The Technicolor Time Machine

“We’ll leave it in, Charley. Any time he gets that close I call it a bull’s-eye.” Barney raised his voice. “All right, that wraps it up for today. Morning call at seven-thirty so we can get the early light. Jens, Amory—I want to see you up here before you go.”

They stood in the waist of the ship, near the big mast, and Barney kicked the deck with his heel.

“Can this thing really make it to North America?” he asked.

“There is no doubt of it,” Jens Lyn said. “These Norse knorr were better ocean-going vessels—and faster ones—than the ones Columbus had, or the Spanish and British ships that sailed to the new world five hundred years later. The history of these ships is well recorded in the sagas.”

“Remember, we’ve come to doubt some of the sagas of late?”

“There is other evidence. In 1932 a replica of one of these craft, just sixty feet long, made the westward passage along one of the routes Columbus used—and improved on Columbus’ best time by over 30 per cent. There are many misconceptions about these vessels, for instance it is believed that they could only run before the wind with their large, square sail. Yet they could—they can—sail within five points of the wind. In fact, most interesting, the point of sailing is called beita, from which we derive the modem term of ‘beating’ up to windward.”

“I’ll take your word for it. What’s that stench?”

“The cargo,” Jens said, pointing to the large mounds with tight-lashed coverings that stood along the deck. “These ships do not have holds, so all the cargo is carried on deck.”

“What’s the cargo—Limburger cheese?”

“No, mostly food, cattle feed, ale, that sort of thing. The odor comes from the hide tarpaulins that are waterproofed with seal-oil tar and butter.”

“Very ingenious.” Barney pointed into the dark mouth of the open well behind the mast. “What happened to the hand pump you were going to install here? This ship has to get to Vinland or we have no picture. I want every precaution taken to make sure of that. Amory said a pump would be an improvement—so where is it?”

“Ottar refused to have it,” Jens said. “He was very suspicious of it and was afraid it would break and he wouldn’t know how to fix it. You can say one thing for the system they use, one man standing in the well and filling a bucket and another throwing it overboard with this wooden arm, it may be crude but it always works.”

“As long as they have buckets and men, which I’m sure they’ll have enough of. All right, I’ll buy that. I don’t want to teach Ottar his business—I just want to make sure he gets there. Where is this navigation thing you rigged, Amory?”

“It’s sealed inside the hull where it can’t be tampered with, and there’s just a simple dial topside for the steersman to look at.”

“Will it work?”

“I don’t see why not. These northmen are very good navigators in their own right. Their sea passages are usually very short so they set their course and sail from a landmark astern to one ahead. They know how the ocean currents run and the habits of the sea birds so they can follow them to land. In addition to which they can estimate their latitude very closely by the height of the North Star above the horizon. Any assistance we give them should fit within the system they already use, so it can be an additional help—but one that wouldn’t cause a tragedy if it failed. The most obvious aid would seem to be a simple magnetic compass, but that would be too foreign to them, and a compass is particularly difficult to use this far north where there are so many magnetic anomalies and where the difference between true north and magnetic north is so marked.”

“That was what you didn’t do. So what did you do?”

“Sealed a gyrocompass into the stem up against the hull here, along with a load of new long-life nicad batteries. We’ll turn it on when they leave and it should run at least a month before the batteries poop out. The gyrocompass is one of the new microminiaturized, no-tumble, no-precession things developed for rockets. Then right here, set into the rail by the steersman, is the compass repeater.”

Barney looked in through the thick glass covering at the white arrow clearly visible against the black dial. The dial was completely blank except for a single large white spot. “I hope this means more to Ottar than it does to me,” he said.

“He likes it a great deal,” Amory said. “In fact he is quite enthusiastic. Maybe if I draw a sketch it would be clearer.” He took a felt-tipped pen and a notepad from his pocket and quickly made a simple drawing.