Prodigal Son 6
It was once again nighttime in Eskendereyya. Hiccup took a seat and let his knees dangle over the sandstone edge of the city's tetrapylon, an enormous archway overlooking the agora, a public gathering place. Hiccup had wandered it during the daytime. It was a fascinating place, always full of discussion and activity. Hiccup had been there not three days ago, discussing religion with a Christian missionary. The man had seemed hell-bent on convincing Hiccup to follow his one God. One! Just one! How could there only be one god?
'God is love' the priest had told him. Apparently the forgiving, all-powerful deity cared for his children. But how that be when such things as disease existed? At least the Norse gods, with their bickering, wars and in-fighting, explained the state of the world. Hiccup often wondered whether or not the world would be better managed if Odin stopped wandering and spent some more time on his throne.
Another man, from Jerusalem, had been trying to raise funds for a ladder to the sky. Had not the Prophet Muhammad had ascended to Heaven during the Mi'raj? Jacob too had seen a ladder, leading straight from heaven to earth. Accordingly heaven must have been a set distance from the ground, so a ladder long enough would surely be able to carry a man up there. Right?
Privately, Hiccup suspected that the quoted stories were more metaphorical than his companion thought. The reality of constructing such an object made the whole idea so much worse. Any ladder secure enough to reach all the way to heaven would have to have an enormous base in order to support its own weight. Instead of wood, it would have to be constructed of the strongest stone to keep itself from collapsing to either side in the wind (although perhaps something could be done with ropes, the way masts were held up on ships). No matter, it was a costly, time-consuming project and Hiccup suspected that the God's wouldn't appreciate mortals suddenly knocking on the doors of Valhalla without an invitation.
All in all, a bad idea.
During one of his exploratory expeditions, Hiccup himself had tried to touch the sky. Yet no matter how high he flew, the stars were always miles away. It got mighty cold up there, and the air got very thin. He had nearly passed out. If it hadn't been for Toothless' insistence that they wouldn't go any further, they both would have suffered horrible deaths.
The dragon was with him now, inspecting the bustling crowds below with his big, round, curious green eyes. An older man in a turban passed under the arch, carrying a bucket of raw red meat with him.
"Stay." Hiccup ordered as Toothless leaned all the way over the side of the sandstone structure until his head was poking out upside down under the archway, watching the man's retreating back. Thankfully no one on the ground noticed.
From his satchel, Hiccup retrieved one of Anton Pandev's broken pulleys. He carefully examined the splintered wooden device, picking the mechanism apart in his mind's eye. He visualized the theoretical repaired pieces, how they were supposed to come together, and how the various forces acting upon the pulley caused it to fail in the first place.
Friction between the rope and the pulley's outer race was negligible. At least for simple systems. There came a point in block and tackle systems where the reduced effort was countered by the sheer amount of friction between the rope and the pulley system.
Pulley systems were similar to levers in that they were a tradeoff between force and distance. Basic pulley systems could halve, even quarter the amount of work required to perform a task whether it was lift a weight, provide tension, or tether a moving object as these were meant to. It didn't matter. Two forces were applied to either end of the line. One force had to overcome the other. One man could lift a load fit for four, but he'd require around four times the distance in rope.
In this case, failure had occurred between the pulley and its axle. Too much friction had resulted in the mechanical system seizing up and cracking. Lubrication was helpful of course, when applied properly. Shahira had told him that she had rubbed wax on the pulley, and she had. She had just applied it to the groove which the rope ran through instead of the contact points between the axle and the wheel.
Toothless the dragon let out a low, curious coo. He nudged the pulley with his nose, sniffing it.
"Yeah, you can smell the fish on it, can't you, buddy?"
Toothless sat on his haunches and fixed Hiccup with an excited look, tongue lolling and black tail wagging.
"Calm down, bud. We'll eat later. Have some patience."
Toothless' tail flopped to the sandstone surface. The dragon fixed him with a scowl. It huffed in annoyance and curled up on the far side of the tetrapylon. He shot Hiccup one last glare then put his tail flap up so he didn't have to look at the boy.
"Oh, quit whining you big baby." Hiccup shook his head and looked down at the pulley, considering the problem. Even if the device had been properly and regularly lubricated, which it hadn't, that wouldn't have solved their problem.
A different system was needed. A new solution.
Hiccup set the pulley down beside him and clasped his hands on his thighs, watching the crowds ebb and flow beneath him. Several carts rolled by, bouncing down the cobbled street. He watched their wheels turn, visualizing the system. Wheel and Axle…
Not entirely applicable, since the axle on the cart was actually fixed to the wheel. It was a different system.
Yet Hiccup's gut was telling him that the answer was in there somewhere. Friction was the problem. And wheels were so effective because they rolled instead of sliding, thus negating friction between the load and the surface it needed to travel across.
Round objects handled compressive forces differently. That was the secret behind Roman arches. Once, on a bet with a priest, Hiccup had used four eggs to support a thick copy of the Bible. Members of the priest's congregation promptly accused him of sorcery and chased him away with pitchforks and torches. In retrospect it was a good thing he had not told them about toothless. Still, there was strength concealed in the shape of a circle. Load bearing and minimal friction…
He began to search the street scene for other circles. Other examples. A shopkeeper's fruit stand yielded no answers. A few more carts trundled by, but Hiccup's gaze fell upon a group of children, who had set up a game of marbles in a narrow doorway near the base of the arch. He watched the small globes roll across the mat, impacting one another.
