trip is 516,166,166 miles a second. Our top speed at midvoyage when we changed over to decelerate was 1,032,885,031 miles per second. This is pretty small, really, as the trip is only about twenty-two light-years. Intergalactic travel, where one goes at least two million light-years, attains speeds much greater than that. It's the distance that determines the speed, you see.
"There's not much dust and not many photons between galaxies, so you don't get all this electronic wake
* The color "yellow-green" is as close as I can come in Earth language to the actual color as there is not yet a vocabulary (or physics) for hyperluminary phenomena. —Translator
like you do inside a galaxy where there's lots of energy." He looked at the horrible wash. "Pretty, isn't it."
He recalled himself to his task. "Anyway, my theory is that Tug Two never blew up because of that stuff."
Heller hit some more buttons. "Anyway, I was figuring what my jump and fall on Blito-P3 would be, so we'll use Earth gravity as the amount for G. Also, I set our ship up for Earth G, as it will be operating there and I wanted to get used to it.
"This ship has gravity synthesizers, of course. You couldn't ride in it at these speeds if it didn't. Our acceleration has been 42,276,330 feet per second per second. You have to have that much constant acceleration to attain these speeds. A body can tolerate no more than two or three G's for any period of time. Actually, if you experienced four to six G's longer than six seconds, you could expect restricted muscular activity because of apparent increased body weight; you would lose peripheral vision and gray out; then you would lose central vision, black out and go unconscious because the blood would be pulled from the head to pool in the lower parts of the body.
"At this acceleration the gravity synthesizers are handling an awful lot more than that. I think Tug Two blew up because her gravity synthesizers failed."
"Well," I said, refusing to be impressed. "How many gravities are they handling?"
"To counteract the acceleration, this equipment is handling..." He pointed at the screen.
It said:
1,289,401.409 G's!
I tried to get my heart back down out of my throat. It meant my body, in the absence of synthesizers, would
weigh 1,289,401.409 times what it normally did, due solely to acceleration and, now, deceleration!
"So," said Heller, "I don't think Tug Two blew up at all. I think the gravity synthesizers failed and her crew simply went splat! She may be somewhere in the universe now, still hurtling along as plasma. They only knew she disappeared. That's why I didn't bother with the problem. I hope the contractors did a good job on the gravity synthesizers. We were pushed to leave so fast that I didn't get too much chance to test the new installation."
He smiled reassuringly as the screen spark-flashed and blew out. "So don't be worried about the tug blowing up. It won't. It's we who would go bang, not the tug."
Heller put the button plate down. "As to arrival time, we would have found it easy to keep. But one has to be able to read screens very well to land in an area one has never seen before.
"Captain Stabb is just a bit nervous. He's a bit of a grouch like some old subofficers and he's gotten too careful." He shrugged. "He wants to see a place in daylight before he goes in for the first time, that's all. So he'll hang up about five hundred miles and study it in daylight for hours and when he's sure there aren't sudden traffic movements and that the base isn't a trap, he'll take it in, in the first darkness.
"Too bad. I planned a predawn arrival because I thought you'd want to be up and on the job early. You probably have things to do at the base.
"But it all has its advantages. I'll be able to look this so-called base over, too. I'll tell you what. Right now you look pretty shaky. Why don't you go get some more sleep and when we're hanging above that area in daylight, say about noon, come back here and
"There's not much dust and not many photons between galaxies, so you don't get all this electronic wake
* The color "yellow-green" is as close as I can come in Earth language to the actual color as there is not yet a vocabulary (or physics) for hyperluminary phenomena. —Translator
like you do inside a galaxy where there's lots of energy." He looked at the horrible wash. "Pretty, isn't it."
He recalled himself to his task. "Anyway, my theory is that Tug Two never blew up because of that stuff."
Heller hit some more buttons. "Anyway, I was figuring what my jump and fall on Blito-P3 would be, so we'll use Earth gravity as the amount for G. Also, I set our ship up for Earth G, as it will be operating there and I wanted to get used to it.
"This ship has gravity synthesizers, of course. You couldn't ride in it at these speeds if it didn't. Our acceleration has been 42,276,330 feet per second per second. You have to have that much constant acceleration to attain these speeds. A body can tolerate no more than two or three G's for any period of time. Actually, if you experienced four to six G's longer than six seconds, you could expect restricted muscular activity because of apparent increased body weight; you would lose peripheral vision and gray out; then you would lose central vision, black out and go unconscious because the blood would be pulled from the head to pool in the lower parts of the body.
"At this acceleration the gravity synthesizers are handling an awful lot more than that. I think Tug Two blew up because her gravity synthesizers failed."
"Well," I said, refusing to be impressed. "How many gravities are they handling?"
"To counteract the acceleration, this equipment is handling..." He pointed at the screen.
It said:
1,289,401.409 G's!
I tried to get my heart back down out of my throat. It meant my body, in the absence of synthesizers, would
weigh 1,289,401.409 times what it normally did, due solely to acceleration and, now, deceleration!
"So," said Heller, "I don't think Tug Two blew up at all. I think the gravity synthesizers failed and her crew simply went splat! She may be somewhere in the universe now, still hurtling along as plasma. They only knew she disappeared. That's why I didn't bother with the problem. I hope the contractors did a good job on the gravity synthesizers. We were pushed to leave so fast that I didn't get too much chance to test the new installation."
He smiled reassuringly as the screen spark-flashed and blew out. "So don't be worried about the tug blowing up. It won't. It's we who would go bang, not the tug."
Heller put the button plate down. "As to arrival time, we would have found it easy to keep. But one has to be able to read screens very well to land in an area one has never seen before.
"Captain Stabb is just a bit nervous. He's a bit of a grouch like some old subofficers and he's gotten too careful." He shrugged. "He wants to see a place in daylight before he goes in for the first time, that's all. So he'll hang up about five hundred miles and study it in daylight for hours and when he's sure there aren't sudden traffic movements and that the base isn't a trap, he'll take it in, in the first darkness.
"Too bad. I planned a predawn arrival because I thought you'd want to be up and on the job early. You probably have things to do at the base.
"But it all has its advantages. I'll be able to look this so-called base over, too. I'll tell you what. Right now you look pretty shaky. Why don't you go get some more sleep and when we're hanging above that area in daylight, say about noon, come back here and
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