage to get it entirely off to check my suppositions, and I feared to break such an intricate piece of machinery—whether good or evil as I feared, it was obviously quite expensive.
There remained one more test for what was becoming a fond theory: If the building was a huge, immovable cannon, it must be aimed at something.
In the last light of the sun and the first light of the moon I went
out again to examine the hill’s horizon. It was trees and blackness, except in one direction:
the direction of the road whence I had come. I returned to the “rack,” worked
prodigiously, and looked again.
The next morning I was awake when Powl arrived, for I had not slept. He clearly did not expect the accusation written in my eyes. He dropped a large pack, under which he had been sweating.
“So you know?” he asked me, dry and ironic.
“It is fearful,” I replied. “It is fearful and traitorous and I wish I had not seen it pointed straight for my city and home.”
“That’s where I thought you had pointed it,” he answered. “It is what I would expect from a lad your age—to look straight at the lights of the city. There are higher targets, believe me.”
I was very angry. “Higher? There is Vestinglon itself, and the
palace, I suppose. But to have a cannon this size pointed at the second city of Velonya and its
military capital is enough. I had hoped”—and here I was stuck between anger and a
strange embarrassment—“I had hoped that you had only found this place, had overcome the
traitorous element and—”
Powl’s jaw dropped and his eyebrows rose commensurately. “As a matter of fact, I had no hand in this construction. It was Adlar Diskomb himself who had it built, and who hanged himself from this very ceiling, though whether he was a traitor to do so is more than I can say. But for the rest of your accusation, Nazhuret, son of—of Sordaling School, I am totally bemused.
“A cannon? Do you think you are living in a gun bunker of some kind?” He climbed the platform in two steps and dragged the chair over to the end of the tube. He looked closely into the brass lip and cried
Though a ladder would be very necessary… Powl’s parting words, that this place operated better without candles, now seemed heavily significant. The man certainly didn’t want to give me any opportunity to shoot off the huge gun at random, or to blow up the emplacement. I began to consider breaking open the crates in the storage rooms in search of black powder or gun cotton.
Destroying things seemed beyond the scope of my assignment here, and though I was more and more alarmed each minute and less at one with the purposes of a man who kept a dog with such terrible teeth, still I could not be sure. I determined to go slowly and be certain.
Next I discovered something that excited me strongly, and that was that the single attaching strut of the tube to the platform was no mere support but a complex levered pipe that would raise and lower the tube along the slot in the roof. To prove true sane intent in the construction of this mad machine, nothing more was necessary than to find that there was an awning of canvas that followed the tube down, covering the fault in the roof entirely, so that if the thing were laid flat against the bottom of the dome, the roof was impervious to rain and dew, if not to wind.
It seemed likely that the blockage in the end of the tube was a fuse, broken off below level, as so often happens with fuses. The endpiece did seem to be threaded, but I did not manage to get it entirely off to check my suppositions, and I feared to break such an intricate piece of machinery—whether good or evil as I feared, it was obviously quite expensive.
There remained one more test for what was becoming a fond theory: If the building was a huge, immovable cannon, it must be aimed at something.
In the last light of the sun and the first light of the moon I went
out again to examine the hill’s horizon. It was trees and blackness, except in one direction:
the direction of the road whence I had come. I returned to the “rack,” worked
prodigiously, and looked again.
The next morning I was awake when Powl arrived, for I had not slept. He clearly did not expect the accusation written in my eyes. He dropped a large pack, under which he had been sweating.
“So you know?” he asked me, dry and ironic.
“It is fearful,” I replied. “It is fearful and traitorous and I wish I had not seen it pointed straight for my city and home.”
“That’s where I thought you had pointed it,” he answered. “It is what I would expect from a lad your age—to look straight at the lights of the city. There are higher targets, believe me.”
I was very angry. “Higher? There is Vestinglon itself, and the
palace, I suppose. But to have a cannon this size pointed at the second city of Velonya and its
military capital is enough. I had hoped”—and here I was stuck between anger and a
strange embarrassment—“I had hoped that you had only found this place, had overcome the
traitorous element and—”
Powl’s jaw dropped and his eyebrows rose commensurately. “As a matter of fact, I had no hand in this construction. It was Adlar Diskomb himself who had it built, and who hanged himself from this very ceiling, though whether he was a traitor to do so is more than I can say. But for the rest of your accusation, Nazhuret, son of—of Sordaling School, I am totally bemused.
“A cannon? Do you think you are living in a gun bunker of some kind?” He climbed the platform in two steps and dragged the chair over to the end of the tube. He looked closely into the brass lip and cried
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