United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A few of them were able to use contragravity hand-lifters and hand-towed lifter-skids; several were even learning to operate things like bulldozers, at least to the extent of knowing which lever or button did what. Give them a little time, Trask thought, watching a gang at work down on the spaceport floor. It won't be many years before half of them will be piloting aircars.
Finally, however, he quieted down, and the boat swung him around, bringing the tail past our bow, and the ship cut contragravity to specific-gravity level and settled to float on top of the water. The boat dived again, and payed out a line that it brought up and around and up again, lashing the monster fast alongside. "All right," Kivelson was saying, out of the intercom. "Shooting's over.
A little later, two air-tanks floated in, and then two more, going off contragravity and lumbering forward on treads to fire their 90-mm. rifles. At the same time, combat-cars swooped in, banging away with their lighter auto-cannon and launching rockets.
How long it'll take is another question." The two sixty-foot collapsium-armored turtles settled to the ground and went off contragravity. The ports opened, and things began being floated off on lifter-skids: framework for the water tower, and curved titanium sheets for the tank. Anna de Jong said something about hot showers, and not having to take any more sponge-baths.
The Peenemünde settled down, turned slowly to get her port in line with the gate, and lurched off contragravity and began running out a bridge to the promenade. I got some shots of that, and then began packing my stuff back in the hamper. "You going aboard?" Tom asked. "Can I come along? I can carry some of your stuff and let on I'm your helper."
So the ship went down to almost sea surface, and Tom and I went to the stern turret. The gun I was to handle was an old-model Terran Federation Army infantry-platoon accompanying gun. The mount, however, was power-driven, like the mount for a 90-mm contragravity tank gun.
And what they can't exclude or attack, they'll accept, and then deny that it's proof of sapience. "What the hell do they want for proof of sapience?" Gerd demanded. "Nuclear energy and contragravity and hyperdrive?"
With contragravity, of course, terms like "escape-velocity" and "mass-ratio" were of purely antiquarian interest. "How long," he asked Pearson, "would it take to fit that vehicle with a full set of detection instruments radar, infrared and ultraviolet vision, electron-telescope, heat and radiation detectors, the whole works and spot it about a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles above Keegark?"
I've seen them on other planets where they've lost contragravity. For winged aircraft powered by chemical fuel. I hope we have time for me to look around, here. I'll bet they even have railroads here." The "great damage" caused by the bomb was about equal to the effect of a medium hurricane; he had seen worse from high winds at Traskon. Mostly it had been moral, which had been the kind intended.
Beowulf had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and contragravity and normal-space craft, they even had colonies on a couple of other planets of their system. They had everything but hyperdrive. Beowulf was a civilized planet, and you didn't raid civilized planets, not and get away with it. And beside, hadn't they gotten enough loot on Amaterasu? "No, we did not," Trask told them.
Word Of The Day