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For another, a ship could travel very many times 186000 miles per second in overdrive. The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence, there were only the small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice, but which it would have been intolerable to have stop. Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy.
They act like they think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of plague-germs!" He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium.
He held it for seconds and broke out. It was still in sight. The speed of the Isis, with the adjusted overdrive, was one point seven lights. Now, instead of spending days in solar-system drive for planetary approach, Bors went into the new-speed drive and broke out in eleven minutes twenty seconds, and was within a hundred thousand miles of Garen.
Calhoun had lately completed five such planetary visits, with from one to three weeks of overdrive travel between each pair. When he left Tallien Three he'd head back to Sector Headquarters for more orders about the work of the Interstellar Medical Service. Murgatroyd zestfully licked his empty cup to get the last least drop of coffee. He said hopefully: "Chee?" He wanted more.
Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length of journey that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun had to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sun under all circumstances and aim for it with the requisite high precision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout.
I've brought spacesuits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, and I've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling for volunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it's needed. Do I get any volunteers?" He got four.
There's no report of any ship fleeing in overdrive. But if any did escape, its report would lead to an immediate discovery of the exact improvement in our missiles. I am saying, Majesty, that if one enemy ship escaped that battle, we can look for all the enemy ships to be equipped with revised missiles like ours." Bors raised his voice. "May I speak?" "Ah," said the king. "Bors. By all means."
There'd been a warning gong an hour ago, notifying that the end of overdrive journeying approached. Hence the coffee. When breakout came, the overdrive field must collapse and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship's keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion.
The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange and the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the Milky Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an unaccustomed angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying magnitudes. But Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to port, which was good.
But the morale on board was superb and the weapons were to put it mildly inspiring of hope. The Liberty broke out of overdrive and the sun of Kandar shone fiery yellow in emptiness. The gas-giant planet had moved in its orbit. It was more evenly in line than before with a direct arrival-path for a fleet from Mekin.
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