"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

We 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
down at the end all by our lonesome.
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