Ch. 5 — Gold! Gold! Glorious Gold!
Harry stared impassively at the pile of Fire Bolt's for a long, silent moment. The others in the Conjurator Room, as it had been named, fidgeted nervously. Ron and the twins fidgeted more than everyone else combined.
There were probably a dozen brooms he could see in the stack, no, pile, to one side of the platform. And they all were, apparently, exact carbon-copies of his very own Fire Bolt.
Which was supposed to be in his room, in his trunk, in Gryffindor House, in Hogwarts, in Scotland. Hidden under both a notice-me-not and an illusion after Dobby had retrieved it for him — Dobby had left an illusioned, but real, broom from the Room of Hidden Things to keep the Toad appeased.
It was most definitely not supposed to be on the ship's replicator platform.
"Okay," he said, and pushed his glasses higher up on his nose. He continued to stare at the pile of state-of-the-art racing brooms in front of him. "Okay. What did we learn here?" he said dryly.
Hermione's hand shot up. "Duplicating magical objects doesn't duplicate the charms on them," she said primly.
"Ah," Harry said, nodding widely. "So, what we have here is . . . a dozen or so useless broom copies. Worthless copies," he said. He sighed quietly and held out his hand over the pile. "Up," he firmly commanded. Nothing happened, except his own broom on the replicator platform twitched. He glanced at and held his hand over the replicator platform. "Up" he again ordered. The broom immediately slapped into his hand. He studied it closely for a moment, then rested it against his shoulder. "You know," he said conversationally, "if this was a muggle sailing ship from the eighteen hundred's, I'd be justified in flogging the lot of you."
"Ehehe — sorry?" Ron nervously said. "You can't really blame us, though, can you?" he said hopefully.
"If you would've asked, I would've been more than happy to lend you my broom for your use," Harry said flatly. "But you didn't. Ask. How did you even get it up here?"
"We, uh . . . used your Invisibility Cloak?" Fred said. All three miscreants winced in unison.
Harry smiled. From everyone's reaction, it wasn't a nice smile. "My . . . invisibility . . . Cloak." He paused. "I see."
Ron — who held the Cloak as far away from himself as he could, as if expecting it to blow up at any moment — handed it back to him. Harry accepted it with a wider smile and a nod. "Thank you, Ron. How generous of you. Returning my own stolen property to me. Very nice of you," he said sarcastically.
"Guys," George stage-whispered. "I think he's going to flog us."
"Leg it, guys," someone whispered back and people started shuffling towards the exit. "Retreat, retreat."
"Stay," Harry commanded — and everyone froze, some in mid-step with one foot raised. He shook his head and turned to Hermione and Lee. "Why didn't the conjurator duplicate the charms? It can make active command stones, can't it?"
"Magic is not a material. Maybe it's like light, in that respect, an energy. And we can't duplicate energy." Hermione shrugged. "The command stones are, after all, just machines with power sources that are inert until used. And duplicating doesn't prevent natural chemical or nuclear reactions, so the stones never seem to lose power during replication." Her voice entered lecture-mode. "Spells are different — they're energy without a material component, a power source, or anything like that." She nodded to the pile of inert brooms. "So, there was nothing for the conjurator to see to scan in the original, and therefore it couldn't replicate it. Thus, the magical properties imbued in the magical wood used for the stick and twigs can't be duplicated, so the brooms are . . . fake magical brooms. And the wood isn't quite exactly like the original wood, — we're apparently not carrying a stock of every element, as we had thought. Even if the conjurator could do spells, the spells are specialized at the factory to each broom, so these copies probably wouldn't work right because the material wouldn't be exactly right."
"Hmm. So, fake brooms." Harry tilted his head inquisitively and pursed his lips. "And what if we gave it the right wood to work with?"
"Well . . . possibly. But it still can't do the magcal properties or spells," Lee answered, "So, still no workable brooms."
People exchanged looks and tentatively started to relax.
Harry nodded "Okay. I see." He stared at the massive machine for a moment. "We can teach it object patterns," he mused softly. He turned to Lee. "Why not spell patterns?"
"Because . . . magic?" Lee asked, confused.
"No," Hermione said. "I see where you're going." She sighed. "It's not like that — spells are organic, magic is organic. We don't just use it, we produce it. A machine, even one as advanced as this one, can't do that." She stared at the machine.
"For example, if we duplicated you with this, it would deliver us an exact copy — but no soul. It would be a complete blank. The body would be there, but it might as well be dead."
