Ch. 4 — By Any Other Name
The argument over what to call the ship had been fast and furious. Ron still sulked over the others refusing to name it after the Chudley Cannons, or any of the team's members, either past or present. Harry had absolutely refused anything to do with his name, and said, "Can you imagine the uproar if Pink Toad or the minister heard the name?" They needed something innocuous.
Thus, Harry stood on the bridge of the newly rechristened D.S.S (Dumbledore's Space Ship) Requirement while Cho and Marietta sat at two pedestals, quivering with excitement. Angel and her team backed them with rapid-fire translations on the changing labels and notifications that the pedestals displayed. For a number of them there'd been a mad scramble to understand all the systems that they had access to since the ship's power came back online.
Harry knew that Lee, and several others, hadn't left the ship except for meals and classes they couldn't skive off. Cho, especially, had thrown herself into deciphering the ship. She was certainly less weepy than she had been, which he found relieving. He never knew what to do with girls when they were in tears.
Up until they had "discovered" the ship, she had been in an almost perpetual state of despair, bursting into weeping at the slightest reference to anything that Cedric had ever been involved with at Hogwarts. Which made it extremely awkward for Harry whenever they talked.
Harry had covered for the group and made himself more noticeable around the castle. That drew Pink Toad's close scrutiny, as well as the Slytherin's who were keeping an eye out for him. They cast a curse whenever they thought they could get away with it. He endured the nightly detentions for the sake of the others.
Dobby snuck him blood-replenishing and pain-relief potions after curfew. And dittany for the blood-quills, as did Hermione when she wasn't otherwise on the ship.
Hermione freed up shipboard time for herself by writing her assignments at an insane rate, and managing her Prefect patrols with papers and books charmed so she could read and write while walking. To the elves' relief, she had given up entirely on knitting.
He had given up trying to sneak to the corridor on the seventh floor. The way the pure-bloods constantly dogged his steps, and with such dedication, they wouldn't even notice the spells the twins and Lee had placed. He had had to resort to the Dobby Express. Every night, after he went to bed, Dobby popped him to the corridor, and then fetched him the following morning. The house-elf was thrilled with the unique use of the Room, and called it "Harry Potter Sir's Ship." Nothing Harry said could change his mind.
While the first priority had been the finding the ship's library, and figuring out the ship's purpose, the item everyone had waited for the most was being tested now.
Moving.
The twins had given up trying to convince the others that the ship was just a figment generated by the Room of Requirement. They did point out that the Room could easily simulate them moving. As a result, this particular test was pointless and didn't accomplish anything.
They were ignored, of course.
"Alright," Cho said, her voice shaking slightly. She had one hand resting on the smooth white control rock that rested on the control grid in front of her. The other was unobtrusively clenched in her lap. She looked around at everyone gathered on the Bridge. "If we all die," she said, "then I'd like to take this moment to say that it's been a pleasure serving with you, ladies and gentlemen."
Nervous, giddy laughter filled the room. Cho took a deep breath and glanced at Harry. He felt his stomach go funny at her steady gaze.
"Go on," Harry said encouragingly, urging her onward.
"Aye, aye, Captain," she answered. She firmly pushed the rock smoothly forward on the grid. "Executing coordinates . . . now!"
They had quickly discovered that the D.S.S. Requirement didn't have actual flight controls. No throttles, no pedals, no levers, . . . no steering wheel. You didn't drive it. Or even pilot it. Not manually, at least. Instead, every movement had to be programmed into the flight computer — at least that was what they were calling it — ahead of time.
It didn't matter if you moved yards, across the solar system, or in great intergalactic leaps; they all had to be plotted out beforehand. It was both a simpler and harder way of manoeuvring in space than any of them had expected. Harder, because to do anything they had to have the exact galactic coordinates of both the starting point and the destination. Simpler, because after punching in those numbers, the ship did the rest. No need to learn the finicky details of thrusters, torque, and power levels. It was easier, or so Hermione said, than driving a car.
Cho and Marietta, and Angel's team, after a week of digging through the library, had found access to navigational maps. From those, they had worked out the coordinate system. Thankfully the ship had most of the galaxy pretty much mapped out. Unfortunately, the galactic map was pretty out of date, based on comparing its records of the stars that were supposed to be close to the solar system with the stars that actually were close to the solar system. Stars didn't move very fast, only ten to twenty miles per second on average. But they were extremely far apart compared to planets, by trillions of miles. However, with the passage of thousands of years, or tens of thousands, that made up for the relatively slow movement.
