Ch. 23 — A Workable Cure?
Monday was a day of surprises, both fortunate and not. As expected, an unusual number of students made it into D.A.D.A. with an Exceeds Expectations or Outstanding. The ministry's summer hols program had been a rousing success — Sirius had made sure that the Ministry included the muggle-born students who weren't in the crew.
Neville was disappointed not to make Transfigurations, but delighted he easily made it into Herbology.
As soon as it was cleared for use by Lee and Hermione, Harry was sure Neville would be using one of the test-ships as a shuttle to the greenhouses at Uranus Station, incorporating all the plants he hadn't already established. That each of the greenhouses at the station was bigger than all four greenhouses at Hogwarts made that a decent amount of work to take care of the plants for any werewolves or muggle-borns who wanted out of England — or anywhere else.
Two of their older muggle-born recruits from Enterprise had already moved to the station full-time, with their wives. Two other recruits, with N.E.W.T.s in potions, had also moved to the station and were carefully monitoring the plants for use in their on-station lab. Currently, they were working with ingredients purchased and brought to the station for the potions they were making for the crew to use.
That this allowed someone to be on hand to watch over the prisoners, just in case, was a nice bonus.
It was a pleasant surprise discovering that with Professor Slughorn teaching Potions, instead of Defence as Harry had thought, Harry could take Potions. On the downside was that he didn't have a book or supplies for the subject. He had assumed Snape would be the professor, and he hadn't scored well enough for the class with only an Exceeds Expectations.
The downside was having Snape as the Defence instructor. Harry left that class fuming at the wizard's attitude towards him. He couldn't help but wonder why he bothered. Getting a message from the Headmaster that he was to meet him this Saturday at eight PM did not lift his spirits. That just reminded him that he had a Dark Lord out to kill him for reasons he didn't know.
He should move onto the Requirement and just stay there. He had completed his O.W.L.s and didn't have to stay at Hogwarts. Staying on the ship took care of where he would live, and eliminated any need to worry about Death Eaters or their ilk bothering him. How would they even get to him? As far as the wizarding world would be concerned, he would just . . . disappear.
While he hadn't really been a science-fiction fan, the ability to explore space was just . . . fascinating. Plus, according to the ship's library, there were millions — if not billions — of planets that had life on them. In fact, now that he thought about it, there was nothing that said he couldn't help all those magical species that the wizards discriminated against and bullied find a new home! One in which wizards would never bother them.
All he had to do was make sure the planet had enough magic to support them.
He had originally wanted to be an auror, like his father had been working towards before they had had to go into hiding. But now it seemed like a much better goal to assure other species had as good a life as the wizards! Now that was a goal worth working towards.
Not to mention that looking for wizards who wanted to kill him seemed a little — counterintuitive?
However, discouraging his disappearance was that as long as he was in the castle the professors paid more attention to him than they did to the rest of the D.S.F.S. Requirement's crew, combined. If he wasn't around, the professor's attention would wander to the others, and questions would undoubtedly arise as to where they were disappearing to so regularly.
He didn't feel right putting his crew in jeopardy just because he was unhappy. But that didn't mean he couldn't plan for the future!
He spent the open period, and lunch afterwards, trying to figure out what he would need to do. First, of course, was having Uranus Station build a ship for him that could make the interstellar round-trip so he could examine the planets for prospects. He didn't want a planet that had someone there already!
While that was being built, though, he needed to go through the ship's library for planet candidates that would be most suitable for the various species in the wizarding world. He would need Angel's help to search the library and match the planets to the species. He was sure the Merpeople would want an ocean world, but he would need to talk to them to be sure. The same for the Centaurs. Plus, who knew what kind of world the Goblins would like? Giants and Trolls were another problem. Getting one of them to listen to him would be well-nigh impossible. It would probably be simpler just to take them, a tribe at time, to the kind of mountainous terrain they liked.
Once he found a proper world, how would he get them there? He shuddered to think about the problems of getting a dragon to cooperate! Or Giants and Trolls.
Well, Firenze being in the castle would be a big help. Getting gillyweed from the potions store in Diagon Alley would be simple. The problem with the Goblins would be getting them to answer him at all! On the other hand, Professor Flitwick might be able to help him . . ..
