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"I'm not some common deckhand," Stralchus says. "You can't order me about."

"Oh, stop it, Stralchus," Alexius says, stripping down to his shirtsleeves. "If I have to chop wood to make money, I'll chop wood."

Then you hand Alexius an ax, and the merchant realizes that without a supply of coal for the boiler, he actually has to chop wood. Stralchus you assign to reassembling the boiler because that keeps him surrounded by controllers. Then you and Control review the blueprints. They are mercifully clear, and the assistance of Alexius and Stralchus—both well educated, if not formally trained in mechanics—clears up any ambiguities.

You make one final inspection of the connections between the boiler and the far more complicated temporal apparatus. It looks good. When Control throws the big jackknife switch, there's an explosion of sparks, but when the smoke clears, you see it's worked—a perfectly circular hole in space and time floats above the Specular, just large enough to pass a watermelon.

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