Baldwin, Bill - Helmsman 03 - The Trophy by Baldwin Bill

Author:Baldwin, Bill
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2004-01-31T01:09:56+00:00

nance flutter when you reach approximately eighty-two M LightSpeed.

Clad in his usual tweeds, the designer looked up and smiled when Brim was within haling distance. "How does she look to you?" he asked.

Brim forced himself to smile. "She looks beautiful," he said truthfully, climbing to the rim of the gravity pad with the breeze full in his face. The morning smelled of high summer—fresh-cut grass and water—blended with the odors of hot metal, fresh sealant, ozone, and heated logics from the ship. "How do you feel about her?" he asked.

Valerian shrugged and pursed his lips. "She's solid enough," he said. "I've been with the crew all night and watched just about every fastener slide home and lock." He turned his hands palms up. "I guess she's as ready to go as I can make her. You want to do a walkaround?"

"I'm inclined to take your word, Mark," Brim said. "For this particular bird, you've got to be the greatest Crew Chief in the known Universe."

"Well," Valerian drawled with a grin, "she was all right when I looked her over ten cycles ago—but there's no telling what might have gone wrong since then."

They spent the next metacycle checking drain plugs, access doors, panel tracks, and plumbing mazes before they were finished; each was important—and each was flawless. But the inspection came nowhere near answering the burning question Kabul Anak had planted in Brim's mind the night before. Ultimately, the Carescrian capitulated to his doubts. "How about resonance flutter between those two big Lyon Napiers?" he asked Valerian. "Is the ship really well enough braced for all that power?"

"Resonance flutter," Valerian mused with a nod. "I wondered if there wasn't something bothering you." He scratched his head. "Well, I'll have to admit it's a possibility, all right. Those two big crystals will be putting out some powerful oscillations—especially in the mass component..."

"And at exactly the same frequency," Brim finished for him. He shook his head. "How much clearance is there between them?"

Valerian closed his eyes a moment while he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fifteen point nine file:///G|/rah/Bill%20Baldwin/Baldwin,%20Bill...%20The%20Helmsman%2003%20-%20The%20Trophy.txt (77 of 149) [1/31/2004 1:10:28 AM]

three five irals, virtual

THE TROPHY / 163

center to virtual center," he said presently. "It's close, but I think it ought to be enough."

Brim made his own mental calculations. "That means I'm safe at least to eighty M LightSpeed, doesn't it?" he asked.

"Probably a little faster even," Valerian assured him. "And, of course, there may be no flutter till twice that speed. Voot's beard, you might never get any at all." He shook his head in mock confusion. "It mostly has to do with the shape of the side lobes they radiate—and these particular beauties ought to be specially safe to work with. Their energy lobes stretch aft—not sideways where they can interact at high time constants. Besides," he added, "the League won it last year for sixty-seven point two M's, so you ought to be able to make a race of it this year for not much more than eighty M's, give or take a few LightSpeeds.

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