Chapter 6

Patricia and KhAvar were kept quite busy. They taught health as a subject and talked frankly about sex. This was in mixed classes too. Sex was common especially when most of the people were raised in a one room home. I just wanted to get around the problems of turning the school into a baby farm. Children now had to get a lot more education before they went out and started a family. Already there were a lot of babies in the school and a few girls with large abdomens.

I could not legislate sex out and figured I would have to use my abilities to keep conception from happening. This could also be used in conjunction with healing to just make conception just a bit harder to occur.

The girls had seen the medical university on the Rhine. I had encouraged them before we left to talk to the teachers so they could give this talk here. The most important discussion they talked about was transmitting diseases. I was not going to be around all the time and I may be too busy to perform healing when there were wars to fight. I felt that they depended on me far too much when it came to their health.

We travelled to the school on the Weser with my mates. I met Gnaeus' family and told them what I thought of their husband or father. I also told them that Gnaeus had agreed to train both the boys and the girls to fight as part of their curriculum. This put graduation off much longer but some of the sports time could be now devoted to being in the militia.

The school and the surrounding communities were there to see us off. I felt warm inside to do so much good for the people. I wanted them to expect more but not just of me but of themselves. One day I would have to try to get them to pull their expectations back or they would be like the gluttonous consumers of my time.

Our ship and barge had been cleaned out. We took on tonnes of salt but it was only a small portion of our capacity. Many more tonnes of semi processed hemp came on board. The school collected this for me along with minerals and curios that the people brought in. All of this was documented with the person's name and the location on the map that the mineral was found. Nothing was new to us but there was still lots more to find.

All of the cadets were with me. They had taught and learned themselves and could only learn more by being with me or in an environment where they could experiment. Critical mass figured prominently in the decision to gather them all together.

The trip back to the Rhine took as long as the trip to the school because I stopped at the cities and gave my sermons. The cadets talked among themselves about what they were now doing. I kept pushing the idea to find the alloys for good springs by putting them all on the same project. The large compressor was coming along fine but it was not complete yet.

On our passage down the Rhine, I left the barge at one of the Roman forts and took the ship up the Ruhr. There were settlements here but they were all small except one. There were two forts too.

I used the time to get acquainted and showed them the documents signed by Julian. I prepped them by saying that I did not want anything to change. There was lots of room and I would only bring prosperity to them. My rights were to mining but I now owned all the land that was not yet sold. I also had the right, through the courts, to gain any property as long as the owners were adequately compensated.

We could not get too far up the river because of obstructions but I did have ideas about dredging and making lakes and locks. The Ruhr in my time was known for the amount of pollution it contributed to the Rhine. I was going to do my best to make sure this was kept to the smallest possible amount.

The two forts gave me their maps to copy and I paid the commander some gold to make much more detailed maps. This I knew would be good for them too. As usual I had sermons and the people were told that Woden had plans to better this area and everybody would prosper.

I was told of outcrops of iron and coal which we investigated. This took a week but it was still fun. I found more deposits myself but I still needed drilling rigs to tell me how good the deposits were an even how extensive they were.

When we got back to our main base on the Rhine, we immediately got cleaned and soaked in a hot tub to relax. The cadets were sent to their own because I wanted to be with my wives.

The next day I went back to work. The rolling mill was partially done. We were now building the gantry that would hoist two hundred tonnes now when I considered everything. More beams had been put into the ground to support this load and the crane itself had to be built to take even more as a safety factor. I was going to go with a diesel engine to power both the travel and the hoisting but the engine and gearbox had yet to be made.

There was no roof on the building yet and I had to make do with tarps treated with animal fat to keep water off the machined surfaces. More fat went on the metal. I wanted to make the roof out of galvanised mild steel and this required me to make thin metal first. It would have to be rolled up because of its length. An acid bath would be needed to clean the material then it had to go into a molten bath of zinc. It was also possible to do all of this in one step but I wanted plate for tanks not roofs.

Zinc was not a metal that people knew of at this time and I had to extract it from other metals. It was usually found with lead and I could use the lead too. Copper had zinc in it and it was in the sludge when the metal was purified. Gold and platinum was in there too but I did not need the latter metal yet. Tin had zinc in it but here I wanted the tin to make good glass. I needed a lot of it and then a way of keeping the tin from oxidising on me.

