Building Harlequin's Moon by Niven Larry & Cooper Brenda

Author:Niven, Larry & Cooper, Brenda [Niven, Larry & Cooper, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure
ISBN: 9780765351296
Amazon: 0765351293
Goodreads: 49789
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Published: 2005-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

ERIKA LIT THE FUSION engines for the final burn.

During the next few weeks Daedalus’s image grew larger. It became distinct from Apollo, gained shape, gained size. Daedalus was bigger than Harlequin, and much hotter, almost a sun itself, with its own sluggish internal fusion reactions. Harlequin’s neat shock-wave diamond patterns were roiled to chaos in Daedalus’s storms. They watched smaller storms nibbling at the edges of a whorl as big as Uranus.

Erika and Gabriel grew minutely but inexorably heavier as the ship’s acceleration increased. Gabriel hated this part—feeling slow and large and awkward while they rocketed toward something his hindbrain couldn’t identify as anything but a threat.

“We’re faster this time, aren’t we?” he asked.

“Medical said you could take six gee.”

“What are you taking us to?”

“Six point two.”

Gabriel snorted.

Hours before the closest approach to Daedalus, they suited up, installed filtered water and vitamin food mixes inside their psuits, and strapped themselves into viewing bay couches. Erika thought cabins were entirely too wimpy—and fear had always lured her, a magnet that pulled the best from her. She was enough the careful ship’s captain to have them in a safe place in case unexpected course corrections were needed, but crazy enough to love the danger. Gabriel watched her cheeks flush and her eyes brighten as they came closer. She’d piloted him around Daedalus twice before, and always she was daredevil happy, sharp, precise, and very alive. Even in a bulky suit, Erika had grace. But only her forearms and fingers moved, because thrust was flattening them both.

Erika filled the view screen with images of the gas giant, so it was all they could see, all of their world. This close, Daedalus dwarfed them to a sand grain blown past a fiery beach ball. The planet showed alarming detail, eddies visible inside storms inside bands of separated gases. A small mistake in trajectory would throw them into it, and the Diamond Mine would never crawl from the gravity well of the gas giant before it was torn apart.

Gabriel held his breath, only briefly afraid.

And at last, at peri-Daedalus, they blew the fireball in their engine into space in one mighty puff. Six point two gee, and then they were falling free, almost weightless, the ship stressed a bit by Daedalus’s tides. They were in Daedalus’s shadow. The receding gas giant was a black circle behind them, rimmed with Apollo’s corona.

Their course gradually straightened, and Gabriel began to feel safe. Erika started the navigation program calculating the small course adjustments they’d need to intersect Refuge based on their actual trajectory after slinging away from Daedalus. The gas giant slowly stole back some of the speed it had given them.

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