More than just a few shuddered at that matter-of-fact statement. It sounded too much like the dementors they had faced two years ago.
"In fact," she continued, "the heart probably wouldn't even be beating, because the machine can't copy an action. It assumes the object is not moving or working. The heart might start on its own, but I'm not sure." She frowned at the machine.
"But . . ." she made a thoughtful hum. "There is a chance we can do a technological knock off of the brooms."
"Hmm?" Harry said
"Well . . . we tell the machine what we want, and let it build up its own tech version of a broom," Hermione said thoughtfully. "The systems here are ridiculously smart — and ridiculously powerful. If we tell one to come up with a design for a flying broom, I think it could do it. It probably would just be tech and circuitry, and most likely metal, but it would work — just not exactly like the brooms we know and use."
"Hm," Harry said, and then shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to try, I guess."
"So we . . . can make brooms?" Ron asked hopefully.
"And you're not mad at us?" Fred asked.
"Oh, I'm still hacked off," Harry said smiling grimly. "You prats. You three are up as my duelling opponents at the next D.A. session. It's going to be so much fun," he said gleefully, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
"Oh, bollocks," Fred muttered. "Well, it's not flogging."
"Isn't it?" George objected in dismay. "Are you sure? I mean, what's the difference?"
Some of the group chuckled at that.
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Since its discovery, the conjurator had been in steady use. The things they made first, after the fuel-converter and generator, of course, had been relatively simple — they now had an unlimited supply of parchments, quills, potion phials, and all the other general supplies they needed at Hogwarts. Then they'd moved on to other things — some of them personal, some not.
Colin, Dennis, and Justin had brought out their muggle hygiene products which couldn't be purchased in Hogsmeade. After that, a lot of the girls had duplicated their hygiene products, which seemed to make them very happy. Then several of the girls had banded together and set up a black-market in those products for the rest of the Hogwarts population that didn't have access to a conjurator.
They were actually making a pretty good amount of galleons, Harry heard, even though they were selling stuff for sickles.
Hermione, Harry was pretty sure, was steadily copying the entire Hogwarts Library. In one of the larger unused rooms on board the Requirement there were now bookshelves, crammed with books.
And the twins had established a partnership with Peeves, and were supplying him with duplicates of all the non-magical prank items they had in their inventory. And Dobby was acting as their go-between at Gambol and Japes, in Diagon Ally, to retrieve originals of the items they hadn't had.
And so forth.
The Pink Toad waddled away rapidly at the very hint that Peeves might be around.
The Fire Bolt incident brought the point home that the magic on things couldn't be duplicated, only the solid, physical components. However, just to nail it in further, Harry had one of the dozen inert copies prominently mounted in the Conjurator Room, and the rest on the ship's walls at key points, such as the elevators, as a reminder. Ron, Fred, and George winced whenever they walked past one.
"You're not actually mad at them, are you?" Hermione asked while she worked on a holographic display of some bit of machinery she was trying to replicate.
He looked up from his charms' assignment. "Well, not as such. I would've done the same thing, if I had thought of it first. It's just that they ransacked my trunk, stole my broom and my Invisibility Cloak . . ." Harry shrugged, and sighed. "How's it coming along?"
"Well," she fiddled with a control and something in the display changed. "There are several methods in the library that allow for flight. For example," she glanced at him, then returned to the display. "I could make, right now, a hover-pallet, which could transport up to four tons almost weightlessly." She shook her head sideways. "Making it into a broom, though . . .." Hermione sighed and folded her arms. She frowned at the glowing patterns in front of her. "The problem is elevation," she said. "And propulsion." She nodded. "The pallets use a sort of electromagnetic cushion — they work only at a certain distance from the ground. Plus, you have to manually move them. There are propulsion mechanisms here, too, but . . . well." She sighed dejectedly. "Those would involve actual engines."
"Electromagnetic cushion?" Harry asked, then quickly held up his hand. "No, please, don't explain." He thought a moment. "At what distance from the ground do they work?" he asked curiously.
Hermione considered it, and then held her hand at waist level. "About here. The general types, at least," she said. "It really depends on the generator output," she continued. "The electromagnetic cushion can be made thinner, of course. So thin it almost touches the ground, in fact."
Harry watched her for a long moment as she adjusted a control. "That . . . sounds familiar," he said and frowned. "Something from a movie . . .. It was one of Dudley's favourites and he played it almost every day for a while, there. Something about . . . being stuck hovering on water?"