Powering-up the ship had, though, automatically updated its information on the solar system, and that included the coordinates. Unfortunately, again, it was all in ancient runes. So, they laboriously had to translate everything before anything could be used safely. And even then, there was no way to know if they really were doing things right.
But all things said and done, all that was left to do now was to test it. Cho had pre-programmed the flight computer with two sets of coordinates — their current location and their destination.
After she executed the flight command, all they could do was wait and see, and hold their breaths. They all stared out the front windows to see if anything changed.
It was unnerving to see and feel. Or rather, not feel. It all happened so smoothly. There was no jerk, no sensation of movement. Just one moment they weren't moving and the next they were. The ship felt perfectly stationary under their feet. But the view outside the window changed. It whirled fast and smoothly to the side with vertigo inducing suddenness, until the asteroid that had been hanging below them for the last month lifted up into centre view. Then it zoomed from a distant shape to take up the majority of the view in front of them.
Almost everyone who wasn't sitting down took a step backwards, and those in seats leaned way back. A couple of the D.A. members actually stumbled and fell in shock. More than one person screamed.
"Merlin's balls, man," someone muttered, shocked, as the ship stopped as quickly as it had started. They were almost nose to dirt with the asteroid that they had only distantly seen. Without an atmosphere to scatter light, the shadowed part was solid black, and its shape could only be seen by the stars it blocked out. The section that was in the sunlight, however, was dark-greyish, pockmarked with craters and impact scars. It was clearly big enough to fill the entire valley that housed Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. It was like staring at a cliff that was slowly moving, Harry thought, and bloody intimidating.
"Alright," Harry said a bit unsteadily. He stepped closer to the window even as everyone else was still backing away in shock. "Zacharias?" he said, a bit more firmly.
"Uh, right, right," the shaken Hufflepuff answered. He turned his attention to the control pedestal in front of him. He moved a couple of the control stones on the grid, and eyed the screen in front of the pedestal. "Hmmm. I don't think we're getting anything new," he said, slowly. "It's a carbonaceous asteroid, mostly. Some silicates, lots of trace elements, copper, lead, iron . . . some water ice."
"Hmm," Harry said. He folded his arms and eyed the asteroid. "Well. We can move the ship." He took a deep breath. "Cho? How about moving us back a bit? Being this close to an asteroid that's spinning is making me a bit nervous." He noticed several others nodding in agreement.
"I can try?" Cho said hesitantly. "Now that I know how it works it should be easier . . .."
Harry took a smooth white stone from his pocket. Anthony had given it to him as they had arrived at the Bridge, and told him how to use it. He turned it over in his hands several times before tapping it gently. "Hermione, Lee?" he asked hesitantly. He felt a bit silly talking to a rock.
"Did it work?" Hermione's crystal-clear voice answered. "Have you started yet?"
"Uh, yeah. We moved. ow does the power look?"
"Pretty good, actually. We didn't use that much power," she answered. "If the power usage is constant, we probably could go around the solar system a couple of times before running out, if we didn't do anything to refuel," she said gleefully.
"How does the asteroid look?" Lee's voice asked.
"Impressive. Terrifying. We're going to back away a bit — this is a bit too close for comfort," Harry said.
He looked up at the click and flash, and saw Colin take a picture, then rapidly shoot several more.
A moment later, and with a brief word or warning, Cho moved the ship back from the asteroid as smoothly as it had moved forward. The valley-sized rock shrank to a visually much more manageable size. Harry could hear people release the breaths they'd been holding, and saw some relax a bit. A few even laughed in relief.
"So, we can move," Harry said, and arched his eyebrows, a small grin on his face.
"We can move," Cho answered with a bigger grin.
Her translators around her had grins just as big. No one had ever imagined that runes could be soo useful.
The ship's bridge exploded into cheers.
Now all they had to do was figure out what to do with their new-found freedom to explore the solar system. Though they had a bit of power, a bit didn't count for much when you dealt with space travel. If they weren't careful, they might run out, again. The ship would once more go dark and unresponsive. Having gotten used to the lights and warmth, none of them wanted that to happen.
Harry suddenly clasped his fist around the communication rock.
"Anyone want to prove this ship is real?"
