The Right to Arm Bears by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0671319590
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Bill did not sit for long, thinking in front of the console. A glance at his watch woke him to the fact that he had less than four hours until the noon meal, and it was right after that meal that he had promised to outdo the village blacksmith. It was high time he was getting busy. He got up from his chair before the power console panel of the communications equipment, and went out of the room. He headed toward the storeroom containing the battery set at the back of the Residency, where he hoped he would find what he needed.

Bill had very little trouble finding what he looked for first. He discovered a coil of quarter-inch rope among the farming tools, and measured out and cut off forty feet of it. Then he started to look for a second item—an item he was pretty sure he would not find.

Indeed, he did not. What he was looking for was nothing less than a ready-made block-and-tackle. But after some forty minutes had gone by without his finding one, he realized he could spend no more time looking for it. He would have to make his own block-and-tackle.

This was not as difficult as it might have seemed to someone with both a theoretical and practical knowledge of such a simple machine. Earlier, as he had stepped into the dim storeroom with its warehouselike smells of plastic wrappings and paper boxes, he had identified a self-programming lathe over against the wall in the one corner that seemed to be a general work area, fitted out with several machines and a multitude of tools racked and hung about the walls.

Now he hunted for some metal stock, but was not able to find what he wanted. He would have to use something else. The outer walls of the Residency, like the walls of most Dilbian buildings, were made of heavy logs. Detaching a power saw from the tool rack on the work-area wall, Bill took it over to a doorway in the back wall of the building. Opening the door, he used the power saw to cut off a four-foot section of one of the logs that ended against the frame of the doorway.

Bill took the log back to the lathe and cut it up into four sections, approximately one foot in length and a foot in diameter. Then he put the sections aside, and turned on the programming screen of the lathe. Picking up the stylus he began to sketch on the screen the pulley-wheel sections that he wanted to construct.

The parts took shape with approximate accuracy in three dimensions, and the programming section of the lathe took it from there. Eventually a red light lit up below the screen, revealing the black letters of the word "ready." Bill pressed the replay button, and before him on the screen there appeared completed and corrected, three-dimensional blueprints of the components for a block-and-tackle.

The lathe was now prepared to go to work. Bill fed

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