Hermione looked at him, blinked, and then her eyes widened. "Hoverboards," she whispered almost reverently, and then began rapidly working again. Harry watched her for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders, and left her to it. He still had to finish that essay.
Then there was the Christmas Hogsmeade weekend before the last day of term, which was on the following Friday. Naturally, people brought their purchases to the Requirement. They suddenly had a brewery's worth of butterbeer, and several tons of sweets and snacks, before Hermione and Lee put an end to it.
"No more. We're running out of the harder to get materials and it's using up power," Lee said. Hermione, with her crossed arms and dark expression, showed she supported him completely.
"I thought we fixed the power situation, already?" Harry said.
"Well, we did. It's just that using the hydrogen and oxygen fuel . . . they're just so much weaker than what the ship's supposed to have — we're going through them faster," Hermione explained. "And the conjurator uses a lot of power. And the material usage is a much bigger issue. The ship has materials stored just for the conjurator, and we're using up the rare materials at a ridiculous rate."
"So, we just need to replenish, right?" Lavender said as she shrugged. "Aren't we doing that, anyway, with the asteroid? We've been mining it, or . . . beaming it, or whatever it's called, haven't we?" She looked at Hermione inquisitively.
"No. I mean, well, yes, we have," Lee said. "But we don't get all the materials we need from an asteroid." He paused. "Not this one anyway."
"We need to either move or figure out another way to replenish materials," Hermione said.
"Like what, carry them inside from Hogwarts?" Fred asked thoughtfully.
"Seems a bit of a waste, when we can mine asteroids," Harry said. "I guess it's time to find another asteroid. One with better resources." He looked around the room.
"Can we find one with gold on it?" Ron asked. Hermione slapped him soundly on the back of the head.
"Hermione, Lee — check out what we need. Zach," Harry turned to Zacharias Smith. "Can you go over the maps, see what asteroids have what?"
"Yeah, sure," the Hufflepuff said sourly. "It's not like it's a difficult task or anything, what with the map only having the close asteroids fully scanned, and the majority of the asteroids not even having been mapped, much less scanned in the first place. So, you know, yeah. Piece of cake."
Harry shook his head at him. "Just do what you can."
Then they had a D.A. session. While the rest of the group worked on their shields, dodging, and diversion spells, Harry set up an actual duelling stage. Once it was ready, he turned to Ron, Fred and George. "Let's see how good your teamwork is," he said with a somewhat malicious grin.
"You're gonna duel all three of us, at once?" Ron said nervously, and glanced at the twins.
"Getting a bit cocky, our ship's Captain is," Fred said.
"I think we can take him," said George confidently.
"Well," Ron said, eyeing Harry uneasily. "Maybe?"
Harry grinned at them and took out his wand.
It was great deal of fun — for Harry.
From the very beginning of running the D.A. Harry hadn't just had to teach other people — he'd first had to teach the spells to himself. Plus, know them forwards and backwards before he could teach them to the others. Then, trying to make sure that all his so-called students would be well-prepared for every eventuality, he had had to think in terms of both attack and defence with regard to those spells. More as an attacker, honestly, because trying to figure out a way to go around defences was the best way to figure out how to improve them, he had learned.
And now he wanted to get people to work together as a team — to defend each other as well as themselves. And in order to teach that skill, Harry'd had to consider how to attack a team as a solo fighter.
Fred and George were good at covering each other's backs, but Ron was the odd man out. Harry overwhelmed his shields pretty easily and knocked him off of the duelling stage. Now that he, the weakest link, was out he could concentrate on the twins. He lured them out of their turtle-like shielding by leaving himself open for an attack, or so it seemed. When Fred took the bait, Harry disarmed him and used him to knock George off the stage as well. Sort of a two-for-one special.
One minute was all it took.
"Again," Harry said, and threw Fred's wand back to him.
This time they all went instantly on attack, and Harry put his own shielding, distracting, and parrying lessons into action. A bit of flash and smoke, and he had them separated. Then he managed to push George off the stage. A distraction which was enough for Harry to knock Fred off as well. Which left Ron, who had no leg work to speak of. A moment later, and Harry had him off his feet and his wand in Harry's hand.
"Again," he said, handing the wand back.
It took eight duels before the Weasleys managed to put together enough team work to defend and attack at the same time. Fred, for the most part, shielded, George took offense, and Ron dealt with the distractions Harry hurled at them. It was George who finally managed to knock Harry off the stage with a leg-locker, while Ron dealt with the smoke Harry had conjured and Fred covered all of them with a shield.