They looked at him, startled.
He held up the rock between his thumb and index finger. "We didn't bring a rock on-board the ship that could communicate with others," he said. "And I am unaware of any such thing in either the muggle world or the magical world that the Room could have fetched to use." He grinned. "If I can take it into Hogwarts and talk to Hermione or Lee; that should prove it wasn't made by the Room! It isn't just . . . a rock."
"Merlin's Balls," whispered Fred.
"You're right!" finished George.
"Let's prove this is just a really intricate fakeship . . ."
". . . created by the Room!" They both turned and headed for the elevator door.
Harry and the rest of the D.A. members, except Lee and Hermione in the Engine Room and who didn't know what they were doing, followed them quickly.
Five minutes later, standing by the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, Hermione's voice was coming from the communications rock. "Of course, I can hear you," she said a bit testily. "Didn't we already prove that?"
The whoop he heard from the stone after explaining what he was doing was only matched by the gobsmacked expressions the twins wore.
The only question remaining was . . . what had the Room of Requirement actually done?
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"If you ask me, I think the ship was originally headed for the asteroid to refuel," Lee said, the next night. It was after curfew and everyone not in the D.A. would think they were asleep in bed.
Dobby and Winky had done a yeoman's service fetching everyone, to Hermione's sour reaction. Harry hadn't previously told her that he had had to bond the two house-elves before Dobby had agreed to help. The sneaky prat said that he would get into trouble if he popped the students around, as he was a Hogwarts' house-elf and Hogwarts house-elves weren't supposed to do favours for students. But if he was bonded to Harry . . .. Then he had played the sympathy card to include Winky in the deal, a truly underhanded ploy. He had explained she was going to drink herself to death for lack of a family if Harry refused.
In other words, Dobby guilt-tripped him.
The reason the Dobby and Winky Express worked was because of a loophole in the rules. Students were not allowed to bring their family's house-elves to school — and wouldn't Draco abuse the hell out of having a house-elf if they could!
House-elves brought to Hogwarts could work at Hogwarts. Which meant the house-elf couldn't take orders from his or her master or mistress while he or she was there instead of at home. For all intents and purposes, he or she became a Hogwarts house-elf until he or she was called home.
But Dobby and Winky were already at Hogwarts when they were bonded. Their home had been Hogwarts. They weren't called or sent to Hogwarts by their master. As a result, the bonding didn't change anything because, as far as magic was concerned, the two were already at home! So, the two house-elves could ignore the rules about not directly obeying their master.
Everyone seemed to want to rush that night's D.A. lessons, and coached each other so that they could move onto the much more interesting spaceship matters. And that motivation had translated into everyone, even the pure-bloods, picking up the spells quickly. As far as Defence Against the Dark Arts was concerned, they had things pretty well down pat. They had even practiced some of the charms from Flitwick's class.
"It's the only reasonable explanation — I mean, the ship was really close to it, wasn't it? Like, really close, right? Far too close to be just an accident."
"But there's no spaceship fuel on that asteroid, is there?" Colin Creevey asked curiously. "It's just carbon and rocks and ice, isn't it?" Dennis nodded beside him, as did many others.
"Precisely. Ice," Lee said. He snapped his fingers and pointed at Colin. "Ice. Water. We can't make heads or tails of what the ship actually uses. We've never even heard of anything like it. But we know the ship can take other forms of fuel, too." He gave a small smile. "With some adjustments and a bit of tinkering, of course. Split water up, like with platinum and electricity, and you have in your hands oxygen and hydrogen. Both of which are used to make rocket fuel. It's seriously energy inefficient when compared to what this ship usually uses, but . . . it's better than nothing. And the ship may have more advanced techniques we haven't discovered."*
"So, the ship was heading for the asteroid to refuel but ran out of power before it could make it?" Harry said sceptically.
"Or," Hermione said, "Maybe they wanted something else and discovered they lacked the needed power when they arrived. Maybe someone miscalculated and they used the last of their fuel to decelerate," Hermione shook her head. "Leaving them essentially stranded."
"So why didn't they refuel?" Fred asked. "They got this close — why didn't they refuel?"
"At a guess . . . they couldn't," Hermione said, shrugging. "Maybe the asteroid didn't have the right resources and they only had enough power left to evacuate. Or the fuel they'd get from the asteroid wasn't enough to do what they wanted. Or they were in a tearing hurry. Or they did try, and failed. Plus, we have no idea how they would've mined the asteroid, anyway. Maybe something came up that prevented it."
