By the time Kallista unfolded the paper, the document was nearly three feet wide and four feet tall. It looked like a schematic for some kind of machine. "Was is it?" Trenton asked. "Did you discover you father really was building a giant . . ." The words died in his mouth as he leaned closer to the light and saw what was on the paper. It was a set of plans all right. It was what her father had been working on. What they had been putting together. It was a machine. But not only a machine. It was a weapon. But not only a weapon. It was . . . Well, he didn't know exactly what it was. If the plans had been drawn up by anyone other than Leo Babbage, Trenton would have considered them a joke. But if there was one thing he had learned about Kallista's father, it was that the man did not appear to possess a very refined sense of humor. The plans were no joke. They were real. But why he would have drawn them up and what he expected his daughter to do with them was beyond understanding. Because the plans on the page-shown in surprisingly great detail-were for building a creature that looked like it had come directly from the pages of one of the storybooks in Leo Babbage's workshop. Trenton studied the powerful clawed legs, broad wings, and sharp toothed mouth. "What is it?" he whispered. Kallista held the plans up before her, eyes filled with wonder. "It's a dragon." Excerpted from Fires of Invention by J. Scott Savage All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