Then lunch was over and he and Hermione were off to potions class. Which, for the very first time since he had arrived at Hogwarts, was actually interesting! Him coming out of the class with a vial of Felix Felicis was a totally unexpected outcome. That Hermione was upset he was using a borrowed book with hand-written corrections was the only thing that wasn't a surprise.
Ron, however, had another outlook, which he shared at dinner. He stared over at the Slytherin table, where Draco's absence was clear. As were a significant number of the seventh-year students. Notably, they were the ones who had bandied about their pure-blood superiority last year, sneered at everyone who wasn't a pure-blood, and tended to shoot spells at people's back.
"If dad had had a sip of that, he wouldn't have ended up in the hospital." He looked over at Harry and Hermione. "It's really hard lines that the replicator can't do potions." He nodded at Harry, "Felix Felicis would go a long way to keeping our people safe on missions, wouldn't it?"
Harry slowly nodded. "But none of us have the time to do it, ourselves, even if one of us is certainly skilled enough to do it." He nodded his head sideways at Hermione, who blushed. He stared at the Headmaster's table. "But there is someone," he said slowly as he looked at the other two, then back to the Head Table, "who we might be able to pay to get us a reasonable quantity."
As if he felt their eyes on him, Professor Slughorn looked over at the trio. After a brief pause, he smiled and raised his cup to Harry.
Harry quickly returned the smile and lifted his own. Yes, perhaps they could make a deal. And if Slughorn didn't have the time, he probably knew someone who was talented enough to brew the potion, and did have the time.
All they needed to do was come up with something to pay him with. Gold bars were right out, the number would be a bit higher than the single-at-a-time that they wanted to pay out. The Goblins had made that clear.
On the other hand . . ..
He turned to his left. "Hermione," he said, "Lee had told me that the Room of Lost Things has trunks of gems and other valuables."
She raised her eyebrows as she turned her head.
"Couldn't we use the replicator to make dupes? Remove any curses they might have? Instead of paying Slughorn gold, we could use those. The scans the Goblins would make would always return them as 'real' gems because of the natural occlusions," he explained. "I'm sure a trunk of gems would certainly get his attention!"
She had a thoughtful expression that rapidly changed to excited. "Yes, yes, that would work! And we wouldn't have to have the twins go into the muggle world to buy the gems!"
Harry smirked, "Plus, there are sure to be rare books hidden away, there. With a few reparos, they would look as good as new."
Her eyes almost glittered at the prospect.
"The replicator would let us make extra copies for Slughorn to use as gifts," he continued. "In fact, we could probably use magic to find the rare volumes with the wave of a wand instead of searching for them, right?"
She was nodding, too excited to say anything.
"The same should be true for the gems," he concluded.
She was ready to charge out of the Hall, already.
Hmm. Speaking of the Goblins and the Room of Lost Things, perhaps they should collect all the Goblin-made items and return them to the Goblins? It wouldn't hurt the crew any, and it might do a little to soothe over their relationship with the Goblins. He'd suggest that while they were heading to the Room, which should be any moment now, from the way Hermione was staring that door, chewing her lower lip in concentration. She was probably already thinking of how to word what they wanted done.
It was remarkably easy. They rushed to the Room, and arrived first before anyone else from the crew showed up. Hermione walked back and forth the three times, and squealed with joy at the result when she and Harry went inside.
Ron stayed outside to ask the others to wait a few minutes when they arrived.
Instead of the Room of Lost Things as he had been expecting, Harry saw a trunk-load of gems, and several piles of knives, daggers, swords, bracelets, circlets, and other jewellery festooned with gems.
"I asked for a room that only had the lost and abandoned gems or items with gems that were in the Room of Lost Things," Hermione said to his inquiring look.
They quickly separated the items into two piles. One pile had curses on them, and the other with either no spells on them or the spells were benevolent. A few minutes later, and with the help of liberal shrinking charms, they had two trunks filled and closed.
They exited the room with the trunks and headed for the replicator room onboard the Requirement. It would take several days to duplicate everything, as they had to do each item one at a time. They didn't want the Goblins to notice that certain batches of gems were always identical. This way, though time-consuming, would give them much better control over what they made, and when.
