United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What has happened to you? You can tell that." "A simple thing, Captain Metcalf. My supply of oil leaked away, and my engines must work slowly. Your signal was useless; I could not have turned on the light." "You have answered the first question. You are far from home without a mother-ship, or she would have found you and furnished oil before this.
They faithfully reported their condition and the direction in which their bows pointed. The radars plotted their position with relation to each other and the mother-ship. Presently Joe cast a glance out of a port and saw that the dark line of sunset was almost below. The take-off had been timed to get the ships into Earth's shadow above the area from which war rockets were most likely to rise.
The mother-ship had to steer a true course, regardless of the vagaries of its rockets. The drones had simply to be kept in formation with it. The second task was simpler. But Joe was relieved, this time, of the need to report back instrument-readings. A telemetering device took care of that. The take-off rockets blasted and blasted and blasted. The mere matter of staying alive grew very tedious.
Before any boy is supposed to be ready for sea, he has to undergo in addition to the 'Impregnable' studies, a course of gunnery, and from ten to twelve weeks on a training brig. I underwent my gunnery course in H.M.S. 'Foudroyant, one of Nelson's flagships, which lay at that time in close proximity to the 'Impregnable, and I returned every evening to the mother-ship.
On a chart the island of Grande Mignon bears the same relation to surrounding islands that a mother-ship bears to a flock of submarines. Westward her coast is rocky and forbidding, being nothing but a succession of frowning headlands that rise almost perpendicularly from the sea.
To the Power that has most nearly guessed the answer to that riddle belongs the future Empire of the Seas. It is interesting to guess for oneself and to speculate upon the possibility of a kind of armoured mother-ship for waterplanes and submarines and torpedo craft, but necessarily that would be a mere journalistic and amateurish guessing. I am not guessing, but asking urgent questions.
The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, emit a flame-erupting something, and close as rapidly as it had opened. That something was a projectile, its propelling rockets fiercely aflame; as smoothly brilliant as its mother-ship and seemingly as impervious to the lethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, it received the full power of the savage attack.
In the bay is the second Ganges, now a sort of mother-ship for mine-sweepers and trawlers, and one of the busiest places one can imagine. The King not long ago dined aboard this ship, and is said to have expressed great interest in the work carried on from the Ganges.
The others might be picked out by the naked eye but it wasn't likely. Drone Two, far ahead and clearly visible, turned from a shining steel speck to a reddish pin-point of light. The red color deepened. It winked out. The sunlight in the ports of the mother-ship turned red. Then it blacked out. "Shoot the ghosts," said Joe. The three drone-handlers pushed their buttons.
I was now sent to H.M.S 'Circe, the outfitting ship for young recruits, to get my uniform. If so, it must be kept in his custody until such time as I should be prepared to join the mother-ship, the 'Impregnable. I handed him the eight pence which I carried in my pocket.
Word Of The Day