Free Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp Page A

at this use of a monument of antiquity, but he
consoled himself with the thought that one column mattered less than the art of
printing.
     
                For type, he contracted with
a seal cutter to cut him a set of brass types. He had, at first, been appalled
to discover that he would need ten to twelve thousand of the little things,
since he could hardly build a type-casting machine, and would therefore have to
print directly from the types. He had hoped to be able to print in Greek and
Gothic as well as in Latin, but the Latin types alone set him back a round two
hundred solidi. And the first sample set that the seal cutter ran off had the
letters facing the wrong way and had to be melted up again. The type was what a
twentieth-century printer would have called fourteen-point Gothic, and an
engraver would have called sans-serif. With such big type he would not be able
to get much copy on a page, but it would at least, he hoped, be legible.
     
                Padway shrank from the idea
of making his own paper. He had only a hazy idea of how it was done, except
that it was a complicated process. Papyrus was too glossy and brittle, and the
supply in Rome was meager and uncertain.
     
                There remained vellum.
Padway found that one of the tanneries across the Tiber turned out small
quantities as a side line. It was made from the skins of sheep and goats by
extensive scraping, washing, stretching, and paring. The price seemed
reasonable. Padway rather staggered the owner of the tannery by ordering a
thousand sheets at one crack.
     
                He was fortunate in knowing
that printer's ink was based on linseed oil and lampblack. It was no great
trick to buy a bag of flaxseed and run it through a set of rolls like those he
used for copper rolling, and to rig up a contraption consisting of an oil lamp,
a water-filled bowl suspended and revolved over it, and a scraper for removing
the lampblack. The only thing wrong with the resulting ink was that it wouldn't
print. That is, it either made no impression or came off the type in shapeless
gobs.
     
                Padway was getting nervous
about his finances; his five hundred solidi were getting low, and this seemed a
cruel joke. His air of discouragement became so obvious that he caught his
workers remarking on it behind their hands. But he grimly set out to experiment
on his ink. Sure enough, he found that with a little soap in it, it would work
fairly well.
     
                In the middle of February
Nevitta Grummund's son wandered in through the raw drizzle. When Fritharik
showed him in, the Goth slapped Padway on the back so hard as to send him
halfway across the room. "Well, well!" he bellowed. "Somebody
gave me some of that terrific drink you've been selling, and I remembered your
name. So I thought I'd look you up. Say, you got yourself well established in
record time, for a stranger. Pretty smart young man, eh? Ha, ha!"
     
                "Would you like to look
around?" invited Padway. "Only I'll have to ask you to keep my
methods confidential. There's no law here protecting ideas, so I have to keep
my things secret until I'm ready to make them public property."
     
                "Sure, you can trust
me. I wouldn't understand how your devices work anyhow."
     
                In the machine shop Nevitta
was fascinated by a crude wire-drawing machine that Padway had rigged up.
"Isn't that pretty?" he said, picking up the roll of brass wire.
"I'd like to buy some for my wife. It would make nice bracelets and
earrings."
     
                Padway hadn't anticipated
that use of his products, but said he would have some ready in a week.
     
                "Where do you get your
power?" asked Nevitta.
     
                Padway showed him the
work-horse in the back yard walking around a shaft in the rain.
     
                "Shouldn't think