I concentrated on the mill mostly. The sides of the hot metal had to be sheared and a pair of wheels did this when the sheet was pinched between them. I also needed a vertical shear to cut the sheets to length. Hydraulics would be the best but I had to use a large flywheel instead. The steel plate would be for storage tanks to hold petroleum or natural gas. The petroleum though would give me the diesel fuel, the lubricants and the oil needed for the hydraulics pumps. At the moment we were using water for hydraulics but it was not kind to the valves or the pumps.

Old and new friends came to me now that they knew I was home. I was treated with what they had learned. One was the organ. This had been worked on here and in Lutetia by Iulius. It was in Gaul though that the organ flourished. Choirs were common and we were able to attract the best singers. With the organ as accompaniment they all sang in key too.

Iulius said, "We built a temporary temple and it is full whenever we said we would use the organ. We do not give long sermons but we give the people all the news we hear. The temple was full after rumour came of what happened in Antioch and it stayed that way. When they heard of Aldúlfr actually coming to our aid in Constantinople the crowds filled the grounds too."

I asked, "Are you getting any problems from the other religious groups?"

"None at all. Their numbers are dwindling and they have no way of stopping this."

Patricia learned more about her family and received letters from them. They were treated even better than before because of Julian's new duties. I got letters too and a great number of them. I got the cadets and the rest to help me wade through them. We had a form letter that could go out in return and had a space where more information could be added. The ships now carried letters for a small charge which is what I wanted long ago.

The cadets were very happy to show Iulius what they had learned. The original cadets had made a book with the Frisians and the Romans on the trajectory of certain types of shells. Possible tactics were included but we knew that this had to be tried first. The work looked good because I had read many similar books when I was growing up.

There was a lot of data about the land around the Weser. I had already gone over this and found it good except that we didn't have a way of checking core samples.

There was work done on black powder but none of this was written down. This was my standing orders until the secret of its construction got out.

The alcohol engine was a hit and so was our compressor though it gave us problems with the valves and the springs in them. We could go slow and use large machines but this was not efficient or a good path toward the building of the diesel engine.

I talked out my problems with the rolling mill. The physics involved drawing the sheets as they were squeezed between the rollers. The sheets had to be trimmed and eventually rolled for storage. Welding was possible with the forge process or the carbon arc but cutting could only be done with a mechanical process. I had gases that could burn but no oxygen.

I had an epiphany then. A plasma cutter was used in my time to cut sheet metal. It used ordinary air that had been excited by an electrical discharge. An arc was carried through the stream of air to the metal to make the oxygen react with the sheet metal and burn the iron. The heat was localised so much that the thin metal did not warp. It was used to cut up to a half inch in some units smaller units. It could cut thicker sections but it had a problem with the cut having a slight bevel on it. I did not care about a bevel and I now had a compressor and I had electricity.

I excitedly gave out the data. The only problem was that I might need AC or even high frequency AC but I was not sure.

I had seen plasma arc machines but never looked deeply into them. There were a lot of copper parts and an electrode that was buried in the head. The first problem was that I had no high temperature insulator but we did have lots of asbestos, mica and ceramics. These were already used in the furnace. The mica just might do in this case.

We made one two centimetre pipe by rolling flatbar into larger tube and drawing it while red hot to the size we wanted. In the process the seam was welded shut but it was not strong. This method had been altered with the carbon arc doing a better job of welding.

This pipe was necessary to guide the air from the compressor. The compressor worked slowly because I knew that we did not need that much pressure or flow for that matter. I went to bed that night tired but there were a lot of cadets that would not let the matter go. It was actually two more days before we had something that would cut thin metal. The steam hammers worked overtime making thin sections and then the cadets cut the material up.

There were a lot of problems with this but it did work. I now wanted a machine that would cut two centimetre plate but aimed for three instead. I didn't get even any grumbles from those working on the project.

I went back to chemistry and tried to find a suitable process to purify more of the zinc compounds I had collected.

We were running into supply problems. We made babbitt bearings for almost everything. This meant that we needed a lot of antimony and tin to go with the copper. We were running out of everything and I had to send people out to see what they could find for me.

This brought me back to mechanical work and I made the slightly smaller rolls that were supported by the giant rolls that I had made. It was the major bearings at each end that required the tonnes of bearing material. I cheated and made the housing out of steel and lined it with a small amount of babbitt. Hydraulic power had to be used to make the fine adjustments and I used the hemp oil instead of water. I didn't know if it would work or not but I had to try something that allowed the valves to last longer.

The sermons went on when they should but they did not last long. I saw now that the people came to be not only comforted but to take part in the services. This is what I had missed before. I satisfied this by getting Iulius to play an organ. People usually sang but now their voices were raised to their god and they did it with all their hearts. It was not the dispassionate way I had seen people in my time act in church.

