Shipyards on Saturn
On a world without oceans, shipyards should be redundant. But these are operating at maximum efficiency. At least that is what he deduces from the way the collections of masts, cloth and barrels keep shrinking and growing over the weeks. Clearly the ships which are being produced are not designed to sail on water.
Do they sail them on land? The possibility can be dismissed, for such vessels would require wheels, and he has spotted no piles of those. Besides, they wouldn’t be ships if that was the case. They would be carriages, and made elsewhere.
The riddle seems beyond him. As he frets, he knocks the telescope a few degrees off alignment with his frilly cuff. Now he is looking into the space between Saturn and her moon. There are many tiny points of light, not stars. And they can’t be extra moons, because that would be greedy. He concentrates on them, watching as they slowly dip behind the planet’s shimmering rings.
These must be the ships! The inhabitants of Saturn have ships which sail the ocean of space! For them, space must be like water, a substance which can navigated. And the sails catch the sunlight. It is unexpected, glorious. Mariners of the empyrean!
Space is like water? How far can the metaphor be taken? Might a man fish in its currents? What would he catch?
Not long since, a man by the name of Cornelius Drebbel constructed a completely enclosed boat which could be submerged by contracting its sides and so reducing its volume. Once under water, it was rowed by oars extending through the sides, and it contained enough air to last its crew several hours before the need to resurface. If space is like water, what exactly will happen when the inhabitants of Saturn also invent the submarine?
As he retires to bed, he whistles an old song by Guillaume Dufay, a melancholy rondo. Not that he enjoys melancholy, or thinks it fitting for his recent discoveries, but sadness is deeper than joy, and depth is what he now requires to keep his mind on the vertical fathoms of space. And it is a gorgeous song. He is anything other than a radical, despite his love for accuracy. No, he likes old music and other antique things. Wines, slippers, alliances, as well as customs and comforts. He whistles himself, his less old bones, to sleep.
The creaking of the sails outside, the steady thump of the pumps below, enter his dream as hands slapping his back in appreciation of his work. The great men of Holland are converging on his home, setting off from every corner of the state. That’s an easy thing to do here, because the country is so flat. There are no bothersome hills to negotiate. Just meadows which were once under the sea.
The dream wakes him. He is left with a feeling that he now has the power to do something special for his government. A chance to increase the reputation and possessions of the Netherlands.
He climbs out of bed, too excited to return to sleep. He runs down the stairs to his study. Writing letters won’t help at this lonely hour. Mundane chores might serve to calm his nerves. He retrieves a broom from the floor, holds it awkwardly in one hand. How does it work? He has no idea. He is still trying to work it out when the sun rises and his new mistress arrives with the mail.
She is foreign, from Spain. Her skill with a guitar must be formidable. He kisses her hand, shows her to her room. There is no time for a proper introduction. The day will be momentous and busy. He must carry all the brass tubes from his attic and fix them together outside. Each time he passes her door, he can hear her unpacking.
There are hundreds of tubes, gilded on the inside with the special light of Saturn. Whatever it is about that world which allows the beings who dwell there to treat space as water must have been forced down into these pipes. One at a time, they have all been plated with the influence of Saturn. It’s worth a try.
Joined end to end, they rise up into the sky. A brass pipeline much higher than the windmill. He connects a tube from its base to the pump in the cellar. Another conduit leads from the pump into an empty barrel. This is not an experiment but an act of patriotism.
He is exhausted. It is noon, but now he is standing in an expanding shadow. Far above, where the brass tubes end, solid ground is forming in the sky. He is reclaiming, for Holland, the land between the Earth and the moon. Why win extra territory from the sea alone? Treated with Saturnian light, his apparatus is capable of pumping out the nothingness of the cosmos, exposing the bare rock beneath. An island in the sky, growing bigger and higher with each turn of the sails.