"If they all died, where are the remains?" Zacharias said doubtfully. "I haven't seen any alien skeletons, have you?"
"The ship's cleaning system," Angelina answered before Hermione could say anything. "It de-molecularizes all materials considered waste — that's why there isn't any dust here," Everyone turned to stare at her in shock. "What?" she said, and then shrugged. "I've been trying to discover and figure out the ship's systems and purposes. The sterilisation sweeps came up during my research."
"It . . . de-molecularizes things?" Hermione said dubiously, getting side-tracked. "Why hasn't it de-molecularized our things? Like, say, the pillows here?" She waved her hand at the items piled by the windows.
Angelina shrugged again. "It can differentiate between things-in-use or not, or something like that. Also, it's calibrated to things the size of dust particles."
"But you said it would take care of bodies?"
"Well . . . yeah, in time, as they rotted and broke apart," she said, and shrugged fatalistically.
There were more than few shudders around the group.
"But the power requirements?" objected Hermione.
"One reason why the batteries were so low?" Angelina responded.
Hermione frowned. "I think they evacuated. If they had simply died, we should have found things like belt buckles, earrings, necklaces, and other odd pieces of metal that wouldn't decompose. Especially in the living quarters."
Angelina shrugged again.
Lee, however had a thoughtful look about his face.
"If this ship can de-molecularize things . . . maybe it can . . .," he murmured. His eyes shot wide open. He walked over and grabbed Hermione by the shoulders, staring into her eyes. "Hermione," he said urgently, and shook her lightly. "Hermione. De-mo-lec-u-lar-i-za-tion," he said slowly. "Doesn't that imply re-molecularization." He paused a moment and gave her a slight shake. "Replicator technology, Hermione!"
She blinked rapidly for a moment. "Oh my," she breathed, "I'm going to swoon." She shuddered instead. A moment later, the two took off at a dead run to check out whatever epiphany Lee had had. Where they were going was anybody's guess.
"Uhh," Harry said. He pointed after them. "Can anybody translate that for me?" He looked around the practice room. The pure-bloods were just as puzzled as he was. So were many of the half-bloods.
"It's tech they have in Star Trek," Colin said, slowly getting as excited as the two who had left. "They can make things sort of out of nothing." He was bouncing on his heels. "They make food and stuff with it."
"If they have the base components," his brother Dennis added as a qualifier, with an equally excited nod. "And a lot of power." His eyes shined and he bounced in sync with his brother. "Do we have replicators?" They looked as if they were considering following Lee and Hermione.
Harry considered it for a moment. "Right," he said and shook his head "Well, while our engineering geeks are doing whatever they're doing . . . what else have we figured out about our ship?"
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Going back to Hogwarts after spending hours, or nights, in the spaceship was becoming harder and harder. Between the Ministry's involvement, Umbridge, and Snape, Hogwarts was getting worse and worse — and Umbridge was getting more ruthless with each day. Meanwhile, the D.S.S. Requirement was bigger and handier than they had realized. The difference between the closed-up, anxious, and guarded Hogwarts, and the open, relaxed, and free ship was like the difference between night and day. The ship was a much-preferred environment.
And, truthfully, between his Quidditch ban and worry about whether or not Hagrid was going to be put on probation, he felt highly resentful toward Hogwarts at the moment.
"Not that I don't simply love magic — I do," Harry said, to Luna.
They were doing their Astronomy assignment on the Milky Way in one of the laboratories — class had been cancelled because of poor weather and they were taking advantage of that to get way ahead. They wanted to skive off in the future, which they could do if they proved they knew the material — and the ship's solar maps were just soo convenient! And the view through the telescopes on board put everything at Hogwarts to shame. Even Harry's drawings of the planets had markedly improved, to Professor Aurora's delight.
"I just don't love Hogwarts as it is now."
"I hear you," she said softly, making a note.
Everyone else seemed to feel the same. Still, they went back to Hogwarts, for classes, food, and extracurricular activities, slipping into the ship whenever they had free time and after curfew for sound sleeping. The numerous unoccupied cabins made that easy.
Dobby and Winky were definitely enjoying the additional work of moving the bedding, and D.A. members, back and forth to fool everyone into thinking the students were still sleeping in their dorm rooms. And the twins' someone-is-sleeping-here items had only improved with time.