When they were done, they would sell the cursed gems to some of the shadier dealers in the magical districts in Paris and Sofia. Let them deal with removing the curses.
Then they went back to the Room, and this time acquired a huge stack of books, which they similarly stored on the ship, before returning and getting the Goblin-made items.
Those would be done with quickly. Those duplicates could be sold to the used-goods stores for galleons. No one would ever notice that that particular book, circlet, knife, or dagger had a dozen identical copies at different shops across the world. Plus, only the Goblins had the Goblin-made items with their attendant magics. The other items looked the same, but had no magic!
The argument over the "Half-Blood Prince" Potions book took a bit longer to hash out.
By the end of the week, Harry had convinced both Ron and Hermione that whomever it was that had made the corrections to his book, they were a genius and it would be a terrible mistake to ignore the improvements. Thus, it was that the trio planned to spend Saturday carefully copying the notes into their own books — Harry had replicated Hermione's book so he had a clean copy. Using engorgio on their books would make it an easy matter to copy the text without straining to write tiny, yet have readable text in their books. That way, at least, their notes, unlike the Half-Bood Prince's, were easily legible.
After only a little discussion, they decided to share the corrections with Ernie Macmillan, Michael Corner, Padma Patil, and Terry Boot, the other four crewmembers in the class. Whether one of the three Ravenclaws would want to share the potion improvements with Stephen Cornfoot was up to them.
The two Slytherins, Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass, were not going to get any help from them! Those two hadn't participated in most of the abuses last year, but neither had they objected. Plus, they still considered muggles and muggle-borns as beneath their notice.
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That Friday evening, after his history lesson with Headmaster Dumbledore and on the way to his Common Room, Harry was at a bit of a loss. He had been expecting something more than what he had been given. He had been expecting lessons on duelling, ways to survive an encounter with the evil wizard.
Instead, he had seen Tom Riddle's mother, grandfather, and uncle.
He wondered what Draco would have said on seeing those three pure-bloods. They were so disdainful of muggles and proud of their heritage, and yet they lived in such squalor. They clearly suffered from inbreeding, with a near-squib daughter and a mad son.
But their near-squib daughter had a son by a magic-less muggle — a son who was one of the most powerful wizards in almost fifty years!
That would have made the ponce's head spin like a top thinking about the implications of magicals marrying muggles.
Harry did recognize both the ring and the locket, however. As Hermione had said, the locket was a personal item from a Hogwarts' founder. As were the goblet and diadem. And now he knew why the ring had been included. It hadn't belonged to a founder, but to his family, the Gaunts. And the diary had been Tom's personal possession.
That made five items.
The Goblins had said that they knew of two more.
One had to be Voldemort, Tom Riddle, the original source of the possessed items. How he had managed to get his hands on those heirlooms was a mystery, but obviously he had tracked them down. There could be no doubts as to his persuasiveness, charm, and intelligence.
The other was the sixth item. Unfortunately, they had no idea what it was. Unless . . .
There had been a snake in the graveyard at the end of the Triwizard, and Mr. Weasley had been attacked by a snake. . . could the last item be a snake? Considering Tom's appearance, and the Gaunts' attraction to snakes, that was beginning to look more and more plausible.
He would have to tell the twins to keep an eye out for a large snake while piloting their drones through the safe houses. If they saw it, they should immediately portkey it to the Requirement's outside hull. He doubted the snake had a portkey, and it absolutely couldn't apparate. It wouldn't survive long in space, and, unlike a person, he wouldn't lose any sleep over it dying.
In fact, maybe they should make it a double portkey. Place a small satellite just outside the ship and portkey-drone it there, with another portkey on that satellite that would immediately portkey it again towards another satellite in geosynchronous orbit above them. It would never get there, of course, the portkey would stall out partway there. Then, if the snake had a portkey attached to it by Voldemort, the second jump would leave it well beyond the reach of a safe return to its master. Blimey! If he really wanted to be paranoid, they could make it a triple-portkey to go even farther away.
Yes, that sounded like a good solution. He'd run it by Hermione for her to find any mistakes.
