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The Launcher

Written by Richard Evans

Bern, Swiss Confederacy, Early Spring, 1634

"Will this spot work?"

"Looks high enough." A few steps toward the edge of the cliff let Peter gaze down toward the ever—but slowly—growing lake below. The lake, cut out of the fast-flowing River Aare, had been intended to slow the river down as it passed the city and allow for new dockyards to be built, as well as to give the city access to the river rock needed for its explosive growth. Bern was trying its best to be the center of technology and science in the Swiss Confederacy.

Technology, dribbling in from the city called Grantville, was making its way to Bern and Lucerne. The other cities of the confederacy, excepting Basel, were waiting to see which way the winds blew.

Karl and Karl were surprised when Peter, a journeyman clock-worker and newly-named master machinist, had offered them a deal to develop an aerial launcher overlooking the new shipyard. He never really told them what it was for, but he needed their help and was paying for their expertise.

"Come spring the pamphlets will go out. By summer we are to expect many competitors to arrive. You've seen the latest posters, have you not? Should more arrive, we'll stretch out the competition. The visitors will spend all summer perfecting their machines and I will be enriched by the monies they spend. It's my shops they will rent to perfect their designs to make the parts they need!

"Imagine every mountain top having its own catapult and a messenger craft to fly out mail, or warnings, and even to take the rich for rides in the sky! We'll be rich," Peter exclaimed. "Rich indeed! We pay the winning designer a small prize, just a percentage of the entrance fees. And then we'll own the rights to develop the craft, too!"

"And all we have to do is build this launcher?" The shorter Karl, Karl Hoffman, crooked an eyebrow and peered over the edge. He was a carpenter by trade, but had recently been trained in machining aimed towards making better roads and tracks for the new mountain rails.

Due to their rich patron, Peter Gerber, he and Karl the Tall had work for the next year at least. And it was a council-approved job that would also count towards their new guild's training requirements.

All they had to do was design a proper horizontal catapult to give any craft placed on the tracks enough impetus to clear the thick trees below and—hopefully—reach the new lake . . . or perhaps even beyond. Any craft, be they packages using something called "parachutes" or man-powered gliders or even aircraft powered by pedals and gears or engines. Karl had seen his first engine last winter. It just powered a small toy boat, but ran on nearly pure alcohol, naphtha and lamp oil. But he could imagine larger versions of such engines.

Peter didn't care which craft was tried. He just had to prove that this launcher could and would be able to move a load across the mountains and do so faster than the best runners or riders could do it on the roads. If it also worked for aircraft, even better. That'd mean more money and more visitors to Bern.

Karl the Tall lowered himself over the side of the cliff, swinging over the drop and holding onto one of the ropes wrapped around what would become one of the anchor trees for their catapult. He swung back fearlessly, grabbed a branch, and pulled himself onto the solid rock of the cliff. "We can drive our shafts here and over there and build the deck and extend it out over the edge . . . ten, twelve feet easily."

"What about the tracking? What are we going to use for track?" Karl the Short asked.

"I acquired some of the older iron-capped wooden rail that they've replaced with good steel rail down at the mines. Don't you mind how I got it. Just know we got enough for a thirty-foot stretch on each side," Peter said smugly. "I know someone who knows someone who didn't want something embarrassing exposed."

"Wish the magazines you bought us had more pictures, Herr Gerber. I'm not so sure about the rope and pulley catapult system Herr Ramsdell came up with. Sure, his father's father was a shipbuilder and kept very good logs and drawings, but it's going to be a pain to raise the weights each time we try for a launch. And I don't trust any Englishman, even if he's thirty years dead and buried. And Herr Ramsdell is only a clock-worker himself. What's he know of mathematics and leverages?"

"The Technology and Science group at the new University is paying for most of the research. So the posters say," Peter offered. There was no such group in Bern, yet, though he was trying his best to make it so.

The closest thing there was to such a group was the new Library of Science and Technology that consisted of books copied from Grantville, available for anyone who could pay the proper fees. As well, articles and copies were sent south with every mail carrier and merchant heading through the Confederacy.

"You all saw the prize ...