Harry decided on additional security measures, based on the constant traffic to and from the Room of Requirement door. Those among them who knew ancient runes and written spell-work were put to work. They enchanted most of the seventh floor, creating a notice-me-not maze that gently directed people away from that corridor. Even someone determined to see the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy getting beaten by the trolls would never get near it. They would be convinced that they had seen it, and that that was nothing to brag about.
They even made sure to include all the secret passages on the Marauders' map.
Because the spells started so far away from the door, no one would suspect they were there and try to either detect or counter them. Only a very skilled and paranoid wizard would even think to cast constant detection spells as they walked around a place they had lived in for years, or decades.
They had better make sure that they kept an eye out for the retired auror Moody. He would trip to what they were doing almost as soon as he walked up to the castle.
The twins had put up alert spells that would warn the D.A. should anyone who wasn't a member ever get close to the corridor, much less the ship's door. Just in case someone really determined came that all that way.
They had even cast illusion spells over the various portraits, paintings, statues, busts, and suits of armour that lined the corridors and classrooms in that area. The spells prevented the semi-intelligent images from seeing anything moving slower than a sprint. You had to stand still for minutes at a time before they noticed. The effect started low and increased the closer you got to the Room of Requirement.
The door itself was hidden behind an illusion that covered the entire wall, so no magical seams or ripples could be noticed. Added to the spells the twins had already put up, the door didn't existent to anyone who wasn't a D.A. member.
"We're spending too much time here," Harry mused to Ron.
They were watching Hermione and Lee fiddle around with one of the stranger tables around the ship. It was circular, at least two yards around, and something extended from the ceiling towards it, a sort of bulky light-fixture. It wasn't a control console, as far as he could tell.
"People are starting to notice D.A. members not being about."
"Yeah, but what can we do about it?" Ron agreed, and shrugged. "It's nicer here than in the school." He looked around. "You don't have to worry about a Slytherin spelling you in the back."
Harry hummed. "I'm just worried that Umbridge will figure out something's up, and track us to the right area. She might not be able to get in, but she could wall off most of the seventh floor without a problem. Except for the Gryffindor Dormitory, it isn't used."
Ron stood quiet a moment, then smirked. "I wish she would."
Harry looked at him quizzically.
"If she put up walls, she'd never catch us using the ship, we'd simply use one of the secret passages or the Dobby Express!"
"But she might call in the Ministry Unspeakables. There's no way we could out-smart them."
Ron had a pained expression. "Ugh."
"Ha!" Hermione declared triumphantly, getting their attention. Lights suddenly appeared on the strange table. A moment later, with a flash of light, something appeared. A rock was now on the table. A control — or communication — rock? Harry wondered.
Lee grabbed and held the rock up in victory like it was a cup made of gold.
"Did we just figure something out?" Harry arched an eyebrow and looked at the two geeks.
"Indeed, we did, Captain!" Hermione said proudly. She motioned at the rock. "We have created . . . a thing!"
"Created," Harry said cautiously, and arched the other eyebrow as he turned his head slightly.
"Yes! Yes! And yes!" Lee excitedly said. He handed the rock to Harry and motioned at the circular table. "Let me introduce to you . . . the Requirement's very own replicator console!" he crowed happily in his commentator voice.
"Right. Translation?" Harry asked, and turned to Hermione on the other side of the table, while looking at the rock that looked just like every other rock he had seen on the ship.
"It's mechanical conjuration. Or, rather, like a mechanical transfiguration." She frowned over the indecision on definition. Then shrugged, "Anyway, so long as we have the base materials, we can make anything!"
"Anything?" Ron said incredulously.
"What he said." Harry pointed at Ron.
Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Well, anything we have the pattern for . . .." She sighed and patted the table fondly. "This isn't actually the replicator itself. You can actually replicate anything to anywhere on the ship because the de-molecularization and re-molecularization arrays are ship-wide. But here you can scan objects and manipulate their make up to whatever you want." She happily bounced on her toes.
"Okay," Harry said slowly. "Soo . . . we can make things. That's . . . good?" He didn't really see the applications. They already had most of what they needed — didn't they?
