Star Rigger #01 - Seas of Ernathe by Jeffrey A. Carver

Author:Jeffrey A. Carver [Carver, Jeffrey A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759296251
Publisher: e-reads.com
Published: 1976-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The next day, Seth rolled out of his hiking blanket to follow Lo'ela for a quick plunge in and out of the water in the sea entry well. The sea, surprisingly, was comfortably warm, but it woke him enough to feel like pouring a large bowl of fresh water over his head before dressing again. He joined Lo'ela for a pleasant breakfast under a clear blue morning sea, during which he found himself on the receiving end of the questions, for a change.

Tell me about starship flying, she began with a huge, expectant grin. She wanted to hear, not only about his actual job as a pilot second, but also everything he knew to tell about all the worlds he had visited, the worlds he had not visited, and about the Star Cluster itself (who the Lacenthi were, and the Querlin, why he called them a "threat," what the Cluster Council was all about, and how the human worlds had managed to build themselves—again—an interstellar society, if a struggling one). Seth told her of his home worlds Rorcan and Venecite, the former a mighty industrial planet of great endless mines and foundries, the latter the home world of much of the scientific and intellectual expertise of the Central Worlds. He told her of Rethmere, the political and financial nerve center of the Cluster, and the home port of his own ship, Warmstorm. And he told her of the Galaxy Beyond, now all but forgotten—where, by the accounting of some historians, humankind first arose, and perhaps lingered even today.

Lo'ela kept him talking constantly, so long that he had hardly an inkling of the passage of time. Seth was exuberant in speaking of such matters, and was slightly astonished to realize how completely, for a day or more, they had slipped from his mind. He vowed not to allow such a lapse again and reminded himself sternly of his Warmstorm mission—to find a means of dealing with the Nale'nid. Which of course, he told himself, was precisely what he was doing.

Lo'ela got him back to the actual flying of the star-ship. You do not travel as we travel?

Seth tapped his cheek. "No," he said weightily, "the distances are very, very much greater—and we are dependent upon machines."

You do not like dependence upon machines.

"They do their job as well as can be expected, and actually I'm rather fond of them, but—" but there was always that uncertainty, the marginal control of the human operator. In the control pit of a starship, when everything had been done that could be done, when the normal-space trajectory was optimal and the probability-probe signaled on to the fluxdrive… in that moment, the ship was already beyond the help of human control and interference. It trembled and shuddered to its core, and plunged into the cold, light-dark realm of flux-space, where both men and instruments were for any important purposes blind, and only the guess-factoring of the probe could guide the ship intact through to normal-space. The

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.