The Weasleys were looking a bit ragged and desperate. Their victory seemed to make them even less confident about themselves. "Now we've done it," Ron muttered. "He's gonna kill us now."
"No, that's about enough for now," Harry said with some satisfaction, getting up again. He turned to the rest of the D.A. They were all watching, most of them snacking on their duplicated Hogsmeade goods. Some, he noted approvingly, had taken notes. Others were exchanging galleons. He slapped his hand together. "Okay, let's talk about one on three fights, and why I kept winning and they kept losing."
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They moved the ship the day after, away from the original asteroid to a much bigger one. About fourteen miles across, the new asteroid was almost spherical in shape. It was an m-type asteroid, Hermione told him, rich in metals — almost half of it solid iron. According to the scans it could handily replenish over eighty-percent of their material stores.
"Good job, Zach," Harry said, and looked at the pockmarked surface of the giant asteroid. "This should do nicely."
Zachary nodded and smiled at the praise.
"It doesn't have much water ice, though, so, we'll need to head off to refuel when we're done here," Hermione said.
"We need better fuel," Lee agreed. "Captain, can I put in a vote for a trip to Jupiter? We could get so much better fuel from a gas giant than most anything we can find around here. Much easier too."
Harry hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe. Can we stock up on materials here? As in, get much more than we actually need? What's our capacity, anyway?"
"Generally," Lee said, "the ship carries about thirty tons of raw materials, but it has the capacity for one or two hundred times as much. All we have to do is convert some of the empty rooms, such as the barracks, into store rooms."
Harry looked at him astonished.
Hermione smirked. "You're confusing size with bulk, Harry. A ton of water takes up a cube of about thirty-nine inches — a meter. Two tons is only about forty-seven inches. Ten tons is only about eighty-two inches — barely two meters on a side."
He looked puzzled.
She shook her head. "Harry, going from one ton of water to ten tons only slightly doubles the dimensions of the container. So, the thirty tons of stuff we have stored for the conjurator would easily fit in the space of one of Hogwarts dorm-room beds." She smirked again. "And how many empty rooms do we have that are nearly as big as the Bridge?" she asked rhetorically.
"Oh," he said, stunned. He hadn't realized just how small solid metal was in proportion to its weight. Or mass, rather.
"It's a pity we don't have any sort of hangar bay," Lee murmured. "But," he shrugged, "we could convert over half of the ship to storage and not really lose anything in the process." He looked over at Harry and smirked. "It's not like we have two or three thousand people living here."
"Let's do it, then," Harry said. "Stock up on whatever we can get from here, and then stop at another asteroid where we can get most, if not all, of the rest. Then on to Jupiter." He stopped and looked at Hermione. "Do we have enough fuel for that?" he said, slightly worried they might not.
Hermione slid a few stones on her console, then nodded tentatively. "Just barely. I think I'd like our chances better if we refuelled before heading to Jupiter."
"Then that's what we'll do that," Harry said, rocking on his heels. "Fill up our stores, first, then start using the unused rooms for extra storage." He paused and sighed. "And, uh, get a bit extra of gold if you can, will you? Standard bar-sized, if there is such a thing?"
"Yes sir," Hermione said with an amused smile.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Ron high-five Zach. Harry sighed and ignored them.
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They moved the Requirement to Jupiter the following day, the day before the last day of term and Christmas holidays. The entire group was there.
It was . . . indescribable. The trip from the asteroid belt to the gas giant was unnervingly fast — it took only seconds more than their recent travel from the old asteroid to the metallic one. It was just a smooth rapid slide from one point to another, never mind the enormous gap between them. There was no sensation of motion, just a quick turn from the asteroid, then a tiny dot that grew brighter, and suddenly was rapidly growing larger.
And then . . ..
And then Jupiter was right there. An incredible striped giant just outside the window. It was half in shadow, and the lit-side fairly glowed in the light of the distant sun. Tremendous bands of red, yellow, orange, and beige, with swirling ripples of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
They all just sat and stared for several minutes, drinking it the sight.
"Uh," Lee finally said, "We, uh . . . we need to go in."
"In?" Harry said.
"Well, at least close enough to beam stuff in. Easiest way would be if we would just . . . go in."
