Tamara de Lempicka Saint Moritz

Tamara de Lempicka Saint MoritzTamara de Lempicka PrintempsTamara de Lempicka Portrait of Ira
another barn. Urn was seeing a lot of barns.
They'd started with a cart, and invested a lot of time in reducing its weight as much as possible. Gearing had been a problem. He'd been doing a lot of thinking about gears. The ball wanted to spin much faster than the wheels wanted to turn. That was probably a metaphor for something or other.
"And I can't get it to go backward," he said.
"Don't worry," said Urn scratched his head. "Okay. The answer isn't a little reptile in a shell, is it? Because you know I know that."
"I mean a shield tortoise. When you're attacking a fortress or a wall, and the enemy is dropping everything he's got on you, every man holds his shield overhead so that it . . . kind of . . . slots into all the shields around it. Can take a lot of weight."
"Overlapping," murmured Urn.
"Like scales," said Simony.Simony. "It won't have to go backward. What about armor?"Urn waved a distracted hand around his workshop."This is a village forge!" he said. "This thing is twenty feet long! Zacharos can't make plates bigger than a few feet across. I've tried nailing them on a framework, but it just collapses under the weight."Simony looked at the skeleton of the steam car and the pile of plates stacked beside it."Ever been in a battle, Urn?" he said."No. I've got flat feet. And I'm not very strong.""Do you know what a tortoise is?"
Urn looked reflectively at the cart.