1st of Granite, 50“Now, you’ll have a good-ly portion that sticks up above the surface, so we’ll of course need some support gantries up there to keep the whole thing from – ”
Granif put up his hand. “Whoa, whoa, hold up there chief. Are you telling me you plan to launch this damn thing
vertically? Using a dried magma vent as a silo? Why, that’s crazy! You’ll be fighting gravity the whole way up on thrust alone– there’s no way it would fly. Here, lemme show you.”
He took the schematic from Kandor, turned the whole thing ninety degrees, and started sketching.
“Alright, when you’re launching a glider, you do it like
this:
The way you want to do this is, you want to fight gravity using
lift. You lay the craft
horizontally – bottom down, of course. You mount some rollers on it,
here and
here, same way on the other side. The rollers sit up on a set of rails, sloping downhill with a short ramp at the end – our ship’ll be booze-propelled, so you can make it mostly level. Now, the length of the track is a direct function of the – ”
All assembled dwarves looked up as the wagon lurched to a halt. Kandor clambered to the front and stuck his head through the canvas.
“Wassis? Are we stuck?”
Doom looked back at him from the reins, map in hands. “Far from it. We’ve arrived.”
Kandor looked about at the landscape, confused.”That can’t be. I don’t see either of the magma vents.”
“No, no, they’re underground. look at the map.” She handed the map to Kandor. “You see, the mark for the pipe is turned one quarter of one degree to the
left. That means it’s subterranean. It’s simple.”
“How… could anyone figure that out? Well, nevermind. If we’re really here as you say, we might as well get started.”
“Doom, take Granif and start digging some lodgings for us. Ieb… you like danger, right? Why don’t you go sounding for that active magma pipe?”
Legon hopped down from his seat by Doom, loading his crossbow. “I’ll go with him. I smelt some ogres on the way in. Master Rawarch, I think it would be best if no one left camp without my supervision.”
“As you wish, seargent. Alright people, let’s get moving!”
(Well, that's brilliant. Both the pit and the magma pipe are underground. Ieb, it looks like you're getting off to a great start.)