Good. A wooden cork with a hole in it… there. I’ll wind some rope around it to keep it closed as long as possible. See, I’ve prepared for this. A wick through the cork like that. Brank’ox, this little pot in my hand looks like just any little pot. But it is in fact a grenade. Let’s test it. But outside, not in here. This thing is dangerous.”
Brank’ox opens the door, and I put the clay grenade on the ground right outside.
“We’ll stay behind the door, but let’s not close it. Just cover your ears.”
I take the fire stick myself and light the wick slash fuze. Then I quickly step back behind the door and cover my ears with my hands.
WHAM!
The grenade explodes, sending a hail of pottery shards at the other side of the door.
Brank’ox opens the door fully. The little pot is completely gone, replaced by a much bigger cloud of smoke and a smell like New Year’s Eve.
I laugh and clap my hands in glee. “You think that will scare them?”
He smiles down at me. “It certainly scared me. It’s very loud. Can one use more than that and make an even louder noise?”
“Warrior, one can use much more than that and make a noise that will scare every dragon from here to… there. But we have something better in mind.”
We close the door and go back to the Factory.
“Now that we know what works,” I explain, “we can make it much quicker. All we need is to get the three powders, mix them together using water, and then dry them out. The only thing that really takes time is the saltpeter, the white powder we make from guano. But we’ve set up the Factory to make it easy for us to make it. See? That row of large pots, the fires, the things I had your men make and put there – now we can start to use that stuff, and this will become a real factory.”
“The aliens made the framework,” he muses, looking down into it. “With this very strange place. Then you turned it into something useful. I think I would like to see your planet some day. If this is something one woman can make, then I barely dare think what a whole planet of you can do.”
“I had help,” I remind him. “Delyah gave me this mission. Your men helped me build it. And then there was someone else, too.”
He frowns. “Who?”
“Just someone who made sure I came here safely that first time. Who helped me get sap and who found the guano cave. Someone who had collected a huge treasure that turned out to be better than gold. Someone who took me here safely again, who supported me and made everything work. Someone who knows how to mix powders right. Someone who is a master smith and carpenter and who never complains about my weird requests. Someone who doesn’t even know how great he is. Can you guess who I mean?”
He looks at me for a moment. Then he bends down and embraces me, calmly and firmly. “I think I can.” His voice is a little gruff.
“Why must you be so wonderful?” I sniffle into his chest. “You have no sense of proportion. Just a little great is fine! That’s all I need. But you think you must be great at everything. And then you just are.”
“You make me want to be as good as I can.” His deep voice makes me tremble.
“Well, mission accomplished. And then some.”
We stand there for a while. Then I stroke my hand across his powerful chest, and the tingles start again. “You want to… experiment some more?”
Something hard is poking me in the stomach.
“I was just going to ask you the same,” Brank’ox says and slides both hands down to my butt, squeezing it. “There are many things we haven’t tried. And I’m sure that one of these days I’ll make you go bang.”
- - -
Neither of us does any more work that day.
The next day, I get started on the first major batch of gunpowder this Factory will make, and I make Brank’ox help, because I want him close.
It will be about six hundred pounds of it. Fifteen percent charcoal, ten percent sulfur, and seventy-five percent saltpeter seems to be the right mix. Making the saltpeter will take a few days, mostly waiting for it to dry as white crystals. But the various mixes I made for the successful experiments are still enough for