Once they destroyed that, Tom would be mortal once more. If he died, it would be permanent.
He couldn't help but feel optimistic at this revelation. Hermione would be delighted to hear his conclusions.
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After curfew, Harry stood on the Bridge, again, and looked at the magnificent view of the England and Ireland out the windows. Luna had her artist's easel up and the outlines of the view were already slowly appearing. Like the other paintings she had done, it was a close view, with the moon lightly drawn in at the edge. It would be a week or two before the moon was actually in a position to be seen at the very edges of the painting, as it made its way behind the Earth on one side, then reappeared at the other after a suitable time, but she was patient.
Now that the ship was so close to the Earth, Harry's visions and headache were still a problem. After all, six hundred miles was less than the distance from London to Hogwarts, so if he could see a vision from Tom at Hogwarts, he could see it from here. It was all very disappointing.
Moving the whole ship for his convenience was simply not going to happen, too many of the crew were going back and forth with apparition and by house-elf. That, and the medical teams hitting up the hospitals needed the ship within a reasonable distance for the medical problem-solvers to work — unless they could somehow put a replicator or ship's systems unit on the ground? They could make a small ship with only the absolutely necessary equipment and park it underwater beside the Isle of Man. Stripped down like that, it would be considerably smaller than Hogwarts, possibly not much bigger than Grimmauld Place.
He would mention it to Hermione and Lee after the test-ships were completed, and see what they thought.
As for getting a good night's sleep, he wondered if he should ask Lee to find a small spaceship equivalent of a camper van. He could park it here on top of the ship and scoot to the moon for a restful sleep. The transit time wouldn't be any longer than having Dobby or Winky pop him to it, and a few seconds more travel time for the pre-plotted course.
"If we send the signal, it'll be five hours before we know what happened to the test ship," Hermione said. "I suggest we move the ship and do it from Uranus."
"Is everyone on-board who wants to be?" He knew everyone from Hogwarts was.
"I think so," she said, nodding.
Harry nodded, and tapped his comm-link. "Captain to crew not on the ship. We will be moving to Uranus shortly. Anyone not on-board who wants to join us, respond now. We will wait for you to get aboard. If no one responds, we'll leave as soon as the Requirement door disappears."
He was met with silence, at first, then the few non-Hogwarts crewmembers checked in, saying they weren't interested.
Five minutes after his announcement, they were at Uranus.
"I had the station build five ships, just in case," Lee said. "But I think we've got this."
"The problem was trying to micromanage everything," Hermione said. "After all, I doubt the aliens had a fusion reactor running the entire time it was in a ship, even when it was simply parked somewhere and not in use."
"We'll pretend someone is starting the test-ship after being away for some reason. The routines are there, you know," Lee said.
Hermione moved a control on the console. "Shutting down the hydrogen-converter and switching to battery. Test ship is now running on battery," Hermione said. "Initiating full-power on the ship, as if someone had just come aboard." She waited a moment. "All systems appear functional and in normal operational ranges. Battery discharge nominal." She looked over at Lee, who nodded, and then at Harry. "Captain?"
He nodded. "Do it."
"Initiating ship auto-start routine on test ship. Reactor power-up routine engaged," she said. "Protective shield-fields stable. Pressure building. Fuel flow starting. Reaction beginning. Fuel flow stable. Power generation coming online. Power generation stable, fuel flow stable. Fusion Reactor stable." She stopped a moment. "Everything . . . appears operational." She turned and grinned at Harry. "Test ship is ready for operation."
He looked over at Cho, and then Zack. "Can you load a piloting routine to take the ship to Saturn and back?"
They looked at each other. "Shouldn't be too difficult," Cho said. "We can just copy the routines we have already and set-up an auto-pilot routine."
"Let's give that a try, then." Harry turned back to Lee and Hermione, who had side-by-side consoles this time. "Let's try doing the other four."
"We can send them to Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, and Pluto, as tests," Marietta said. "I'll get started on modifying the Pluto run."
With Zack grumbling at the extra course-plotting, Cho reprimanding him, and Marietta mumbling to herself in the background, they successfully started the fusion-reactors on the other four ships.
