The Gryb by A. E. van Vogt

Author:A. E. van Vogt [Vogt, A. E. van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 1978-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Merritt told himself that he had to hold back his anger. He said, ‘Rocket tubes, Mrs Smith, work on the principle that action and reaction are equal and opposite. When you fire a shotgun there is a kick against your shoulder.

‘That kick would occur even if you were standing in a vacuum when you pulled the trigger. Actually, the presence of air slows a rocket ship. At the speeds a rocket can travel air pressure rises to thousands of pounds per square inch. In free space, away from the pull of gravity, a rocket will travel at many miles per second.’

‘But,’ mimicked Professor Hillier, ‘wouldn’t such speeds kill every living thing aboard ?’

Merritt said, ‘Madam, you are confusing acceleration with speed. Speed never hurt anybody. At this moment you are travelling on a planet which is whirling on its axis at more than a thousand miles an hour.

‘The planet itself is following an erratic course around the sun at a speed of nineteen and a fraction miles a second. Simultaneously the sun and all its planets are hurtling through space at a speed of twelve miles a second. So you see, if speed could affect you, it would have done so long ago.

‘On the other hand you have probably been in a car on occasion when it started up very swiftly and you were pressed into the back of your seat. In short you were affected^ by the car’s acceleration. Similarly, when a car is braked all of a sudden, everybody in it is flung forward. In other words, it had decelerated too swiftly for comfort.

‘The solution is a slow gathering of speed. Let us imagine that an automobile is travelling at a speed of ten miles an hour, a minute later at twenty miles and hour and so on, ten miles an hour faster each minute.

‘The driver would scarcely notice the acceleration but, at the end of a hundred minutes, he would be moving along at a thousand miles per hour. And he would have attained that speed by an acceleration on ten miles an hour per minute.

‘Actually, human beings have survived decelerations -crash landings - approximating fifteen gravities. But it is recognized that the average person will be pretty close to death at six gravities and very few could survive nine gravities of acceleration.’

‘What,’ said the scientist, ‘do you mean by gravities?’

‘One gravity,’ Merritt began, ‘is the normal pull of earth upon an object at ground level. Two gravities would be twice - ‘

At that moment he happened to glance at Drusilla, and he stopped short. She was white and Merritt realized that she thought he was following the wrong tack. He straightened.

He said, ‘Really, sir, don’t you think this is a little silly?’

‘So you’ve got it all down like a parrot,’ Professor Hillier sneered. ‘Simple answers for simple people. Now the morons are going to learn about space and the planets and you’re going to be the starry-eyed teacher.’

‘The notion that everybody should automatically know all about your subject,’ Merritt said, ‘is a curious egotism in so great a man.

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