The work I did, made me want to pull my hair out but it was fun too. The girls did not see that much of me but I still had to see some visiting dignitary when I could not get out of it. The girls took over some of this work when they could and I loved them more for it. Those that had to see a male figure also got my opinion of a society where the male was everything and the woman nothing.

The rolling mill grew and grew from my earlier estimates. A two hundred tonne crane was going to weigh much more than that by itself. With no good method of welding, I cast the steel and rivetted it to other portions and build heaver than I needed even though two hundred tonnes was already more than I needed.

There was the difficulty of lifting the crane into position once the bridge was done. We used portable hydraulic jacks to pick one end up and slipped some of our rails under it then went to the other side and did the same thing. We went back and forth and formed a mountain of steel that was thirty metres long by thirty wide and it had to go up to thirty metres high.

The last set of track was put into place and the crane was labouriously shifted over to the beams that would support it.

The diesel engine was not ready so we had to use a heavy steam engine to drive a heavy drum through a gearbox. A multipart sheave was used to add to our lifting power. The hook it lowered was larger than I was tall because I could not afford for it to break.

There was not just one operator on this. You had one man in command and another to feed the boiler and control the brake. He also switched between putting power to the gearbox that lifted, to the one that moved the bridge or the trolley. We could not do even two at once.

There was no roof yet so the smoke was no problem. The giant bearings to support the rollers were put into position then the large lower roller. A small, by comparison, roller of only twenty tonnes went next. A similar one went on next then the final large roller. This was done two more times. The small six centimetre rollers would carry the hot steel from one set of rollers to the next. When it got to the other end the rollers would be adjusted and it would make the trip back.

There was a lot of people there on the third day. We had used the first two to get some of the major kinks out of the system. We all knew that there were lots more.

A hot billet was brought over by a train car and a smaller hoist put it on the conveyor. It was pushed into the first set of rollers and it noticeably shrunk in height from fifteen centimetres to ten. We had made provision to have powered conveyors but we had push the hot billet with tools now.

The metal got thinner and thinner with each pass. When it started to extend past the end of the conveyor the wheels there cut it off like a large pizza cutter with two wheels or a rotary pair of scissors that sheared where they touched together.

It was only when the metal was under two or more sets of rollers at once that it was stretched longitudinally. When I saw the thickness I had the metal pass through another trimmer and then rolled onto a power roller.

I now had metal that was two centimetres thick and it looked very good.

In a week we had a roof on our building. It was only temporary and may last a few years because there was no zinc on it. The chemicals in the air might well reduce that time. The peak of the roof was open. There was an airspace and another roof above this. I hoped this would allow the smoke to leave without letting rain in.

The plasma cutter I ordered came about. It had to be high frequency as I had feared but we got it to work. The unit got hot and had to be water cooled. It was large even without counting the alternator or the steam engine. The tool was fixed and we had to move the plate to cut it. This meant that I had to make a conveyor with single ball bearings to support the plate. This took the time of more people to make the machine and then get it working right.

We made seven millimetre plate and sent it to the dry dock. A team there used rivets to attach the plate to a strong frame made of steel beams. This was going to be our 'Endeavour Class' ship. This particular one was called 'Germanic Endeavour'. All of them would basically have a flat bottom. It was the same width as our largest barge but was three times longer.

A removable floor of five millimetre steel plate went down on the ribs. This was going to be double hulled to keep it safe and to make sure whatever we carried would not be lost to the sea. The intervening area could also be flooded for stability or the water removed to get through shallow areas. There was still a double keel that would help on our forays into the ocean when it was needed. The ship would draw three metres but the multiple keel made it a total of four.

The bow opened like a WWII landing craft and the cargo could leave from either the upper or the lower of the two holds. A crane at the bow would allow heavy articles to be lifted out if necessary.

Both hand and steam powered pumps were installed to drain the area between the two hulls or inside the hold. Steam could also be blown in to purge the volume. Two of our largest steam engines drove the monster. It was twenty-three metres wide and eighty nine metres long. I figured we could carry five thousand tonnes.

The area above was made like the ships of my time and was all metal. We had portholes with thick glass in them. All told there were two hundred forty six rooms on three levels with an observation deck on the top. Most rooms were small but some were really suites.

The sides of the ship extended a metre and a half with grating. This was so that the passengers could see but still not be harmed by spears or arrows from shore. We had all the amenities. There were flush toilets, sinks with hot and cold running water. Private showers for the suites and public ones for the rest. The beds though were fixed in place as were all the furniture pieces.