Harry frowned as he listened to the others manoeuvring the test ships around in Uranus space while they waited for the auto-pilot routines to be finished so the ships could fly themselves to the other planets and back. "Hermione?" he finally said. "We blew up two ships because of light-speed limitations," he said slowly. "And earlier you said Uranus is two-and-a-half hours away from Earth at light-speed." He studied her curious expression. "Why didn't it take two-and-a-half hours to get here?"
Her expression fell and she started worrying her lower lip with her teeth. "Remember Lee telling you last year about how artificial black holes could be used to move faster-than-light?"
Harry nodded cautiously. He sort-of remembered that conversation.
"Well, as far as we can tell," she glanced at Lee, "The ship is doing a very sophisticated and efficient form of that." She frowned. "It's doing something that really uses up fuel as we come to a stop. I'm not sure what, just yet, but it seems to be something that's almost on the quantum level and tied into the de-molecularizer." She shook her head. "But it requires a lot of power. That's what's chewing up our fuel so fast. Which is why we want to go to using fusion with helium-three."
Harry nodded. "Okay."
He stared out the window while the others worked.
"That's another thing," Harry said, as he frowned and rubbed his scar. "If it takes five hours for a message to go from Earth to Uranus and back, why is it we can instantly communicate with anyone in Hogwarts while we're here?"
She sighed again and glanced at Lee, who was supervising loading the new navigational program into one of the five test ships. "We checked that out. There appears to be a communications repeater built into the door in the Room of Requirement that lets communications go back and forth to the ship as long as the door exists in the Room of Requirement."
"So, whenever we release the Room of Requirement, it'll take a message two and a half hours to reach us? And vice versa?"
She nodded and grimaced. "The ship has a communicator that is faster-than-light, a trans-light communicator, I guess you'd call it. But the comm-links aren't tied into that. And it needs a pretty big antenna."
"We should probably put one in the Hogsmeade meeting room when it's finished," he suggested, "Then hide the actual antenna on one of the mountains near Hogwarts."
She shrugged. "We could put it alongside the Astronomy Tower. We'd just have to be very careful. Maybe replace a column of the blocks used in the wall so no one could see it. Or simply replace a few of the flag poles on the roof, maybe?" Her expression became thoughtful. "Maybe make the whole roof the antenna?"
"Put evaluating what would be best on the to-do list, then. We need a backup communications method."
She nodded her agreement.
"Lee?"
The other looked up from his console.
"It seems rather inconvenient to move the ship every time we catch a Death Eater or three. Is there a smaller ship we could build? One that could securely hold a dozen or two prisoners and transport them that way?"
Lee shrugged. "Just use one of the test-ships after I remodel it to remove the hydrogen converter-generator. As I mentioned before, those are the size of large buses and have plenty of room."
Hermione smirked. "That would work well. Apparate over to the other ship, a quick trip to Uranus, apparate to the Uranus Station, put the Death Eaters into the brigs, and return. Shouldn't take more than an hour, at the most, probably much less."
"Then, let's do that."
"And, Lee? Rather than moving the Requirement to refuel, maybe a tanker?"
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The following week was exciting for some, and tedious for others.
Harry and the other Sixth Years discovered that rather than letting off for the year before the final push for the N.E.W.T.s, sixth year was actually a hard push of revising and integrating everything they had learned so far. Several were wavering on whether or not they should just drop out and go on the ship, full-time, instead. They could do that, now that they had their O.W.L.s. Plus, the magic they were learning wasn't really going to be much use on the ship. It was interesting, yes, but unless they wanted to apply for a high-end job in the wizarding world, those things weren't that useful.
On the other hand, quitting now seemed like the wrong thing to do. It sort-of gave the message that they didn't have the ability to complete a difficult task.
However, working together as a group made things much easier. They decided to divide the workload with two in each of the classes doing the basic assignments, and the others copying the results, with changes to individualize them. This also meant that the best ones for each course were able to explain the things the others missed in class, and the two students concentrating on their specific class didn't have to worry about their slacking on the other courses hurting them.
