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As he neared the analysis section, it went into deceleration, but the pressure was not too bad. He made his way against it easily. The chief analyst was waiting for him. "We have everything you need, Lieutenant, except the orbital stuff. We'll do the best we can on that and have an estimate in a few minutes. Meanwhile you can mark up your figures.

After a long deceleration they were afraid to draw any more power for propulsion from their weakened batteries. They needed the remaining current for the moisture-reclaimers and the pumps of the air-restorers a relatively much lighter but vital drain. The sunlight was weak way out here. Worse, the solar thermocouples to power the ionics were almost shot.

The cruiser landed and deceleration cut to zero. At the same moment the water came on. Rip hurriedly finished cleaning up, dressed, then took his radiation instruments and carefully monitored his men as they came from the shower. Private Dowst had to go back for another try at getting his hair clean, but the rest were all right. Rip handed his instruments to Koa.

Several times during the cleaning, the men would leave the tube and go into the main mixing chamber while the tube was blasted with live steam to throw the stuff they had scraped off out into space. Each squad was on its last tube when a spaceman arrived. He saluted Rip. "Sir, the safety officer says to secure the tubes." That could mean only one thing: deceleration. Rip rounded up his men.

He searched the skies above him, and then, faintly, he could see the exhaust trails of the two ships as they streaked over the field, beginning their deceleration orbits around the satellite. Behind him, Strong heard the voice of the tower operator ordering Ramp Four and Ramp Five cleared for the two ships, and the mobs of people on the spaceport surged back.

"What calculations do you use in space-fighting?" "Courses and distances," said Bors. He could see no sense in this, but he went on. "Allowing for acceleration and deceleration in setting our missiles on targets. Allowing for the motion of the targets. Again we have computers for this. In practice they're too good!

Even at ten gravities of deceleration, it took several hours to reduce their speed to a point which would make it possible to head for any planet of the tiny sun. Morey went to the observatory and swept the sky with the telectroscope. It was difficult to find planets because the reflected light from the weak star was so dim, but he finally found one.

The feeling of deceleration increased. For part of a second they had the sensation of three gravities. Then there was a curious, yielding jar really very slight and then the feeling of excess weight ended altogether. But not the feeling of weight. They still had weight. It was constant. It was steady. But it was very slight. They were on the moon, but Cochrane felt no elation.

Now, ten minutes after brennschluss, they were going to start deceleration. That meant they had really high-vacked it to get somewhere in a hurry. He calculated swiftly. "I don’t know exactly," he admitted. "But from the ship’s actions, I’d say we were aiming for the far side of the asteroid belt. Anyway, we’ll fall short of Jupiter." There was a glimmer of respect in O’Brine’s glance.

At 40 miles, the ship had lost more than two miles per second of its speed since the landing-rockets were ignited, and there was a shuddering in all its fabric though because of the loss of speed it was not as bad as the atmosphere-graze. At 30 it began to shake and tremble. At 25 miles high there was as horrible a vibration and as deadly a deceleration as at the air-graze.