"That's excellent, Harry. It's brilliant," Hermione excitedly assured him. She dashed over to pick up her rucksack. She pulled out a book and dashed back to the table. After a bit of fiddling with the console, there was a flash of white light — and suddenly there were two identical books sitting on the table. She clapped her hands elatedly and bounced up and down a couple of times.
"I think that's called forgery," Harry said dryly. He frowned as he thought, "Or copyright theft?" He arched his eyebrows as he opened both books on the table. They were exactly alike, right down to the notes Hermione had written in the margins.
"Well . . . yes," Hermione deflated slightly. "But imagine the things we can do! So long as we get the materials, we can do anything." She started to get enthusiastic, again. "And I'm pretty sure the ship can pick up things from outside. I'm not sure of the measurement terms, yet, but maybe as far away as ten thousand miles!" She was positively vibrating with excitement.
Harry nodded slowly. "Okay," he slowly said, still not quite getting it.
Hermione took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Harry, we can mine the asteroid! We can turn it into fuel. We can turn it into anything we want! We could even replicate the entire ship if we wanted to!" She stared intently into his eyes.
They were a rather nice chocolate brown, he decided.
"Oh." He perked up. "Alright then," he said and smiled. He tentatively patted her head. "Good work. Very impressive!"
She preened and Lee made a face. "Hey! What am I? Chopped liver? Don't I get a pat on the head?"
Harry blinked than stepped closer. "Good boy, very good work," Harry said obligingly. He patted the boy's dreadlocks. He couldn't help but snort in amusement at the absurdity as Lee, too, proudly preened. Especially as he was so much taller than Harry. "Well," he said, nodding his head. "I think this calls for a meeting."
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They had a general meeting the next night after curfew. First, and foremost, they all agreed, ensuring the ship stayed powered-up was of the utmost importance. Thus, the first mining efforts and matter conjurations would be concentrated on making fuel for the ship. Which, it turned out, would also involve making a generator, because the ship didn't have any way to turn the raw elements they would be mining into fuel, nor any way in which it could easily make that fuel into electricity.
Hermione and Lee assured them, however, that that would be as easy as flight. "The patterns are already there, and we pretty much have all the materials either on hand or in the asteroid. All we have to do is press a couple of controls and we have both our converter and our generator."
After they could be sure of their fuel reserves, the group was divided on what they wanted to do next. There were as many opinions as they were people, not surprisingly. They did agree that replicating the ship itself would be rather silly — the ship was easily triple or quadruple the size of Hogwarts, and could probably accommodate everyone at both the ministry and Hogwarts combined, even if both were at full capacity. Why bother?
That said . . . there were a lot of them who'd been extremely disappointed by the lack of small fighters on board. There were no shuttles, no X-wing fighters, Gunstars, Colonial Vipers, Cylon Raiders, nothing. Nada. Nope. Not even a hanger to house such things.
The Requirement was basically the size of the mother-ships they'd seen in all of the sci-fi shows and movies — but it was remarkably barren of smaller brethren.
"I don't suppose we can make those?" Harry said dubiously.
"Well, I wouldn't say we can't," Lee said slowly.
"We probably can," said Hermione, reflectively. "Making them actually work, on other hand . . . that's a bit harder. We'd have to convert them to use a fuel we have on hand."
"I don't think the people who made this ship had any use for small fighter-type ships," added Lee. "We'll have to look into it."
"Well," said Colin. "How did they get on the ship without smaller ships?"
"Yeah," said Dennis, "I doubt they had a Room of Requirement that made a door to it."
They all looked at each other.
"They apparated?" said one of the twins.
"They teleported?" Terry Boot suggested.
"Transporters?" hazarded a guess from Justin.
Lee and Hermione just looked at each other, then they turned to Angelina.
"Angelina?" Hermione said. "Have you found anything in the systems that might tell us how they got on and off the ship?"
The seventh-year shook her head. She turned and looked at the others who had been helping her, they all shook their heads. She turned back to Hermione. "Doesn't look like it, but I'll see what we can find."
Harry nodded, "Take your time and be thorough. There's no reason to hurry," he said. "We've managed without for this long, we can manage for a bit longer." Everyone chuckled.
Ron's hand shot up. "Question!" he half-shouted. "Yeah, I heard there are a lot of metal-rich asteroids in the asteroid belts. And not just cheap metals either," he said quickly. "I heard you could find gold around here pretty easily. Can we mine that and conjure it into gold bars or something?" he finished eagerly. More than a few echoed his enthusiasm, nodding excitedly.
