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

point of the tail to one side or the other, mimicking real fish, which Halina, in her wonder of nature, had studied with an intensity beyond ordinary human curiosity. A metal bar with seven settings, three to port, three to starboard, and one in the center inside the rubber seal, limited the excursion of the flapping tail, and vectored the flow of water to the direction of desired travel. The energy to flap the tail also came from tanks of compressed air. These could flood the interior of the rubber bladder should something go wrong with the mechanism and bring the craft to the surface. The solution would be to allow the schiff to reverse direction. This would be possible if they had enough room to maneuver, which, when in the duct, they would not have, not until they gained the river.

Within a week, and with Halina’s help, test articles of the tail and bow fin controls were built, and various other kinks were ironed out. Zerrissen’s list of reasons to abandon the adventure eroded. The main reason that remained on the list, remained unmentioned until Zerrissen could confirm his arithmetic to himself.

Meanwhile, Halina’s skill with the welder and metal work in general had progressed far beyond the imagination of Zerrissen or even Nicolaus who knew better what to expect from her. Though he had resigned himself to the jerky mechanical movement typical of pneumatic systems, Halina’s implementation was supple, organic, and quiet. Could these characteristics improve performance? Probably not. But this was performance art to Halina, not just performance metrics, as essential as the schiff was to Zerrissen.

“I sense you remain skeptical, Raynor. Talk to me.”

Zerrissen picked over the possible items to raise at this point. He went for the easiest of all the remaining hard ones.

“Navigation. While the passengers are nestled inside, how does the pilot know where the opposite shore is?”

The two men dove again into their world of design ideas, each idea knocking the other one down.

“ADF,” announced Nicolaus proudly.

“ADF? You mean a radio signal? The fish swims towards a radio signal?”

“Yes. Towards some transmitter that we place on the bank, or an existing transmitter. Voice of America for example.”

Zerrissen challenged Nicolaus, “Can radio waves penetrate water?”

Nicolaus shrugged. He had used radio direction finding equipment in his “work” at the Embassy, but never under water.

“No. A loop antenna would have to protrude several meters out of the water.”

“If piloting cannot be done automatically somehow, we have no choice but to put a bubble of some sort on top, so the pilot—that’s me—can steer the damn thing. Maybe disguise the bubble as floating rubble or something, at least as viewed from the East side riverbank.”

Halina signed something to Nicolaus, using gestures Zerrissen had learned were letters from the Polish alphabet. She was using a word for which no Polish equivalent existed in sign language.

Zerrissen looked to Nicolaus for the translation.

“She wants to know if you could recreate your sequencer from the Bunker days.”

Where did she pull these ideas from? What was going on in that mind of hers? Zerrissen mused, growing uncomfortable with the idea of resurrecting his sequencer from Die Kuppel, which had already failed to prevent the deployment of Todtenhausen’s Apparatus 33.

“It took a room the size of this one, and a massive bank of batteries. So, no. Does she want to run an extension cord from behind the schiff all the way back to here?”

“It’s been two decades. Are there no new technologies that…”

“My Apparatus 33 was based on a kinescope, yes? What developments have there been in movies in the last two decades? It would have to be very small. The other electronics and mechanical parts… well, they would all have to be very small.”

“How small?”

Zerrissen thought for a moment, assembling a description in his mind that was beyond anything he believed possible. Once again, he was operating in suspension of disbelief mode.

“I’ve got to create some electronics, and with the available space and heat dissipation…”

“So, how small?”

“Smaller than a paperback book.”

“Oh. You mean like this?” Nicolaus reached into his pocket, pulled out two oblong objects, each encased in aluminum, each about the size of a candy bar.

“This,” he said, pointing to the smaller one, “is a camera. And this,” pointing to the larger one, “is a tape recorder.” Then he popped out a plastic cassette, not much larger than a postage stamp, and said, “And this is the magnetic tape. Good for thirty minutes of music at the symphony, or for secretly recording someone’s desperate plea for asylum.”

Zerrissen had never seen such miniaturization before. “How is this possible? Have you ever recorded me?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Your name has not dropped out of the American card reading machine yet. I’m tracking that. You’re safe for now.”

Nicolaus let the implications sink in for a moment. He was presenting Zerrissen with the opportunity to redeem his failure to protect the victims at the Bunker.

“You asked how it was possible to make these things so small. I don’t know. When I ask that question, the answer everyone seems to be happy giving me is ‘transistors.’”

“Transistors?”

“Yes, transistors. They’re all the rage now, whatever they are. Evidently, they replace vacuum tubes. They’re tiny and smart, I think.”

Zerrissen was still contemplating getting recognition for his innovations at the Bunker, and for clearing his name as the ‘good guy’.

“I need to get my hands on ‘transistors.’”

Zerrissen tried to imagine how a device that ran cold and was the size of a kernel of corn could replace a vacuum tube. “Todtenhausen told me that for a device to be smart, it needs to be self-aware, possess self-control, and memory.”

“Do transistors really have all that?”

Warming up to the project, Zerrissen revealed a bit of excitement. “We don’t need them to. We only need them to control and remember. There’ll be humans on board to have self-awareness.” Zerrissen stopped himself, realizing the picture he was about to paint recalled Pyotr’s destiny, clear to anyone one who would only look, and reveal the one