I used lead based paint all over the ship to keep it from rusting. I had zinc by this time and as much of the ship that could be covered was. The ship was nothing more than a powered barge that reminded me of a paddle-wheeler with no paddlewheel. I kept my true feelings hid.

The new wooden hulled ship was called 'The Princess of Persia'. It was much more aesthetically pleasing to me. Patricia was not too upset because she knew that more ships would be made. The effort to get the barge going meant that we had little time to work on the Princess. It was almost ready though but the engines had gone into the Endeavour ship instead.

For the last few months a team of men had been working just off the Rhine delta to make a dock where the flame had once been. It had to be deep enough to accept heavy barge traffic and strong enough to protect the ship from the strong gales that were known to come along the English Channel or the Germanic Sea. This meant that there was a lot of stone that had to be cut and placed. This was further complicated by the tides that hardly effected the Mediterranean at all.

Everybody knew about both ships. Even without Sapor or KhAvar's relatives I still think the Persians would have known. We made a magazine that was just for our people a few months ago but it proved to be more than just popular. I didn't think the paper was used to wipe asses like the old catalogues of my day. People that made inventions or made significant improvements made it onto the pages. The girls each had a column to write. KhAvar handed out Ann Landers type advice and Patricia had some social commentary. I was not going to allow them to go for just recipes and sewing tips. Courses in mathematics and reading were put in a series of articles aimed at those that would have to have the articles read to them. This was the most I could do until universal education was instituted.

Rufus was taking cargo around Hispania and to Berytus. Actually it was more than that and he tried to make the most profit for me. He wanted to move up to captain the Princess but I think he would take the barge too for a year or so. Since Rufus was not back yet I made a request of Lucius' commander to release him for something of importance to the Empire. Lucius was with us the next day courtesy of one of our Patricia class ships.

Lucius came rushing to me and said with a worried voice, "What's wrong? My commander said it was important."

"It is. I need to go to the Rhine delta and unload our supplies. While I am getting this stowed I want you to come back and load up with more pipe and plate and come back. I want to start on my chemical plant now."

"I was told it is important for the empire."

"I write to Julian all the time. He thinks it is important. I think it is important. What do you think?"

I got a bit of a smile and he said, "I have to agree with you then. Do you really mean for me to pilot that monster?"

"Rufus is not here, Mithridates is busy making sugar, you are the only captain I have left."

"I cannot pilot that ship. I know nothing about it."

"Nobody does so we will find out together. It is already loaded and all you have to do is leave."

"I would like to go home and greet my wife and family if I may."

"Why? They are already on the ship."

"You mean they are going with me?"

"There are going to be 816 people on that ship when we leave."

I just got a blank look.

In an hour I had the man in the captain's cabin. He was getting a shower with his wife. His bed had a white cotton uniform I wanted him to wear that would make any sailor proud.

It was two hours more before everyone was onboard and we left the dock beside the dry dock. Lucius tried various power settings as we listened for trouble but everything seemed fine. We had a full load of steel in the hold and the ballast tank was emptied. We rode low in the water and still felt the surge of the twin propellers. Looking at the shore I knew that we were still going at twenty miles an hour but part of that speed was caused by the river flow. I figured Lucius could come upstream empty even faster.

The ship was famous and everybody waved to us and everybody on the ship was glad to wave back. Only the Patricia II class ships could keep up with us but they did not try. There was a lot of steam whistles blown whenever we came in hailing distance. There were people on the banks and on islands waving madly.

We were in the wheelhouse but Lucius was not at the wheel. He was the Captain and he would have somebody else do this duty while he took care of more important matters.

Lucius' wife and children watched the shore go by with Patricia, KhAvar and me. The cadets were in their stateroom or someplace on the ship. Toward dusk Lucius ordered the lights on and two large carbon arc lights shown forth. The light was as bright as I had seen at Niagra Falls when the falls was illuminated.

A few minutes later Lucius came by his fort and he pulled the cord that sounded the loud whistle. There was already a crowd there and Lucius walked out the hatch and waved to his fellow soldiers while he was dressed in his new uniform. The waving on the shore stopped. I figured they did not know what to make of this.

Lucius knew about keeping logs but I gave notes on what should be written in a separate piece of paper. Another piece of paper told him what I expected of him. This would be that he was on call all the time but he would not have to stand watch more than eight hours. I had other able seamen that could pilot the ship through the night.