At that very moment, the curtain opened and a scribe carrying an armful of scrolls stepped out onto the street. His feet slid on the marbles, upsetting the children's game and more importantly sending him flying. His scrolls scattered across the causeway. One of them rolled open in the middle of the street, revealing a map of Eskendereyya with several important landmarks circled on it, including the Pharos lighthouse. The Scribe dove for it and scooped it up in his arms. A crowd gathered immediately, helping him back to his feet. A few stern-looking adults chased the children away while others delivered the poor man's other scrolls back to him. The harried Scribe thanked them and hurried away towards the docks.
But Hiccup's mind was elsewhere as he replayed the image. The marbles had rolled under the scribe's feet. They had taken the compressive force of his weight, and rolled easily with the motion.
That was the secret! Put the wheel inside the pulley!
He leapt to his feet. "C'mon bud! I gotta get back to the forge!"
The dragon let out an impudent huff.
Hiccup sighed. "And we'll grab some fish for you on the way."
Yanick Erwan arrived at his smithy early the following morning to find that the furnace was already lit. He stepped behind the curtain which separated the forge from the storefront. Alan was standing at the counter, looking thoroughly put-out.
"Yanick." The apprentice said. "Hiccup booted me out of the forge."
"I'm amazed y1ou wanted to be in there in the first place." Yanick replied evenly. "All those 'grandma's funerals' you've had."
Alan opened and shut his mouth several times. "Sorry." He managed lamely.
"Sure you are." Yanick strode past him into the forge. The room was a mess. Tools were strewn across every available surface. The fire in the forge was going, but no one was working the bellows. Hiccup was sitting at his bench. Wire, thin iron strips and other small bits of metal had been placed in a semi-circle around him. Hiccup was asleep, his faced pressed into some unknowable device which lay open on the table before him. He was snoring lightly, completely unaware of Yanick's presence.
Yanick sighed and shook his head impatiently and turned to the beaten anvil. A device was sitting on it, and in its shape the smith recognized a Pulley. With a shock he realized it was the young man's solution to Anton Pandev's problems. Instead of the simple wooden constructs Pandev's fishing vessel used, this was a combination of wood and metal, bolted together. The boy had done something… insane.
The pulley had been separated into two parts; an outer ring, which came into contact with the rope, and an inner ring, which was meant to be fixed upon an axle. Neither ring touched the other. Instead, between the two of them, he had place marbles. They were spaced evenly around the perimeter of the inner ring, locked in position by thin metal strips bound together with tightly wound wire. They ran along a smooth, oiled track.
Yanick held the device up in his hand and gave it a spin. The interior disk stayed completely still, while the outer spun easily and smoothly, and relatively quietly.
He had put Marbles in a pulley. Children's marbles! What on God's green earth…
Yet the more Yanick thought about it, the more sense it made. It was a brilliant idea, and there was no one else insane enough to think of it, never mind actually try it.
A year ago when he'd hired the strange young Dane, he had recognized Hiccup's brilliance. It had only been proven again. The young man had wandered into his shop holding a broken linkage of some kind, and offering his services in manual labor in return for the repair. Over the following few days he had proven beyond any doubt that he was possessed of mechanical genius and he knew his way around a smithy. Yanick had scooped him up and given him a place as an apprentice and associate. Yet he still knew next to nothing about Hiccup beyond the man's insatiable curiosity and strange habits.
He quietly set the prototype down on the young smith's bench. Hiccup's robe had fallen on the floor around him. Yanick carefully picked it up and draped it across his protégé's shoulders. The youth shifted slightly and murmured something in Danish, though Yanick caught the word 'Gobber'. Not for the first time, he wondered where on earth the young man came from, and whether or not anyone was missing him back home.
As far as my research (read: google) indicates, the tetrapylon in Alexandria would have looked similar to the Arch of Galerius in Thessaloniki, Greece. Regular tetrapylons were Roman monuments usually consisting of four sets of four columns built with four archways. They were usually constructed at important intersections in cities and towns. This particular arch had been placed on Canopic Street (one of Alexandria's major streets) near the library, the museum, and several temples. Not to mention the Agora or 'meeting place'. A part of the city designated for everything from civic festivals to philosophical debates.
I hope the mechanical jibber-jabber isn't too dull. But I find it's an aspect of Hiccup's personality which is under-stressed in other fics. Perhaps this is understandable on the basis that stories and characters require more emotional journeys for reader engagement, but Hiccup built a flightsuit, a false tail, and impressively complex mechanical systems out of simple materials available to a pre-industrial society. The clockwork visible in Toothless' tail in 'Gift of the Nightfury', as well as the springs mentioned in HTTYD2 -the ones which govern the stabilizing fin on the back of his flightsuit- were invented around the 1500's or later. This puts Hiccup's mechanical expertise at least six hundred years ahead of his time. I realize that this may be overanalyzing things, but his intellect and problem-solving skills in this area should not be neglected. I hope I'm doing them justice.
The marbles idea is a rudimentary version of modern ball bearings. As I said, Hiccup is working waaaay ahead of his time.