Tinker's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Tinker set the cracked engine block aside and faced a new wall. He had an engine now, pulled from a scrapped SkyRock flyer. But a flight engine spins high and light. It wants air under it. His buggy needed the opposite. It needed low-end grunt to tear a launch out of the dirt. He bolted the SkyRock engine to the bench and ran it. The buggy lurched, coughed, and died. No torque down low. Nothing he could reach would fix that. He tried three more flight engines over two days. Each one screamed at the top and stalled at the bottom. Tinker sat on the shed floor and stared at the dead machine. The workbench behind him held every wrench he owned. None of them could rebuild physics. Elroy Jetson pushed through the door that afternoon. Tinker knew him as the junior rocket pilot, the kid who traded lessons with him—flight theory for throttle timing. Elroy's eyes went straight to the sleek buggy, then to the stalled engine. He didn't waste words. "That's a flyer's engine," Elroy said. "You're asking it to pull. It was built to push." "I know," Tinker said. "It's all I've got." Elroy crouched by the block. He tapped the gearing. "Then stop fighting the engine. Change the gears." He talked fast. "We gear down. Trade top speed for torque at the start. The engine spins where it likes. The buggy gets the grunt to launch." Tinker sat up. "That kills my top end." "For the launch, yeah. You build a second gear set for the straight." Elroy shrugged. "Two setups. One to leave the line. One to run." Bam Bam Rubble ducked in behind him, a steel bar across his shoulders. The caveman had cleared this shed for Tinker with his bare hands. Now he came when work smelled close. "You need something bent?" Bam Bam asked. "I need a new gear housing," Tinker said. "Short. Strong." Bam Bam grinned. "Hard work." They built it that night. Elroy did the math on a scrap of paper. Tinker cut and fit the gears. Bam Bam held the housing steady while Tinker torqued the bolts down hard. The cottony creature bounced along the bench and dropped loose nuts into a tin. Tinker rolled the buggy to the shed's far wall. He climbed in. He fed it throttle slow. The engine caught and held low, growling instead of screaming. The tires bit dirt. The buggy shot forward and crossed the whole shed before he braked. He sat there, breathing hard, grinning like he had at 142 when the rear stepped out. "It launches," he said. Elroy nodded once. "It launches. But you heard it hit the wall of that gear. Short gears, short legs. You got no top speed yet." Tinker looked down the empty shed. He could leave the line now. He still had no way to run flat-out for a record. That was the next build.