In the meantime, Lee managed to make a small fleet of Star Wars' X-wing fighters that fired plasma blasts of varying magnitudes, at two hundred and fifty miles an hour, as well as were equipped with powerful lasers capable of instantly punching through yard-thick armour. While the plasma blasts, a mass of million-degree hydrogen gas, could instantly vaporize an unshielded ship, they were completely useless against the shields the X-wings and the Requirement had. The plasma bursts dissipated harmlessly as they skated across the magnetic field-lines of the shields. The lasers, however, could slice and dice a ship regardless of shields — the lasers were, after all, just concentrated bursts of visible light. For the shields to block lasers, they would also have to block the light a pilot needed to see, rendering the ships blind to anything around them.
The same was true of instrument flying. How did you protect the external instruments from being destroyed? Without, again, leaving the pilot blind?
Lee and Hermione were trying to see if they could tweak the shields to block light based on its intensity, like some sunglasses did. Thus, a pilot could see the laser hit his ship's shields, but only a safe percentage of the light would be allowed through. Any light above that limit would be blocked.
Lee rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, the first time I tried a ship out I realized it would take a lot of training to get to point where you could fly one without running into things or blowing yourself up."
Harry could only nod as he stared out the window at the six-by-six formation of ships floating alongside Uranus Station.
"On the other hand," he continued, "you did say you wanted an ample set of examples of the new fusion helium-three reactors installed and running properly." He grinned. "I think I can safely say that forty trials without a single mistake has that sorted."
Harry nodded again. "How did you get X-wing fighters?" he finally asked.
"Well, it was either the Star Wars' X-wings or Battlestar Galactica's Vipers. I thought the X-wings looked cooler. I just found a book in a muggle bookstore about the spaceships used in Star Wars, fed the replicator the schematics, and let the Library put together what I wanted. Once it had the dimensions, it was just a matter of filling in the blank spots with what it knew had to be on the ship. The lasers and plasma guns were the same. The Library just calculated what had to happen, then designed something to do that. Then fed everything back to the replicator."
He frowned. "There was something odd, though. After I put in the dimensions, the replicator asked if I wanted the ship to be able to be shipped through something it called a stargate. Apparently, they have a technology that lets you put one of these gate-things either on a planet or in space, and then travel directly to another stargate no matter where it is." He looked at Harry and raised his eyebrows. "You could actually walk through a gate on Earth, say, and step out onto another planet far away, in another star system." He shrugged. "Anyway, I said yes. Never know if it will come in handy." He frowned. "It did alter some of the dimensions, made the ships a bit smaller with folding wings, but there wasn't any loss of functionality."
Harry frowned. "Could we use one of those Gates to go from Hogwarts to the ship, you think?"
"Maybe," Lee said hesitantly. Then his expression cleared. "Anyway, I handed what I knew over to Angel for her team. I'm sure they'll come up with something right quick."
Harry nodded. Angel would tell him, in time, what they had discovered.
"Well, that's the background, what I really want to show you is this way."
A few minutes' walk brought them to a large room that had a dozen small car-sized boxes lining the walls. Lee led him to one and opened the door. Inside was a seat with a bewildering array of buttons, switches, and lights in front of it. "Get in," he said, motioning Harry inside.
Gingerly, Harry sat in the seat.
"Wait a moment, and I'll be right with you," Lee said, closing the door.
For a second it was dark, then suddenly he was seated in the cockpit of one of the x-wing fighters he had seen outside the station. Through the windows around him he could see the other ships drifting beside him. Then he saw Uranus Station, and the three asteroids they were using for materials, not far off, with the gas giant taking up the rest of his view. For several moments he just stared. If he didn't know he had seated himself inside a box on Uranus Station, he would have thought he was actually in space in a fighter.
"Isn't this ace!" crowed Lee over an intercom. Lee's head and shoulders appeared on a small display to one side.
"It looks so real, right?"
Harry, again, could only nod.
"These are flight simulators for the X-wings! I'll slave yours to mine, just watch. Starting reactor, notice the readouts on you right."
Harry watched as four indicators went from grey in colour to yellow, then faded to green.
"So, the reactor is online. Now if I pull up on the control wheel, we should go straight up out of the formation."
Harry saw a ship to his immediate right, as well as himself, move up against the back drop of the other ships staying still. The ship on his left dropped down as he moved up.