"Er," Harry said, taken aback. He glanced at Hermione and Lee, and then at everyone else. They all watched him, eyes wide with excitement. "Well, I guess we could?" he said. He folded his arms and frowned slightly. "I suppose this gold would be for personal use?" He arched an eyebrow.
"We would divide it up, obviously?" Ron said hopefully.
"You know, with the replicators or conjurators or whatever we're calling them — I'm not sure we need gold," Harry said thoughtfully. He glanced at Hermione. "We can get pretty much anything we need from the belt, can't we?"
"Pretty much," she agreed, and nodded, as did Lee.
"And we can make anything we want to," Harry added. "Considering that we can make everything you need . . . what would you need gold for?"
Lee frowned. "Well, we do need at least one original of everything we want to replicate," he said slowly.
"We need to pattern the things we want to duplicate," Hermione explained. "If you wanted a quill, for example, we'd need an actual physical quill to pattern first. And if you wanted more than one kind of quill, you'd need originals of each type," she concluded.
"Yeah, that," Ron said quickly, and pointed at Hermione. "We could use the gold to buy stuff to pattern." He paused. "Also, maybe, a bit to send home?" he raised his eyebrows hopefully.
"If we started suddenly sending huge chunks of gold home, I think the Ministry and Gringotts would have some issues about it," Harry said, somewhat dryly. "Besides, the mail in Hogwarts is monitored, in case some of you didn't know." He shifted uncomfortably. "I know Umbridge goes over every bit she thinks is interesting. And the sudden appearance of packages of gold bars is something I'm sure she would find interesting."
There were a lot of moans and pouts and Harry sighed. "Let's get the fuel situation sorted, first, right? We'll see about other things, afterwards. As it is now, the only way to get anything in or out of Hogwarts safely is actually to physically carry it with you. If you want to take something made on the ship out of the school, Christmas hols is the only time to do it. You'll have to wait until then." He smiled. "I'm sure a having to wait a few more weeks isn't going to cause any problems at home."
There were some mumbles of agreement. "For now, let's just make a list of things we might want and things we might need," he said, and nodded with satisfaction. He glanced at Hermione and Lee. "How much power does this . . . conjurator use anyway?"
"A lot," Hermione admitted. "But if we can figure the fuel situation out, it shouldn't be a problem. There's plenty of ice and the right metals in the asteroid." She paused in thought for a moment. "And if nothing else, we can jump over to Jupiter and get helium-three."
"Which is?" Harry blankly said.
"It's a non-radioactive isotope, good for nuclear fusion. It's probably the best choice for powering the ship in the long run," Hermione admitted.
"We still can't make heads or tails of the ship's actual preferred fuel," Lee added. "As far as we can tell, it's something we haven't even discovered, yet. From what Zach can tell with the instruments, I doubt we can find any of it in our solar system." He shrugged. "That might be why they abandoned the ship, here. They couldn't get the right fuel, and didn't have the time to cobble together something that would do the job, so they just left."
Hermione nodded, "And probably intended to come back later, but something else prevented that."
"That might be why we can't find an armoury, they emptied it before leaving," Lee suggested.
"Well . . . let's do what we can do the easiest for now," Harry said. "We'll worry about more powerful fuels later. So, Hermione, Lee, see what you can do to get us a power surplus. Angel? See if there's anything in the ship's systems about transporting on and off the ship. Everyone else? Ten inches on what you want made with the . . . replicator . . . and why."
"Aye, aye, captain!" came the happy chorus of responses, and everyone began to file out. Some might even have been headed for bed!
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Author's Note: Sodium, lithium, and potassium free hydrogen from water, but are slowly consumed in the reaction as they make sulfates. Iridium, platinum, or ruthenium are catalysts, and free hydrogen and oxygen from water with electricity. A catalyst gel, based on iron, cobalt, nickel, and tungsten, was announced in 2017. All these elements are found in the typical carbonaceous asteroid in the asteroid belt. Yeah, the percentages are low (ranging from three percent to less than a hundredth of a percent. But when a kilometre-sized asteroid masses about 700 million tons, a tenth of a percent is hundreds of thousands of tonnes — more than all that has been mined in all of history, in total, on Earth. ( /robby-berman/researchers-announce-breakthrough-in-separating-hydrogen-from-h2o & science/article/pii/S0016703718304095)