Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

control. Without a means to pump the water out, it will fill your U-boat in a few minutes.” Zerrissen pulled the assembly out of the water, removed the shaft from the tightly packed hole in the oil can, and poured out a liter of water.

“How about a pump?” Nicolaus seemed to be finally grasping just how complicated a viable U-boat would be.

“Pumps are heavy, noisy, and also require power from the batteries, not to mention, they also require a hole in the hull.”

Zerrissen looked at Nicolaus for a second then he added, “Next on the list, and believe me, I’m just getting started, is steerage. Steering requires a rudder, and a rudder requires tie rods, and tie rods require holes. This means more water on the batteries, and batteries don’t like water.”

Nicolaus was silent, signing to Halina occasionally, while both men were in thought. One trying to come up with solutions, the other with barriers.

“What if,” Nicolaus posited, “we flooded the hull, and Halina and I wore scuba gear. That way, we have as many holes as we like. In fact, the more the better.”

“And the batteries?”

“A watertight box the size, say, of a footlocker would be sufficient, yes?”

Zerrissen contemplated the idea in his head. Getting the craft out of the water, once flooded, would be impossible, but why would that matter? The craft was going to be abandoned on the other side anyway once its precious cargo was delivered. He drew out what the men had discussed to this point, a sewer pipe with a hatch cut into the top, a propeller coming out of the back end, a rudder after the propeller, and tie rods attached to bicycle handlebars for the person steering inside. That person would be Nicolaus. And Halina would position herself in front of and facing him so they could communicate, signing with hands would be impossible if they both faced forward. This raised the issue of the third person, something Zerrissen had been keeping to himself until he could run the numbers. As the design takes shape, the answer became increasingly clear – the tube and mechanisms and available air would only accommodate two people, not three. Raising this issue now would only sound selfish. The who adventure began by saving Halina and Nicolaus after all. Zerrissen decided to skip to the next objection, navigation.

“How will the pilot navigate? The pilot’s head cannot be above the water; you’ll be seen by the GDU guards, and I hear them even from here taking pot shots at floating garbage out of boredom. What would they do with a head wearing scuba gear? Should we shave circles on our heads like a bullseye?”

Nicolaus rested his head in his hands in near defeat. He had not thought of that one.

“This is impossible, isn’t it?” Nicolaus conceded. He glanced at Halina, wondering how to break the news to her. She was busy with Zerrissen’s torch and scrap metal with Buttercup on her shoulder, chatting away, sculpting something, another caterpillar perhaps. She was within earshot, but otherwise oblivious to the conversation.

“Yes. I’ve known from the beginning, but I understood that you needed to see it for yourself.”

It was getting dark, which made it easier to lose the Stasi tails Nicolaus knew were waiting for him outside. He lifted his head to call out to Halina, but she was already standing there, beside Zerrissen, with something in her hands. Another sculpture, but it was larger, and half as long as Halina was tall. It was a tube with flaps on the side, rounded at one end, and pinched to a vertical flat surface on the other.

She held it out with outstretched arms to Zerrissen, who took the load off her spindly arms and placed it on the desk. She had created another work of art. It had a muffler pipe as the body, with an articulated flat section made from overlapping joints of scrap aluminum. The joints of the pinched section were held in place by a rubber lining made from an innertube. A crank on the nose turned a shaft running through the center of the pipe set the flat section at the rear end in motion, moving it side to side when turned. Another crank moved the side flaps up and down, and a third lever limited the motion of the tail end so that the cranking would make the tail flip more on one side than the other.

“Gottverdammt. It’s a toy fish. Or a sculpture. Made from muffler pipe, an innertube, and… what? scraps of aluminum?” Zerrissen’s admiration of her craftsmanship put a smile on his face, taking his mind off his current predicament and the dungeon that was East Berlin.

Halina signed something to Nicolaus, who, in turn, smiled and laughed out loud.

“Raynor, that’s not a toy, or a sculpture.”

“No?”

“It’s a prototype, dummkopf.”

Sentient, not Sapient

The mechanical elegance of Halina’s prototype was difficult to ignore. One could easily imagine it in a museum of industry. Or at least one in the West, since none of those existed in Germany anymore.

Parts that moved did so organically, not in the mechanical, jerky motion of robots one saw in the cinema. They glided smoothly, possessing the same inertia, momentum, and hysteresis one expected from a living creature.

Movement where joined pieces needed to rotate, fold, or slide, were balletic, firm but yielding where the joints needed to be strong and solid. The parts were simple and economical. There was no propeller, and therefore, no propeller shaft penetrating the hull. The prototype demonstrated that depth could be achieved by displacement and ballast, adjusted by pneumatics from compressed air, and set to neutral buoyancy. When at rest with its occupants, the schiff 28would float just below the surface of the water. When in motion, depth could be set by bow fins that did not rotate as would a propeller shaft. Rather they would be controlled pneumatically via rubber hoses fed by compressed air tanks completely sealed from water.

Steering could be accomplished by flapping the center