What followed was the most realistic computer game he had ever seen. Lee even demonstrated the plasma and lasers against one of the asteroids they were mining for materials.
As they were walking back to the Uranus Station command deck, Lee said, "Those X-wing fighters are a lot more complicated than I thought they would be. Fortunately, the station's system was able to put together a flight-manual." He pulled a small book out of his pocket that he unshrunk to something almost as thick as Hermione's Hogwarts: A History book. "Still, those trainer units will do nearly as well as actually flying an X-wing for most of us."
He gave Harry a sly grin. "I know a few of my muggle friends would sell their mothers to play in one of those." He smirked. "I'm thinking we should put a few in commercial arcades to see what happens. Go through some of the film they've got of World War II air battles and let the computer in the simulator synthesize something appropriate for a space battle."
Harry had to smirk in return. "My cousin would be spending quids non-stop in one of those." He took another look out the window, and shook his head.
"It'd be a great way to find natural pilots, too." Lee waggled his eyebrows and smirked.
Harry just wryly shook his head. He knew that Lee was referring to The Last Starfighter movie.
"Ready?" Lee asked, holding out his arm for the side-along. Less than a minute later they were in one of the Runabouts, as the test-ships had been rechristened. Then it was a simple, quick return to the Requirement at Earth.
Looking at the ship as they approached, Harry frowned and said, "Does the replicator have the patterns for the fuel the ship normally uses?"
Lee looked at him curiously, "I think so."
"Why can't we use the replicator to . . . replicate it?"
Lee was silent a moment. "Because it would take, like, a thousand tonnes of helium-three to make a pound of the fuel."
Harry blinked a moment. "So? Aren't there quadrillions of tonnes of helium-three on Uranus?* And the ship only needs a few thousand tonnes of fuel, right? There should be enough Helium-three for a few million refuels, right?"
Lee stared at him. "Yes?" he said uncertainly as he thought about it.
"So, why not build a refinery that mines helium-three and uses it to make our fuel?"
"Time?" he said uncertainly. "It would take a long time to create the fuel?" He frowned in thought.
Harry shrugged. "We're not exactly on a schedule here, are we?"
Lee blinked at him. Finally, he said, softly and with a frown, "Let me check my notes."
Harry nodded.
Lee shook his head, as if he wanted to clear his thoughts. "But, first, I'll make that special replicator-unit for the medical units."
"Brilliant! I meant to ask how that project is going." Harry smiled widely.
"The only thing we'll need to do is refuel it once a year. But there is the problem of where to place it," Lee cautioned. "The most central place would be right below us, north of the Isle of Man and south of Scotland. But the U.K. and Ireland are part of the European continental shelf, and that's rarely more than three hundred feet deep. Someone is bound to notice anything we put down there that's nearly a hundred feet in height, especially because it's so rectangular."
Harry shrugged. "It has a range of ten thousand miles. We can put it anywhere we want. Why not hollow out a space in one of the mountains around Hogwarts? That would hide it from the muggles rather effectively, and no wizard would ever suspect something so muggle so close to Hogwarts."
"That would work," Lee said, nodding his head and raising his eyebrows. "Plus, we could make that our trans-light communicator." He nodded, musing.
"I'm sure you and Hermione can come up with a good place for it," Harry said.
Minutes later Harry was piloting his modified Runabout into orbit fifty thousand miles up, well out of reach of any dark visions sent by Tom Riddle. He was looking forward to an easy night's sleep.
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A.N. * Elemental hydrogen and helium on Uranus only account for about 0.5 to 1.5 earth masses (5.972 × 10^24 kg). Helium atoms per hydrogen atoms is about 0.262 ((5.972 × 10^24) x 0.262 = 1.55 x 10^24kg). Ratio of Helium-3 to normal Helium-4 is 1:10,000 ((1.55 x 10^24) / 10^4 = 1.55 x 10^20 kg, or 1.55 x 10^17 metric tonnes, plus or minus 50%. So, about a probable range of 77-232 quadrillion tonnes. Only 15.2% of Uranus' atmosphere is helium. Hydrogen is 58%. The remainder is methane and other gases.
Neptune has approximately the same amount of helium-three as Uranus.