"Into the actual planet?" Ron asked, wide eyed,
"Well . . . it's a gas giant," Lee said, "It's really big." He made a haphazard motion at the planet outside their window. "So, uh . . . we need to go . . . into . . . it."
"Can the ship do that?" Harry asked, turning to Hermione. "It looks kind of . . . stormy . . . down there. And . . . corrosive." He stared at the red band uncertainly.
"Well, yes, but the ship can probably handle it," Hermione said. "And if we fix the fuel situation, it can pretty much stay there, indefinitely." She glanced at Cho. "The ship's shields can easily take on any storm Jupiter could throw at us."
Cho nodded in agreement. "Easily," she said. "Though they use up power like nobody's business."
Harry considered what they had said, and looked at the planet. "Do we have to?" said plaintively. "I don't know about you guys, but the idea of going into Jupiter's atmosphere kind of freaks me out. Is there somewhere else we can do this?"
"Well, we can mine from orbit too," Lee said. "It's just a bit harder."
"But safer," Harry said, relaxing a bit.
"And if it is a problem," Hermione added, "we can easily move to Uranus* or Neptune. According to NASA they aren't nearly as stormy, and the lower gravity would make it simpler."
Harry liked that even better. It was always a good idea to have options.
For Lee and Hermione, the rest of their time on board the ship was spent in hurried activity. They worked ceaselessly to set up an automated helium-three "mining" operation. The gathering of helium-three wasn't hard, but they had to rework the power core, again. That meant setting aside the previous hydrogen and oxygen converters and generators, and starting to work on nuclear reactors instead. Which meant they only wanted to make the switch at the last moment. No one was sure how long the batteries would last while they were doing that. Best to get all the power intensive stuff done, first.
"It's obsolete technology for whoever built this ship," Hermione said. "But thank Merlin they still have the patterns stored in the library. Still, we probably should do an off-ship test before putting a nuclear reactor in the ship."
Lee nodded his head rapidly. "Let's not take any chances with that stuff."
"And how do we do an off-ship test?" Harry said cautiously, and as he frowned.
"We replicate the reactor in space," Lee shrugged. "Fuel it up and turn it on remotely. If it doesn't blow up, put it into the ship's Engine Room. If it doesn't work, we repurpose the remains."
"You know what I want to do?" Hermione said while she used the conjurator to create the enormous gas tanks which would eventually hold the gasses they harvested from the gas giant. "I want to put an actual mining platform here. An automated one, hovering or orbiting just on the edge of Jupiter's atmosphere. That way we wouldn't have to worry about fuel in the future — just pop on by Jupiter, re-fuel, and be on our way."
"It would be handy," Lee agreed. "Especially if we ever make new ships."
"Hm. For now, let's fuel ourselves, first," Harry said. "If we don't blow ourselves up, you can start figuring out the mining platform," Harry glanced at Hermione. "Speaking of hovering things, though — how are the hoverboards coming along?"
"What? Oh, I finished those," Hermione said, as she shifted to another console and moved a couple of control stones. A moment later, a skateboardesque device materialised on the conjurator table. "Ta-da!" she cried holding one arm up and pointing with the other. "It doesn't have any power though," she said dropping her arms to her side again.
"Wait, what? You made a hoverboard — and it doesn't have any power?" Lee said. He sounded awed and horrified, both at once.
Hermione shrugged. "I haven't had time to work on the batteries, yet. I figured it was more important to make sure the ship had power, first."
Harry shook his head admiringly. He picked up the hoverboard. "Well, I suppose it can wait," he said as he studied the board. "What's Hogwarts policy on skateboards, anyway?" he said thoughtfully.
Hermione shrugged and smiled. "It doesn't have one. I'm pretty sure wizards don't even know skateboards exist, never mind the possibility of hoverboards."
"If Umbridge finds out, they'll be illegal faster than she can say 'ahem'," Lee muttered darkly. He eyed the hoverboard covetously. "Can I have one, too? Please? Pretty please?" He looked at Hermione with a pleading expression, his hands together as if in prayer,
"I'd wait for a next generation if I were you," Hermione said, amused. "I want to make a version that works in space."
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A.N. * In what is probably a vain attempt to forestall all the jokes regarding Uranus, modern English speakers are horribly mispronouncing the planet's name. Uranus was named after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos, literally "heaven, the sky." According to myth, he was the father of Saturn and the grandfather of Jupiter.
The correct pronunciation, in ancient Greek, is "oh-RAH-nos".
I prefer the Greek.