Heinlein's Gay Deciever - In LEGO® Bricks
One of my favorite bits of detail is the ability to stash a pair of swords "under the dash." In the book, the men's swords are stowed there, and including that bit of detail is what inspired me to base as much off of canon as possible.
I scrunched down, got at the stowage under the instrument board, pulled out padding and removed saber and sword, each with belt. - page 142
Here you can see that the dash has been constructed so that there are hinges on the window-edge of things, and flip up panels that allow for the weapons to be stored. Sort of "under the dash," and the best compromise between functionality and accuracy I could reach.
Also note the pilot's seat is fully reclined in this shot.
This next excerpt details some of the cabin features:
Aunt Hilda and I finished reprogramming in the time it took Zebadiah and Pop to design and make the fail-safes and other mods needed to turn Gay Deceiver, with time-space widget installed, into a continua traveler - which included placing the back seats twenty centimeters farther back (for leg room) after they had been pulled out to place the widget afbaft the bulkhead and weld it to the shell. The precessing controls and triple verniers were remoted to the driver's instrument board - with one voice control for the widget, all others manual:
If any of our voices said, "Gay Deceiver, take us home!" car and passengers would instantly return to Snug Harbor." - page 72
I took "abaft" to mean on the far wall of the rear space. It's possible that it meant the twister is right behind the seats, although I doubt it.
This next shot shows the full extent of the cabin area.
Through the bulkhead door in the main cabin, there's a smaller aft space referred to quite often in the text. It's about the size of a large phone booth, turned on its side.
This area has Jake's twister mounted to the hull (in the top right), as well as a second bulkhead door leading to the space warp they had installed in Oz. (Go read the book at this point, if you haven't already.)
The second bulkhead door doesn't go anywhere in this model - it opens up to reveal the wall behind it. Space warps are a bit beyond the scope of the LEGO I had on hand. The placement of the doors was based on dialogue from the second novel Gay appears in: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
I saw only a little of the vehicle. Its door opened into a four-place pilot-and-passenger compartment of what might be a spaceplane. Or might not be; the controls were strange and I was in position to judge how it worked. I was lugged between seats and shoved through a door behind them into a cargo space and wound up on top of the Rabbi's folded wheel-chair.
Was I going to be treated as cargo? No, I lay there only briefly, then was turned ninety degrees and passed through a larger door, turned another ninety degrees and placed on a floor.
And glad to stay there! - TCWWTW - Pages 244-245
Since we know the back passenger seats are a bench, I took "between seats" to mean the gap between the pilot and passenger areas. For what it's worth, the layout of the Oz annex has the doors to the restrooms parallel with Gay's main doors. Thus explaining all the turning, above. I think.
Just to the left of the twister is a container for the "juice" - Gay's fuel supply. Actually it's more of a monitoring station - there were no details on how she'd refuel, so I decided that a (hidden) hatch on the outside would allow for fill-up similar to gas stations today.
This is another view of the interior - showing Jake's twister a bit more clearly. The roof assembly closes the gap above the twister.
You can't really make it out, but the twister has a single gold-toned 1x1 round LEGO brick as it's centerpiece. This is the "Golden Snitch" piece from the Harry Potter sets. I figured mixing in a bit of magic and fantasy was true to the text.
Yes, I know it's not much to look at beyond that. But again I point out source text:
I said, "Where is this time machine? All I've seen is a claptrap."
"'Caltrop,' Aunt Hilda. You're looking at the space-time machine."
"Huh? Where? Why aren't we in it and going somewhere fast? I don't want my husband killed; he's practically brand-new.I expect to get years of wear out of him."
"Sharpie, stop the chatter," Zebbie put in. "It's on that bench, across the table from you."
"All I see is a portable sewing machine."
"That's it." - pages 56-57
Portions of this site make extensive use of Macromedia Flash. |
|
| Read updates on your 
Livejournal Friendslist