That night my girls and I curled up in the Emperor Suite and relaxed.

Patricia said, "Jón, when are we going to start to have children? My father and KhAvar's uncle said it was ok to start."

"We still have a wedding to plan. Buildings still have to be put up for guests."

"But you have not started to put up those buildings yet."

"That is because I want to make good cement. I have all that I need except the fuel. The fuel we are going to get now. Some of this effort will be to make fertiliser. I mentioned this long ago and there are a lot of other products and tools we have to make."

KhAvar said, "You told us that too but we can still start on the children."

"We will start after our new home in the Ruhr Valley is finished." I got a hug from each but they knew that this would still be a year or two away.

We slowed during the night and we had a great breakfast in the morning. Lucius looked tired but happy. I said, "Sleeping on a ship seems to agree with you."

"It was hard to get to sleep in a strange bed. It was hard to sleep knowing all of my new responsibilities. Licinia tossed and turned all night too."

Patricia and KhAvar smiled and looked down. I said, "Yes, I heard the both of you working hard to get into a comfortable position." Licinia blushed and so did Lucius. Their children just smiled.

Around nine o'clock we headed out into the channel and went full speed to the west. It was less than an hour later that we spotted a flag on a buoy and turned south. Lucius used the telegraph to tell those in the engine room to slow down. We found the opening into the manmade bay and Lucius called for people to check the depth. We got to within a hundred metres of the opening when we heard some ominous groaning as we slid over a rock. Our props were not deep in the water and the lower portion of the blades was level with the bottom of the hull. The twin keels were deeper. We had no idea if the rock had grazed our keel or the hull. One would mean that the props may be in danger.

I suggested, "Lucius, if we stop the props we can use a winch to pull us in. If there are no rocks any higher then we are safe. When we unload, you will be three and a half metres higher in the water."

"You are the owner. If that is your wish, we will do that. I would send people out in a boat with lines to see if there are other dangerous rocks."

"Then let's do that way then."

We had four boats which were not enough to handle everybody on the ship but we did have life jackets and floatation rings. A boat was launched and at the same time a ship of the Patricia class came from the harbour.

There was a lot of talk and both groups used a lead lines to find the depth. A half hour later both vessels tied up and the people came aboard. The man sent to find the depth said, "The bottom is quite regular. We are at low tide now and in a few hours we should have no trouble being able to dock."

There was nothing I could do from here and pulled rank. Both Patricia and KhAvar came with me as we went ashore in one of the boats. I had not seen the improvements until now and it looked just like my drawings. I would have to come with less cargo next time or come when we could get into this harbour with the tide. A storm could come up at any time and the ship may have to gain shelter quickly. A flat bottomed boat did not fair well in a ocean storm. This meant that the mouth and perhaps the whole bay would need to be deepened. Waves coming in could cause the heavily laden ship to go up and down and cause a lot of damage to the bottom of the ship.

When we left the harbour, we checked where I wanted the plant to be. There were no tanks up yet because they were in the hold of the ship. There were buildings to house the workers. They had steel roofs like what we had in the twenty first century but the steel was not as good. The roads were not good but they would have to be made to withstand the heavy traffic they would one day have. We had toilets, sinks and showers in the barracks but they were not hooked up to a septic system because of the time it would take to build. We had a latrine that would have to do until the tiles and tank were put in.

The girls checked our house. It was small but adequate for now. It too had a small outhouse in the back.

The Germanic Endeavour came in later and was tied to the sturdy bollards. Square timbers protected the hull from scraping the stone wall. People got out on the port side and the ramp at the bow was lowered to connect with the dock. It was now a very labourious job of digging out the cargo. A hundred klicks of double rail was on the top and they were dragged out first. This was not our first railway off of our original property. Rail cars were pulled out as soon as the first two tracks were laid. Almost three hundred kilometres had been laid in total. These tracks here would carry the heavy parts from the ship to where they were needed.

Only a few people could help with the unloading or the laying of track. The rest got to work digging the septic system while another crew cleaned off an area that would hold the tank for the natural gas that I was after. None of this could proceed quickly because the gas, like that above Antioch, was wet. There were a lot of volatile liquids in the gas that would be very useful. They had to be separated and stored instead of being burnt.

Ammonia could be recovered from making coke but it was not significant. It also had to be done to protect my employees if not the environment. The ammonia was necessary if I was going to make ammonium nitrate fertiliser. The gas could be manufactured if I had nitrogen and hydrogen. The hydrogen was easy if I had the right equipment. I now had enough to do this.