"No!"
"Truly. They thought — now, to my mind, it takes a twisted mind to think this in the first place — that someone could use the gnomeflingers to throw dead weight projectiles instead of passengers. Well, we performed some experiments, but we never got reliable enough results to suggest that this would work."
"Why not?" Mara asked.
Standback sighed. "Mostly because the note-takers kept getting crushed by thrown rocks. At any rate, the knights asked us to come up with a defense to protect getting hurt by flying rocks. They talked about shields, and barriers, but our Hazard Analysis Committee interviewed the gnomeflinger Impact Test Survivors and concluded that the problem went beyond shields and walls. I brought their results down here with me." He led her into the next room.
The furniture, Mara noted with relief, did not look banged up at all. How dangerous could this room be?
A closer look revealed the furniture to be brand new. The comers of the room contained large piles of splinters.
"Are you sure you want ME to stand on the X?" Stand-back asked. "After all, I guarantee it to be the safest place in the room."
Mara bowed to him. "All the more reason to give it to you."
He was flattered. "How kind you are, and how brave."
"I am also called Mara the Courageous," she said.
Standback was not surprised.
He stepped onto the X and folded his arms confidently. "This room has a broad-band sensor." He pointed to a small round bump in the floor. "Stamp anywhere. You don't need to do it very hard."
The floor looked to be some kind of parquet, broken at regular intervals with circular lids each the size of a melon.
Mara eyed Standback narrowly and slammed her foot against the bare floor. Nothing happened. She stamped again, harder. Still nothing. She took a running start and stamped with both feet, hard enough to hurt her ankles. Nothing. She gave up and leaned on the wall.
Huge leather balloons popped out of the floor. Filling instantly with compressed air, the balloons smashed the new furniture to kindling.
Mara sidled around the edge of the room, squeezing between the wall and the balloons. "That's pretty impressive, Standback — hello?" She squeaked a balloon with her thumb. "Standback?"
Mara heard an answering squeak. She leapt onto one of the balloons, poised there like a cat, and saw a hand struggling upward in the crack where all the balloons met.
Mara rolled down to the hand and planted her feet against balloon, her right shoulder against another. Gradually, the two moved apart. She heard a gasping inhale below her, then a thump as something hit the floor.
"Thank you so very much," Standback said feebly. "The Thudbaggers are nearly perfect — I don't have a bruise on me — but I couldn't really breathe in there."
"You could make a snorkel," Mara said sarcastically. She had grown up near the sea, " — a short breathing tube."
There was a hiss, then another. The balloons were deflating. Standback appeared among them, stuffing them back below floor level. He said dubiously, "That's an awfully simplistic answer. You should leave design questions to the specialists. On the other hand," he added thoughtfully, "if it had reserve tanks — and an air pump — and free-swinging gimbals to keep it upright…" He sketched it all out on the only clear portion of his shirt.
Mara, who needed a rest, sat beside him, her chin in her hand. "I see why you're having problems getting promoted. Do you have to get these all working to win approval?"
"Oh, my goodness, no." Standback caught himself and added, almost defensively, "Besides, they all work wonderfully!" He stared out at the smashed furniture wistfully. "No, it's simply a matter of getting the Committee's stamp of approval. Unfortunately, I can't even get their attention. They completely ignore me."
"Do you do everything by committee?"
"Some humans think we invented the committee."
"And until you get their approval, poor Watchout can't be betrothed to you?"
"Nor should she be," Standback said glumly. "After all, would you agree to marry a gnome with no credentials?"
Mara didn't think she would marry a gnome at all, but decided it wouldn't be polite to point that out. "You're very nice just for yourself, credentials or no. And now," she said firmly, "what about the weapons?"
"A bargain's a bargain." Standback, making a final note on his shirt, opened the rear door of the Thudbagger room, and Mara found herself in a branch of the main tunnel again. They walked back toward the place where the tunnel split in two. Mara looked interestedly at the piles of debris and the bulky inventions half hidden under canvas or in shadow. Several of them were labeled, but life's too short to spend reading gnome labels.
"Wait." Mara had noticed a device carelessly tossed to one side on the tunnel floor.
It had a shiny black hand-grip butt and stock that supported a shining tube-and-yoke arrangement of blue steel and black wire, which was topped by a small sighting tube and a tiny ring with crossed hairs in it. The whole effect was remarkably menacing.
"What is it?" she asked, staring at it in awe.
"What? Oh, that." Standback nudged it with his foot disdainfully. "A co-worker made it."
"You disapprove of him?" Mara hazarded.
Standback nodded, his beard whipping up and down rapidly. "It was to be his Life Quest, and he abandoned it. Can you imagine, abandoning your Life Quest? He's always sworn that he'd fix it some day, but I doubt if he can; it has too few parts, it's far too small, and it can't even carry itself." He finished indignantly, "It doesn't even have a place for the operator to sit!"
Mara bent over it. "It fits in your hand."
"You see what I mean?"
She didn't, but only asked, "What's it for?"
The gnome snorted. "It's supposed to dowse for water, but it's hopeless. I can tolerate a few false starts, or a near miss, or the occasional explosion or dismemberment, but this — "
"It doesn't find any water, then?"
Standback said disgustedly, "Just diamonds, emeralds, rubies, other rocks…" He shoved it aside with a kick.
Mara looked back at it longingly, but kept walking.
Leaning alongside a hanging drop cloth on the tunnel wall was a human-size mannequin with some sort of backpack on it.
"This," Standback said as impressively as a gnome can be, in brief, "is the Mighty Thunderpack."
Mara examined the three nozzles connected to two tanks and what looked like a fire-starting flint. Near the top of the unit was also the now-familiar bulge of one of Standback's sensors. She gingerly touched the directional fin, like a fish's, on the Thunderpack. "How do you aim it?"
Standback laughed tolerantly. "It's not a weapon; it's personal troop transport."
Mara put it on her shoulders. For metal work, particularly for gnome metalwork, it was surprisingly light. "Very impressive," she said. She pictured an army (led by herself, naturally) swooping through squadrons of draconians and cutting them into small, non-combative strips. "How does it start up?"
"From the mere touch of an iron weapon," Standback said proudly. "I used a special kind of rock in it. Do you have a dagger?"
Mara hesitated.
"Come, come," the gnome said impatiently. "All thieves have daggers."
Embarrassed, Mara handed him the paring knife she had brought with her from her mother's kitchen.
Standback took it and said, "When I wave this near the sensor, the Mighty Thunderpack will burst into action." He tensed his arms and said in a melancholy voice, "Well, good-bye."
Mara, seeing the knife wave and noticing belatedly Standback's emphasis on "burst," lurched forward out of the way as Standback's arm moved near. To her relief, the Thunderpack did not activate. "What do you mean, 'goodbye?' Has this thing been tested before?" she demanded.