"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автораWe found Sears and Roebuck and told them they
could stop programming navigational centers. We were alone. The Newbie's ghost could join that of Rumplestiltskin and every other dead Fred on board. We picked up the creature's body, bearing him aft to the "bridge," just about midway along the ship's body; actually, this bridge was just one among many. We set him up in the co-pilot's chair, where the Fred captain had been slain. Enemies in battle, they could become fast allies guiding the ship of death with spectral hands. The Newbie weighed more than I would have expected, about twice what Arlene weighed. I wished the nav cabins were closer to the central core of the ship, so we wouldn't have to lug the dead thing through nearly a full g of acceleration. This marked the second time in living memory when Fly Taggart ever wished for zero-g! We ramped up to speed again, but the monkeying around had cost us ten days of travel and a dreadful amount of fuel. I didn't understand how two hours of space-jockeying could cost us ten days until Arlene explained the fuel problem. The fuel was calculated on two assisted accelerations: ramping up at the beginning of the journey, after being launched by the pinwheel launcher from Fredworld, and slowing I mostly nodded and said "uh-huh" whenever she paused to wait for my response. I was really only interested in one aspect, which she finally disgorged. The ramscoop only worked at a certain speed, and you had to accelerate to that speed by other means . . . hence, the hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel we carried. The hydrogen was no problem; the ship replenished the store as a byproduct of fusionЧI guess not all the hydrogen fused, or something. But the LOX, as Arlene called it, was irreplaceableЧonce it was gone, it was gone. The bastard Newbie had used a lot of it trying to slow us down. We didn't have enough left to do a hundred-g burn for three days and match orbits with Skinwalker. We would have to start slowing a subjec- tive week earlier by shutting down the ramjet fusion entirely and just letting the friction of interstellar hydrogen against the ramscoop slow us some. Then we would manually burn at lower thrust, conserving our fuel and hopefully matching velocities.... If not, we either would stop short, dead in space, drifting at whatever velocity relative to the planet we finally ran out of fuel, sailing on past the planet and waving bye- bye in the rear windshieldЧor else we might plow |
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