Awoken Early.

Druuna was awoken early by a loud bird outside her window. Unable to sleep, she grabbed one of her other books, one marked “Basic Engineering” and flipped through it until she saw an interesting section. The page she was reading had a picture of an odd wheel, one that was much too large for the old cars that littered the streets of the wastelands. The book said:

“A water wheel is a means of extracting power from the flow of water; otherwise known as hydropower. Water wheels were widely used in the Middle Ages to power industry in Europe. The most common use of the water wheel was to mill flour in gristmills, but other uses included foundry work and machining, and pounding linen for use in paper. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface. Most commonly, the wheel is mounted vertically on a horizontal axle, but the tub or Norse wheel is mounted horizontally on a vertical shaft. Vertical wheels can transmit power either through the axle or via a ring gear and typically drive belts or gears; horizontal wheels usually directly drive their load.”

Druuna studied the schematics and figures in the book closely until she began to understand how the machine worked. Happy over her new discovery, Druuna again flipped the book to a random page. This one showed a long metal scaffold attached to an egg shaped car of some sort that had long, oval tires. The first paragraph said:

“Cranes illustrate the use of one or more simple machines to create mechanical advantage.
The lever. A balance crane contains a horizontal beam (the lever) pivoted about a point called the fulcrum. The principle of the lever allows a heavy load attached to the shorter end of the beam to be lifted by a smaller **** applied in the opposite direction to the longer end of the beam. The ratio of the load's weight to the applied **** is equal to the ratio of the lengths of the longer arm and the shorter arm, and is called the mechanical advantage.
The pulley. A jib crane contains a tilted strut (the jib) that supports a fixed pulley block. Cables are wrapped multiple times round the fixed block and round another block attached to the load. When the free end of the cable is pulled by hand or by a winding machine, the pulley system delivers a **** to the load that is equal to the applied **** multiplied by the number of lengths of cable passing between the two blocks. This number is the mechanical advantage.
The hydraulic cylinder. This can be used directly to lift the load or indirectly to move the jib or beam that carries another lifting device. “

Druuna read this with interest and saw that the simple mechanism would be easy to make and could be extremely useful to the city of Greenport. Maybe she would bring it up with Ezra sometime? As she pondered these thoughts, Druuna’s eyelids became heavy and the Mediterranean woman fell fast asleep with a book tented over her face.